Danger! Danger! as the iconic robot in the 1960s sci-fi series Lost In Space used to say, is the catch cry now that Labor has won this election with a more powerful left wing faction and a Greens balance of power in the Senate.
Albo and his left-wing inner circle are at risk of misreading their electoral mandate – which is to do better – not move to the left on issues mainstream doesn’t agree with them on.
Labor won in a landslide, not because voters want Albo to listen to his ideological underpinnings, but because they were worried about what a Peter Dutton-led Coalition might offer up.
It’s a mandate for centrist stable government in an international climate dominating by Trump’s erratic behaviour.
The massive uptick in Labor MPs has seen the party’s left wing faction grow in size within the caucus. It now has a majority verses the more conservative Labor right faction.
As a result there will soon be more left wingers in Albo’s cabinet. A majority in fact, especially when you include the PM himself who was the formal leader of the left faction before assuming a leadership role.
Then you have the rise of the Greens power in the senate. That’s right, don’t be fooled by its poor performance in the lower house where its leader Adam Bandt lost his seat.
The Greens will hold onto all their senators, and given that Labor has increased its senate numbers – again with more factional left wingers – together they will soon control the senate.
Yes, the Greens are about to have the balance of power in the senate in their own right. They will be in a position to decide what legislation Labor puts forward, what gets passed into law, what gets amended according to their desires – and what gets rejected to never take effect.
The second term Albo administration is at risk of becoming the most left wing federal government since Gough Whitlam. The only saving grace might be that Anthony Albanese’s penchant for serving time ahead of achieving ideological wants might prevent him acting that way.
Think about it: Greens won’t support anything that resembles budget cuts to deal with the structural budget deficit forecast for the next 10 years. The only way they will even consider doing something to address the fiscal mess the country is in is by taxing more.
Namely, taxing asset classes such as housing or share investment portfolios, or slugging big businesses with higher company taxes, or even putting income taxes up for the wealthy.
They don’t believe in the economic reality that doing so would more likely stifle economic growth – so much so that any new taxes wouldn’t count as additional revenue.
The Greens also want an inheritance tax by the way, but surely even a left leaning new Labor team won’t go that far.
What happens next to superannuation will be an early indicator of how much power the Greens have and whether Labor is prepared to give ground to them.
Labor wants to tax unrealised gains on super accounts worth more than $3million. That’s already concerned the super industry, but the Greens want the threshold lowered to $2m.
Will Labor abide by the minor party’s demands if they threaten to block the changes? We’ll soon see.
They weren’t prepared to before the election, but that was before the complexion of the Labor Party room shifted to the left, and before Albo won so convincingly.
Even if the PM rebuffs the Greens on some or all of their high taxing plans, the best case scenario is that the government hits road blocks on its agenda in the senate. Or at least the good parts of its agenda do.
You can be sure that Greens will always pass new spending initiatives.
And we know from the campaign that Labor has plenty of spending plans for the near future: wiping 20 percent of HECS debts, billions for housing, health and TAFE.
And that’s before the new look left start to hatch plans for what Labor in its second term should come up with.
If the government sought to curb excess spending – despite its now dominant left wing factional control – the Greens will simply block the moves in the senate anyway.
What it won’t block is anything and everything Labor seeks to do in areas of new social, environmental or cultural policies.
If you worry about the Liberal Party getting caught up in the culture wars, just wait until you see what the future now holds.
We’ve already seen internal pressure being put on Albo to increase the emissions reduction target for 2030 to 75 per cent. If that happens, and if actual moves are made to change policies to make it happen, the economic cost will be significant.
Internally a Labor government run by the left will lean in hard in these sorts of areas. When it does, the Greens will pass the laws attached to it, unless it demands they go even further to get Greens support.
Mining tax anyone?
This is ‘s future for the next three years at least, perhaps longer given the size of the victory Albo had on Saturday night.
If you doubt my concerns watch back the PM’s victory speech as well as Penny Wong’s introduction bringing Albo to the stage.
Both misused their acnowledgments of country – laced as they were with invective – meaning they were not delivered as a welcoming statement as they are meant to be intended, but a first shot in the culture wars before the votes had even finished being counted.
Again, the only chance of reprieve is Albo’s personal weakness. The hope that because he overreached and poorly handled the voice referendum on his first term, he won’t go there again – happy, instead to build his legacy as a long term PM in the Malcolm Fraser mould.
Not remembered for what he did but for how long he stayed in power.
That’s the best case scenario from here.