First whispers of discontent for Labor are coming from within

It’s the end of the year, which means things tend to be a lot looser than usual and emotions can run high.

It’s never unusual for commentators and journalists to receive messages from those they are analysing, opining and reporting about, but it tends to ramp up as the parliamentary year draws to a close.

The end of the year means nothing but a calendar flip, but the idea of flopping over a mental full stop, even if nothing actually stops, seems to appeal to politicians, in particular. It also means that they tend to take things a little more personally than usual. Perhaps we all do.

At the very least, I was more amused than usual at receiving two messages, almost simultaneously, from both Labor and Liberal figures essentially asking why I was being so “mean” about their side of politics.

These messages appeared at the same time as Carly Simon was singing You’re so vain in my ear (I have the musical taste of a boomer who lived in a van, dodged the draft and got lost at Woodstock for a few years before ending up in Laurel Canyon), which made it more amusing, at the time. Yes, you probably DO think this column is about you.

It says something about the state of politics in Australia when both parties feel under attack. To which, as always, the response has to be – imagine how their constituents feel.

The Liberals are lost and unlikely to make it out of the wilderness anytime soon, if ever. But their ideas live on.

In its bid to become the “natural party of government” (whatever that actually means), Labor has filled the policy arena usually taken up by Liberal Party thought bubbles. Recent examples include, but not limited to – what if we revolutionised work and society with new technology but didn’t regulate it? What if we had environment laws that made it easier to approve mining projects? What if we had donation reform that locked out independents and minor parties from election funding? What if we gave billions and billions for an insecure, no-guarantees defence deal but paid for it by shredding the social contract and cutting NDIS funding?

Labor has the space to do what it wants – and what it wants, apparently, is to be the Liberal Party of the 1990s.

But that doesn’t mean all is lost.

Labor’s leadership might be doing all it can to stick to the “middle of the road” incrementalism path that Anthony Albanese set it on in 2019, but that doesn’t mean everyone is on board.

You can see that in some of the breakaways. Ed Husic was one of the loudest voices in pushing for Labor to change its gas strategy, but he wasn’t alone.

There is a moodiness to the electorate that MPs who spend time with their communities would have to wilfully ignore to not notice. In the past couple of months, the number of stakeholders using the word “arrogant” about their dealings with the government and senior staff has risen. The hubris has begun to creep in – that’s not unusual in a second term with an increased majority (in this case, a thumping one) but that it’s spilling out across stakeholders usually means it’s just one step away from hitting the public.

At one recent event where I mentioned this growing sense of arrogance, three lobbyists each approached me afterwards to say they’d personally seen the shift. That has some in the government who haven’t been entirely choked by the Kool-Aid worried. But worried enough to make change?

Paul Sakkal’s recent Sydney Morning Herald news break on Labor looking to move forward on an east coast gas reservation, just six months after Peter Dutton attempted to take it to the electorate as a hail Mary shows that the leadership can be made to bend, if the public scares it enough.

Because that is always what moves politicians – fear. Fear they’ll lose the electorates, their jobs, their futures, with not enough time to reverse opinion.

Those fears, or at least concerns, within Labor are growing. Not that it will lose government – on the numbers, the Coalition winning the next election is as likely as me being named the next Bond girl – but that it will lose more seats than first anticipated.

There are about 18 nervous backbenchers who have decided they quite like their jobs. A summer in their electorates, hearing directly from those who put them there, and not what their party leaders are telling them are wins, should at least give them pause.

Because if Labor is to act at all on what needs to be done, then it only has next year. The year after that is straight back into election mode, when reforms tend to be short term and even shorter-sighted.

A gas reservation seems a small start. But not enough to win back the votes of the disappointed – and, worse, the disillusioned. If both parties are filling the same space, then scare campaigns that criticism will bring only a lost government loses any bite.

Addressing needs as they are, and not as the government sees them, doesn’t have to be clouds in your coffee. As the year winds down and the fever of the parliamentary year starts to break, you have to wonder how many in the government are starting to worry about the winds of change.

Amy Remeikis is a contributing editor for The New Daily and chief political analyst for The Australia Institute.

Originally published on The New Daily.