Inside Labor, the Albanese\u2019s government fifth budget was initially met with rapturous applause. Here was a bold Labor budget, making Labor reforms, showing a government willing to use its mandate to meet the moment. That quickly evaporated as the budget met with the biggest media attack seen since the anti-carbon tax campaign more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n
A new staging post in the legacy media\u2019s decline occurred on Tuesday, when News Corp\u2019s The Daily Telegraph splashed an AI-generated meme of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese doing the splits on its front page.<\/p>\n
The fake picture, which showed Albanese surrounded by hostile Pilates practitioners, one of whom was correcting his pose with a stick, was posted by a Bribie Island Pilates studio whose account had no prior political content.<\/p>\n
This front page exceeded the low the same newspaper set in its budget edition the previous week, picturing a laughing Treasurer Jim Chalmers with the headline, \u201cYour Capital His Gain\u201d. A red hammer and sickle replaced the \u201cC\u201d in \u201cCapital\u201d.<\/p>\n
Chalmers was accused of delivering a \u201cbig-taxing communist manifesto\u201d in \u201cthe most radical redistribution of wealth since the Whitlam era\u201d \u2013 a hysterical take on the budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand why the greedy are whingeing but it\u2019s depressing how stupid everyone else is,\u201d a well-placed source said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, how many average young people are making their fortune running their own business and building their share portfolio? It\u2019s unconscionable that the media are giving airtime to these entirely non-representative stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Betoota Advocate punctured the Telegraph\u2019s hyperbole with a story headlined, \u201cBoomers with 5 Properties and $4.9m in Super Reduced to Gruel and Stale Bread in Jim\u2019s Communist Dystopia\u201d. The stricken Boomer was pictured eating what looked\u00a0 like vichyssoise with a bottle of Penfolds Grange adjacent.<\/p>\n
Chalmers himself passed it off as a joke in a video budget briefing he did with Housing Minister Clare O\u2019Neil for Labor Party members and friends last week, which more than 2000 people registered to attend.<\/p>\n
The briefing was part of a government strategy to reach around the media and talk to Australians directly, given that parts of the media are so febrile and hyperpartisan social media posts are so untethered from the truth.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow many average young people are making their fortune running their own business and building their share portfolio? It\u2019s unconscionable that the media are giving airtime to these entirely non-representative stories.\u201d<\/p>\n
News Corp\u2019s national masthead, The Australian, claimed on Monday that its latest Newspoll showed the budget was the \u201cworst in decades\u201d, and that \u201cJim gives Keating a run for his money\u201d.<\/p>\n
Just 22 per cent of those surveyed said the budget was \u201cquite good\u201d or \u201cextremely good\u201d. However, this was the same level for the government\u2019s previous budget in 2025, and Labor was re-elected in a landslide just two months later.<\/p>\n
Nor did the post-budget Newspoll published this week show any fall in Labor\u2019s primary vote of 31 per cent, which has been steady since March. Coalition support fell to 20 per cent (-1), and One Nation\u2019s rose to 27\u00a0per cent (+3).<\/p>\n
Old Labor hands were dismissive of the News Corp onslaught.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was so hard to actually attack, so they\u2019re making stuff up,\u201d said one. \u201cShock!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey might be reinforcing their base but they\u2019re not even trying to be a trusted source,\u201d said another. \u201cAre they only up to circus tricks now? They\u2019re competing with their in-house stable to see who can be the most stupid. It\u2019s embarrassing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the media framing of the budget, Eric Beecher, the author of The Men Who Killed the News, said \u201cframing\u201d suggested \u201csomething considered or thoughtful\u201d, whereas \u201cto me it\u2019s yet another example of banality creating more banality\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a bunch of desperados waving and flailing their arms to attract attention as their business model sinks,\u201d Beecher says.<\/p>\n
The Resolve poll, published in the Nine newspapers on Monday, showed Labor\u2019s primary vote on 29 per cent (-3), the Coalition steady on 23 per cent, and One Nation on 24\u00a0per cent (+2).<\/p>\n
Resolve showed that 36 per cent of those surveyed said Albanese\u2019s \u201cbroken\u201d election promise not to alter property taxes had \u201cdamaged my view of Labor\u201d. However, 31 per cent said it had \u201cnot changed my view of Labor\u201d, and another 14 per cent said it had \u201cimproved my view of Labor\u201d.<\/p>\n
The reporting of the Resolve figures also treated Albanese\u2019s policy change in isolation.<\/p>\n
