At least he has a sense of humour. Albo has a new team, same as the old team. Via The Guardian:
Reshuffles are always a window into the psychologies of leaders and the parties they preside over, and Thursday’s Labor reshuffle tells us Anthony Albanese knows he has a fight on his hands, and not just against Scott Morrison.
The frontbench refresh, which was supposed to happen before Christmas, then this coming weekend, but then lobbed on Thursday after one of the key decisions leaked, is a combination of offensive and defensive actions by the leader.
Before we get to the specifics of the reshuffle, we first need to map the underlying conditions.
Labor MPs continue to ask themselves and one another whether Albanese has what it takes to beat Morrison in crisis management mode.
Just in case this isn’t clear, this is the most dangerous question a party room or a caucus ever asks about a leader. If that question is persistent, it can trigger a conflagration. But it is not yet clear whether Labor’s wafting existential dread will lead to any concrete action.
Over the summer Tanya Plibersek has put herself in contention in the event the party decides to act. Colleagues say she has Bill Shorten’s support, which means numbers from a portion of the Victorian right.
But the Labor right hasn’t moved in lockstep for years. The king-making faction of the Hawke/Keating/Rudd era is Balkanised in 2021, and it is not clear that the non-Shorten right is interested in replacing one inner-city leftwinger with another.
If opportunity ultimately presents, some rightwingers might want the opportunity of leading Labor for themselves. Chris Bowen. Jim Chalmers. Richard Marles. Tony Burke.
While it’s possible Chalmers could be drafted on a ticket with Plibersek (and I’d only rate that as possible), it’s not clear that others would be seriously interested, either because of loyalty to Albanese or because of personal ambition; and Albanese also commands significant support within Plibersek’s left faction.
So the saga chases its tail. Things either fizzle out after a time, or they escalate, because internal sentiment shifts decisively one way or another.
In my view, Albo has about as much chance as Buckley. The AFR sums it pretty well:
When Morrison came up the middle and supplanted Malcolm Turnbull in August 2018, and then calmed the Coalition in the shadow of an election, there grew a reluctance among voters for another change, even to what was then a stable Labor Party.
This yearning was just one of many reasons Bill Shorten lost in 2019 but it was an underlying factor acknowledged in the aftermath by both sides.
Today, as all and sundry lurch into 2021 and the shadow of the next election – either late this year or in the first half of 2022 – stability is once more an emerging theme inside the Coalition. This time with a slight difference.
People’s lives have been turned upside down by coronavirus over the past year and with the vaccine roll-out soon to begin and scheduled to finish by October, there is an overwhelming yearning for a return to a life that as best as possible resembles that pre-COVID-19.
That sounds about right to me. If ScoMo goes later this year he’ll be doing so into the recovery boom as well.
It’s not all Albo’s fault. He is ineffectual but the pandemic sucked away all oxygen.
That said, if it does get close it won’t matter anyway. Labor has so mishandled the China divorce that it is a standing veto for the Government over Labor winning anything.
They need only to drop the word “China” in and it’s all over for Albo:
Next up, after the election, Tanya, I guess. Onwards and downwards.
