Anthony Albanese won a mandate not for revolution, but for repair. The thermostat was cranked from chaotic to competent. But governing is more than adjusting the temperature; it’s about building a new house when the old one is on fire. Instead, we have a government that looks like a real government; ministers, press releases, legislation, smartphones, but which, upon examination, reveals itself as a masterclass in activity without achievement. It’s a shock. Like shacking up with a partner who does a runner on your honeymoon. Or who proves emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, totally unavailable.
Let’s be kind. Just sitting in the driver’s seat is enough for some. Then there’s the Competence Trap: the myth that good administration is an end in itself. Of course, we can’t rule out stage fright. Such a big production must bring its own inertia. With 94 seats, its largest majority since 1943, Labor governs with the courage of a bunny caught in the headlights, terrified of using its power. Keating would have reshaped the country with these numbers. Albo’s mob takes them and disappears into the furniture.
Bernard Keane calls it AI slop governance. Not the real thing, but a simulation; coherent only if you don’t look too hard. Like ScoMo’s Photo-shopped image with two left feet, its policy-shaped objects fall apart under scrutiny. Environmental reform that guts protection. FOI changes that invoke a transparency scandal to justify secrecy. Sovereignty invoked constantly while being surrendered daily.
It’s government as performance art, reform as its own opposite.
The Robodebt Obscenity
Witness the freedom of information bill. The government justifies gutting FOI by invoking the Robodebt scandal. This is an obscenity. The Robodebt Royal Commission recommended expanding FOI access, noting that weak laws prevented the scheme’s earlier exposure. Had cabinet documents been accessible, lives might have been saved.
Labor’s lesson? Dramatically expand the cabinet exemption. It is weaponizing a tragedy to achieve the very opacity that caused it.
Environmental “Reform” as Capitulation
Murray Watt’s environmental laws follow the same script. He positions Labor as the honest broker between the Coalition’s culpable driving the wrong way on the highway to hell and the Greens’ concern. If both sides are unhappy, the logic goes, you’ve found the wise middle ground.
This is a false dichotomy. This isn’t a contest of ideas; it’s money against ecosystem. Labor’s positioning was clear when it gutted the EPBC Act to protect Tasmanian salmon farming from the consequences of its depredations. “My government makes no apologies for supporting jobs,” was Albo’s red-herring. Clearly the Maugean skate should have spent the last 60 million years tarting up its voter appeal.
The new “reforms” double down: no climate trigger, an “independent” agency subject to ministerial override, and an “override power” allowing ministers to approve projects that breach environmental standards if deemed in the “national interest.” What could possibly go wrong?
This is executive fiat disguised as protection. The corruption potential is obvious. A corporation need only convince a minister of jobs or exports or national security, and the project is waved through. Under Labor’s proposed FOI gutting, evidence of any quid pro quo would be effortlessly hidden.
Sovereignty Theatre
The masterpiece of contradiction is “sovereignty.” Best Boss Cockatoo in show. The word is parroted constantly to justify defence spending, AUKUS, and bailouts for multinationals.
Meanwhile, in reality, we surrender it to Washington. B-52s operate from our north. Pine Gap is theirs for a peppercorn. We store American fuel and weapons for a war with China. When Trump bluntly confirms AUKUS submarines were for use against China, a junior minister is dispatched to squawk “sovereignty”; from a mob that just handed joint control of our critical minerals strategy to the US
This isn’t hypocrisy. It’s sovereignty as a purely rhetorical construct, or a mantra, invoked when useful while being negated in practice. Australia has become a forward operating base, a target for US’s many enemies and Labor’s response is to keep shrieking “sovereignty” as if repetition makes it real.
The Pattern of Paralysis
How did we get here? The knifing of Mark Dreyfus for Michelle Rowland is telling. Dreyfus seemed capable of embarrassment. His replacement lacks this handicap. Precisely why she got the job.
This government doesn’t want ministers constrained by shame or intellectual consistency. Charisma, deficient, it seeks reliable apparatchiks who will mouth its talking points. Nonentities, Keane calls them. But that’s a tad harsh. Even human bollards can be very protective.
Labor’s entire agenda is to upset no one. Everyone’s a winner. Big Mining happy? Tick. Big Business happy? Tick. Americans happy? Tick. The result is a captured state; not through shadowy conspiracy, but through the broad daylight appeasement of every established power. The script is written by corporate Australia, audited by corporate Australia and Labor is reading it verbatim.
There is no excuse for this. None. Stage fright doesn’t justify cowardice. And knowing you’re captured doesn’t make it acceptable. Getting into bed with the enemy? That’s Stockholm syndrome.
The Decade of Slop?
“And here’s the kicker: it might actually work. In an attention economy, where clicks trump substance, simulation is enough. Welcome to AI slop governance; the governing paradigm of the 2020s. Why wrestle with policy when you can mint political capital from its hologram? Ask Bitcoin how that plays out.