It could have been contextualised in the history of other \u201cbroken\u201d promises, including by Liberal prime ministers such as John Howard, who as opposition leader promised to \u201cnever, ever\u201d establish a goods and services tax, yet went on to champion one in office.<\/p>\n
The fact Albanese prominently \u201cbroke\u201d his 2022 election promise not to change the Morrison government\u2019s stage three tax cuts, yet went on to a massive win at the 2025 election, has been lost in the melee, too.<\/p>\n
The lesson is that voters will forgive changes in position if they can be brought to accept them as worthwhile.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s an assumption that budgets move polls,\u201d says Essential Media pollster Peter Lewis. \u201cAnd that doesn\u2019t really happen because people aren\u2019t engaged. The government\u2019s challenge is how to get the debate to where they want it to be, where voters see the value behind the changes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Labor\u2019s approach has been to \u201cown the change and explain it\u201d, monitoring reach and sentiment on social media but not getting thrown off kilter by the noise.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo far, despite the best efforts of News Corp and right-wing influencers, it hasn\u2019t really taken off either way because penetration is still low,\u201d a well-placed government source tells The Saturday Paper.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t mean Labor MPs weren\u2019t unsettled by this week\u2019s media fracas.<\/p>\n
\u201cSmall business has no idea what CGT is and we haven\u2019t been quick enough to tell them,\u201d one MP said, worried that, from a backbench perspective, the plan to deal with the backlash was not clear.<\/p>\n
NSW Premier Chris Minns\u2019s midweek budget criticism, based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the PAYG tax thresholds work, did not help.<\/p>\n
However, former prime minister Paul Keating\u2019s endorsement of the budget changes, close on the heels of Minns\u2019s attack, did. Keating\u2019s credibility on tax reform is high and his intervention came at a critical moment.<\/p>\n
University of Sydney honorary professor Simon Jackman said the budget was \u201ca reasonably big deal in terms of unpicking some of the structural drivers of inequality\u201d in\u00a0the tax system and that the \u201cgrandfathering is generous\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jackman noted that the budget commentary has taken the media focus away from falling consumer confidence, the oil price shock still working its way through supply chains, and the ongoing fuel crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe structural work is important and overdue but Labor\u2019s political success will be tied to its management of these acute short- to medium-term pressures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
In this, Albanese and Chalmers are \u201cgoing to sink or swim together now\u201d, according to a senior Labor source.<\/p>\n
\u201cJim\u2019s probably moving into the best position we\u2019ve ever seen in him,\u201d the source said. \u201cHe\u2019s going for broke. He\u2019s got the credibility. He\u2019s got the knowledge. He\u2019s not worried about Tim [Wilson] or Angus [Taylor].<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a scrapper. He\u2019ll draw strength from it. He\u2019s used to working hard to get things done. That\u2019s the problem with people like Angus Taylor \u2013 they\u2019re not used to working hard for things.\u201d<\/p>\n
How a situation is framed depends on the viewer\u2019s perspective. From the strife-torn northern hemisphere, the Albanese government looks good.<\/p>\n
The view from Westminster is that the Albanese government is successful \u2013 particularly when compared with the British Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer.<\/p>\n
Starmer\u2019s tenure is being counted down in months, not years, as potential successors manoeuvre to challenge him. His support among voters and his own MPs has slumped, partly because of his reluctance to lead in a way that meets and deals with the chronic problems Britain and its citizens face.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the would-be successors want to learn about effective left-of-centre leadership they should study Anthony Albanese in Australia and Mark Carney in Canada,\u201d British political biographer Anthony Seldon wrote in the London Financial Times last weekend. \u201cBoth show what intelligent progressive leadership looks like in the 2020s.\u201d<\/p>\n
This framing suggests that the budget, far from being the act of political insanity the local media has described, is the product of prudent and deliberate political pacing by a government now facing up to the harder tasks.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Inside Labor, the Albanese\u2019s government fifth budget was initially met with rapturous applause. Here was a bold Labor…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-688807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}