When Scott Morrison declared that it was not “a race” to procure vaccines first and fast into Australia during the COVID pandemic, it was another nail in the coffin of his languishing prime ministership.
Prime ministers who don’t meet the moment when the public is terrified and looking for leadership lose the public’s trust.
Iran war live updates: For the latest on the Middle East war, read our blog.
The Albanese government has been on the brink of a similar moment. But over the past week, there has been a pivot in the fuel crisis, and the PM has been meeting the moment.
Over the weekend, that pivot was crystal clear when Australia started racing to get fuel here first — at record high rates — underwritten by the Commonwealth. It may seem like a crazy idea, spending so much on boosting our supply, but a long period of complacency across different governments has left us desperately vulnerable.
There were moments early in the fuel crisis sparked by the Middle East war when it felt like the government had missed the urgency that was evident around the country. We were entering a full-blown crisis that needed a full-blown response.
Energy Minister Chris Bowen has been the subject of deep internal criticism for what one senior Labor figure told me was his condescending style and failing to “meet the moment” with his language.
Albanese has now stepped in, standing next to him to deliver what have been daily updates about the government’s handling of the fuel crisis. The optics have radically improved for the government as it faces its next test with state and territory leaders meeting to discuss more action today.
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The government has been careful not to trigger memories of the COVID crisis.
There is a view in the government that Australians are fed up and that overreach on telling them how to behave will be met with anger.
At today’s national cabinet meeting expect directions on everything from working from home to taking public transport to be light touch — no-one wants overreach that scares the Australian public.
Loading…Australia-first approach, not MAGA
Just how our leaders talk about this crisis and who they hold accountable matters.
Albanese has clocked the severity of this moment and the tone he must adopt to respond.
The opposition used question time last week to go after the government, particularly Bowen, but didn’t quite nail its attack.
The PM didn’t miss the opportunity to push back and question whether they were on “team Australia”.
But there is one stand-out figure in the Coalition who has done more to project an Australia-first approach than any of his colleagues.
Coalition leadership aspirant and shadow industry and sovereign capability spokesperson Andrew Hastie is now one of the only people on his political side to directly blame US President Donald Trump for the dire straits we and many other countries have been left in.
Yesterday, he said that while he supported US strikes on Iran’s nuclear capabilities last year, dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, he said, “I don’t know why we went in now.
“I thought last year we did the job,” he said.
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Hastie said he was concerned US credibility was being undermined by its current military action in the Middle East, and that Australians’ support for the alliance may be eroding.
“I’m pro America and I have been for a long time. I’m married to an American, my grandfather was saved by a US medic in WWII, I’ve served on combat operations with Americans,” he said.
“But we can be critical of bad strategic decisions … I think this was a huge miscalculation.
“Iran has managed to pretty much hold the whole world economy to ransom, and because we’re at the end of a very long supply chain we’re going to experience pain.”
This builds on his comments last week, where he lined up Pauline Hanson as pro-Trump and, therefore, inflicting financial pain on Australians.
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No-one has been as sharp and effective at exposing One Nation for its contradictory messages on cost-of-living pain while backing the man responsible for delivering the worst energy shock in decades.
“You’ve got Pauline Hanson, who’s come out twice in support of the war. That sounds very MAGA first, rather than Australia first,” Hastie said.
“My heart is with regular Australians who play by the rules, who expect the system to work, and they’re now going to get smashed by this global shock.
“I want listeners to think very carefully about who’s acting in your best interest. And I think as a nation, we need a plan past this war and make sure that if there is another global crisis, that we’re self-sufficient, we can look after our own people, and we’re not relying on long supply chains that end up in the Middle East.”
The fact that the most vocal critic of Australia’s involvement in the conflict is a former soldier who hails from the conservative flank of the Liberal Party should worry Labor.
Public not behind Trump’s war
Hastie talking about the need to “build guardrails for combat operations” runs deeper than offering foreign policy hot takes.
He is not just tapping into community angst over the logic of the conflict, but also the fact the government has tied itself to the United States in joining the war on Iran (even if only in a defensive capacity, as they are at pains to repeat), a conflict that has forced the closure of the critical shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz.
Political analysis that matters
With diesel now sitting around $3 per litre, it’s not Australia’s strategic posture that is making people grumpy and worried. It’s that the war in the Middle East is making us pay more for the petrol we currently have left, while the government is scrambling to work out how to get more.
Liberal MP Garth Hamilton, who is the shadow assistant minister for energy security and affordability, told me that he believes the public’s mood is not behind Trump’s war.
“I’m hearing a lot of deep concern and anxiety in my community about the thought of entering yet another war in the Middle East,” he said, referring to his electorate of Groom, which takes in Toowoomba as well as the Darling Downs in Queensland.
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Public anxiety about Australia following the US into this latest conflict runs deeper than an anti-Trump attitude.
When global events jump from news items to being felt at the petrol bowser or while buying groceries, people worry and that quickly turns to looking for someone to blame.
During COVID, economic uncertainty and the scarcity of basic staples on supermarket shelves caused anxiety and anger. The fact that COVID was first detected in China, as well as how it managed the pandemic, caused a significant shift in sentiment towards our key trading partner.
The Lowy Institute’s 2021 poll highlighted how Australians’ views of China flipped sharply: 63 per cent said China was more of a security threat to Australia, while only 34 per cent said it was more of an economic partner. In 2020, that had been almost the reverse, with 55 per cent saying partner and 41 per cent threat.
The pandemic demonstrated that when global events become local, Australians were quick to turn on even a mighty trading partner.
Most Australians already held a negative view of Trump. Lowy’s 2025 poll found trust in the United States fell to 36 per cent, down 20 points in a year and the lowest level on record in two decades of the institute’s polling. Last year’s poll also found 68 per cent of Australians were pessimistic about the next four years under Donald Trump.
There is a real capacity here for the war to sour our attitude to the US alliance.
Politicians have often invoked Australia needing to have its own independent foreign policy.
Given two great powers have caused Australians direct economic pain and anxiety in the past five years, maybe the public is growing tired of our actions being dictated by others, and that no longer means just Beijing but Washington too.
Patricia Karvelas is host of ABC News Afternoon Briefing at 4pm weekdays on ABC News Channel, co-host of the weekly Party Room podcast with Fran Kelly and host of politics and news podcast Politics Now.
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