Anthony Albanese has credited his election landslide with a new two-word slogan: ‘progressive patriotism’, as he hits back at naysayers who suggest he owes his win to Donald Trump.
The Prime Minister debuted the new catchphrase in a wide-ranging interview on Nine’s Inside Politics podcast, where he insisted he believed not only in the state as a vehicle for improving people’s lives, but also the market.
‘Markets are a democratic mechanism as well, through the economy of expression, I believe, of a private sector as being the key driver of growth,’ he said.
‘But the public sector should step in when there is market failure. I think that during the campaign as well we had progressive patriotism, if you like.’
He added: ‘We spoke about doing things the n way, not looking towards any other method or ideology overseas to try to copy.
‘If we get this right, we can be increasingly successful.’
The Prime Minister said ‘progressive patriotism’ informed the strengthening of Medicare, housing reform and his pride in ‘s peaceful multicultural identity as an example for the rest of the world to emulate.
‘At a time where there’s conflict in the world, where people are often divided on the basis of race or religion, here in , we can be a microcosm for the world,’ he said.
His reference to ‘doing things the n way’ also lay behind his criticisms of Peter Dutton for attempting to mirror some of Trump’s policies.
In a clear echo of Trump’s sweeping reforms, the former Opposition Leader vowed to end working from home for federal public servants and to slash the number of public sector staff.
That connection to Trump became a political liability when the US President imposed tariffs upon and other countries during our election campaign, and the Coalition rapidly but unsuccessfully tried to disavow a MAGA agenda.
When Mr Albanese was asked whether his campaign success owed much to the timing of Trump’s tariff announcements, and Mr Dutton’s consequent back-tracking, the PM hit back.
‘Some of the commentariat have looked for reasons why their commentary was so out of touch last year,’ Mr Albanese said.
He said it was Labor’s ‘destiny… to try to be the natural party of government, rather than look for dividing people’.
‘That’s one of the increasing issues I think in the last campaign – who was seeking to bring people together and who was seeking to divide people,’ he added.
‘That’s why things like culture wars are so unproductive, because they seek to pit people against each other.’
He said some in his team thought it had been ‘crazy brave’ of him to agree to four leadership debates with the former Opposition leader.
‘It was the right thing to do. I went to the National Press Club, I did all of that,’ he added.
Mr Albanese also took aim at the Greens, who he claimed had become ‘vulnerable’.
‘I saw that in my local community, that they had lost their way in blocking Labor’s housing reforms and not being a party which concentrated on the environment and issues that mattered most to people,’ he told the podcast.
The Prime Minister is currently on his first overseas trip since the election victory, visiting Jakarta where he will hold talks with the Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto.