Thumping election victories can have perverse consequences. One of them is how they create the conditions for hubris and ultimate defeat.
“The precise moment you believe you’ve mastered politics is when politics masters you,” writes Labor elder Wayne Swan in an essay published by the Chifley Research Centre on Friday.
In 1993, Paul Keating won the sweetest victory of all in defiance of the punditry with an increased majority.
“Three years later? Complete devastation. Government to opposition in a single electoral cycle,” recalls Swan.
When LNP leader Campbell Newman claimed the largest state victory in Queensland history in 2012 he “appeared invincible, untouchable”.
“By 2015, he was packing boxes in the premier’s office, having lost not just government but his own seat,” Swan writes.
 Labor elder Wayne Swan has penned a cautionary essay for the party. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
Three years to make a case
Ozymandian stories of triumph rendered void by the “shattered visage” of “boundless and bare” failure are as old as politics itself.
Percy Shelly’s poem was about an Egyptian pharaoh. Given today’s hyper-partisan, social media distorted reality, the rise and fall of governments happens infinitely faster these days.
Swan’s cautionary essay is a timely update to the canon and is aimed squarely at Labor’s triumphant class of 2025 — the 94 jubilant MPs embodying the 134-year-old movement’s biggest majority in 80 years.
“These seats are instruments of change, not symbols of triumph,” writes Swan.
“We have three years to demonstrate we deserve to keep them — three years to prove that Labor governments deliver for the people who elected us.”
Swan is Labor’s national president and is worried about the party’s declining and “fragile” membership and ballot box support among working Australians, particularly in outer suburbs and the regions.
Both belie the scale of Labor’s May 3 election majority, he suggests.
“For too long we have been in denial about low membership in the Labor Party,” he writes.
“Although we achieved a record two-party preferred vote we should be humble and diligent and recognise that a national primary vote in the mid-thirties demands more work.”
Labor has an opening to make change while it is not on a political knife’s edge. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)
Meanwhile at the roundtable
Swan’s hand-wringing is the flip-side of the Coalition’s ongoing despair, and it sets a useful frame to consider this week’s economic roundtable.
The Liberal and National parties are still coming out of their state of shock.
Condemned, for now, to irrelevance in the national policy conversation, some Liberals privately still worry there may be no saving the Coalition in its current form.
So much for the union ‘stitch-up’ predicted by the Coalition ahead of the roundtable
And even if it can be saved, conventional wisdom is that there’s no hope of power until the 2030s.
How robust these assumptions remain may well depend on whether Labor did enough this week to put itself on a sustainable pathway to meet the expectations it has created among voters.
Or whether it will end in disappointment. A do-little outfit that squandered its political capital.
Swan’s argument is that the government will not be re-elected without demonstrable progress on big challenges like housing and the energy transition.
Labor’s next campaign may not have the tailwind of the Trump effect. And without a record of self-made success, its fortunes will be hostage to future events and crises.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers’s roundtable has had mixed reviews, with some pundits quick to dismiss it as a flop.
But that would be to miss the groundwork that has been done.
Loading…Tax reform up in the air
While easy fodder for cynics and lampooners, the 29 hours of discussion and 327 different “contributions” over three days from the Treasurer’s hand-picked temporary cabinet has forced a degree of clarity on several key topics.
As participants dashed for the parliamentary taxi rank, Chalmers on Thursday night listed nearly a dozen “quick wins” for the government to pursue.
A laundry basket of reform leaves a lot of washing to be done
These were led by accelerating reform of environmental approvals rules to help unlock renewables projects and consideration next week with state and territory governments of options for road user charging, “an idea”, Chalmers said, “whose time has come”.
Less clear was how the treasurer should tackle tax reform and address the view that the current system favours older Australians over younger generations.
There was also no support for a quick and dirty Ken Henry-style tax review.
Instead, Chalmers said Treasury and the Productivity Commission will work on potential reforms that meet three broad considerations.
The tax system needs to provide a “fair go” to working people and address intergenerational imbalances; it should provide “affordable” incentives for business investment; and be made more sustainable given challenges like an aging population.
In his Thursday night interview on 7.30, Chalmers left the door wide open for higher taxes on wealth.
“Will you now consider asking retirees to pay tax on earnings and withdrawals to reduce the capital gains discount, and as Treasury have wanted for a long time, crack down on family trusts?” host Sarah Ferguson asked.
Chalmers replied: “We haven’t taken a decision on any of those things”.
“This was three days in August of 2025 to inform the next three budgets and beyond.”
“Where we can make the tax system fairer, we will.”
Loading ‘The potential for progress is stunningly fragile’
In his press conference a few minutes earlier, the treasurer was careful in his language when asked whether the strong support from the roundtable on key matters was reflective of a broader community mandate for change.
“I wouldn’t use the word that you’ve used in terms of the momentum and progress and imprimatur that we drew from the room, the mandate,” Chalmers said.
One of the participants, budget economist Chris Richardson, posted on social media a short time later, urging pundits, special interest groups and politicians to “tread carefully” with their barbs and take-downs of ideas.
“The potential for progress is stunningly fragile — and especially so in tax, our most poisoned well,” he wrote.
“Pretty much anyone who was in the room today could generate the three banner headlines that would kill any idea out of this roundtable. It’d be all too easy to do.”
Richardson vowed to “give the politicians some clear air on this for a bit”.
After all the build-up, hype and expectations management, the government has solid grounds to regard this as a successful week.
For one thing it may have created a more permissive political environment to do some challenging things on tax.
Addressing a tax system geared towards older rich people might be something that any self-respecting progressive Labor government would pursue.
Loading…Tough budget decisions ahead
On top of that, the government has demonstrated a long-overdue willingness this week to make some tough decisions on the spending side of the budget.
First, the government moved to trim benefits to pensioners and some welfare recipients that hold assets by lifting the “deeming rate” that was slashed to near zero in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Second, Health Minister Mark Butler announced the government will make further inroads into curbing spending growth in the NDIS.
Both will involve political pain from those who are directly affected and the lobbies that represent them.
But they also reflect tacit admission from the government that it needs to address spending growth if it also wants to raise taxes.
Hitting savers who have worked diligently all their lives to put money into super for their self-funded retirements while avoiding spending discipline is a fast way to erode the social licence for vital welfare programs such as the NDIS.
Anthony Albanese has an opening to do these things because he’s not on a political knife-edge, and community support for challenging things may be greater than is generally assumed by the political expertocracy.
“The choice belongs to us,” writes Swan. “Not merely winning elections but constructing a movement. Not simply holding office, but wielding power purposefully. Not just generating wealth, but ensuring it creates opportunity for every Australian who needs it.”
If nothing else, this week’s roundtable may have started the long overdue debate on difficult topics that was sorely absent during the election campaign.
Jacob Greber is political editor of ABC’s 7.30 program.Â