Cynics will say this is all government ought to be in an age of corporate capture; a harmless manager for the status quo. Sceptics will argue it’s all government can be, outgunned by ruthless, corporate power and sidelined or totally upstaged by the monetised eyeballs of an attention economy.
But there’s another way.
It requires calling this elaborate nothingburger for what it is. You have to. A fart has no nose. It means speaking truth to power, even when you know it might land you up shit creek without a paddle. This isn’t about left or right; it’s about courage versus calculation. It’s about whether we have a political class that will spend its capital, not just hoard it.
So get your Maugean skates on. The ice is melting, the hour is late, and the only thing left to do is to keep the bastards honest; even, and especially, when the lying bastards are the ones who promised they would.
After the Landslide, The Coda Nobody Expected
We gave him 94 seats. A 55.22% two-party preferred vote. The biggest landslide since 1975. Peter Dutton’s Coalition was obliterated; so savagely that Peter himself lost his seat after 24 years. On May 3rd, 2025, Australian voters looked at three years of Albanese government and said: more of this, please.
So why, barely five months later, does the foul stench of disappointment already hang in the air?
The Integrity Fraud Continues
The Centre for Public Integrity has accused the Albanese government of being less transparent than Morrison. Read that again. Morrison; the man who secretly swore himself into five ministries, but who still missed an alleged rape in a nearby office, is now the higher benchmark for transparency?
Fully granted Freedom of Information requests plunged from 59% to 25%, while outright refusals nearly doubled to 23%. Senate compliance also slumped, with Labor adhering to only 32.8% of document-release orders compared to Morrison’s 48.7%.
Independent MP Helen Haines doesn’t mince words: “Some of us were here during the Morrison times, and really it felt like we couldn’t go any lower than what we saw during that period but we have.”
Senate Estimates a Festival of Evasion
The October 2025 Senate Estimates hearings exposed a government treating scrutiny as an impertinence. Officials from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water revealed the travel bill for 64 staff attending 31 international climate change and COP31 advocacy events was $1,030,000 for July-August 2025 alone. Over a million dollars in just two months on climate junkets.
Meanwhile, the Albanese Government refused multiple Senate orders to provide the complete incoming government brief from the Department, making a mockery of its transparency claims.
On national security, the Albanese Government took 2.5 years to act on listing Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organisation despite bipartisan support and ASIO warnings, with legal barriers not addressed until after IRGC-linked attacks occurred on Australian soil in 2025.
The Education Shambles
Victoria still has no arrangement in place with the Albanese Government on its so-called national ‘Better and Fairer Schools Funding Agreement’, with the Victorian Government deciding by March 2024 to strip $2.4 billion from school funding by delaying the start date by at least three years, from 2028 to 2031.
Yet Albanese told voters during the 2025 election that the agreement was being “delivered” and his government had “fully funded” it. Announce the announcement, celebrate the celebration, hope nobody notices nothing’s happened.
The US Alliance, managed mess.
In October 2025, Albanese finally met Trump at the White House and signed a trade agreement to export critical minerals to the United States. On paper, alliance management. In reality, a relationship built on necessity rather than warmth, after Labor spent an election campaign tying Dutton to “Trump-like” policies; a strategy that worked domestically but sent damaging messages to Washington.
On China, Albanese has steered clear of saying anything that might cause Xi Jinping discomfort, remaining almost silent on Beijing’s challenge to regional security. When three Chinese warships circumnavigated Australia in February-March conducting live firing, Albanese and Defence Minister Richard Marles downplayed security implications, both emphasising how lawful this was.
The Housing Mirage
On October 1st, 2025, Albanese’s government expanded its housing scheme to allow first-time home buyers to purchase a home with a five percent deposit.
Problem solved? Economists, spivs and real estate touts note that the scheme will likely increase prices further due to heightened demand. Can’t afford a house? Labor makes houses less affordable.
The Puzzle
If Albanese’s government has been this disappointing, why the landslide? Because Dutton ran what has a strong claim to be considered among the worst campaigns since federation, with barely a day passing without some new misstep or about-face, some embarrassing revelation about a candidate, some new policy condemned by experts as half-baked, uncosted or worse.
Three years of waiting for Labor and Anthony Albanese to fall over instead of doing serious policy work came home to roost, and the chicken concerned was very ugly.
Albanese won because Dutton lost. Not because Labor inspired, but because the Coalition collapsed.
The Post-landslide letdown
What’s emerged since May is a government emboldened by its unexpected majority but no more transparent, no more competent, and no more willing to take on vested interests. The secrecy continues. The announced-but-undelivered policies pile up. The million-dollar junkets roll on. When challenged, ministers dissemble, officials stonewall, and the PM offers his trademark non-answer answers.
They won 94 seats. But winning big doesn’t mean governing better. Five months in, the second-term complacency is already showing.
The Australian people gave Albanese an historic mandate. Early signs suggest he’s treating it as permission to do less, not more.
And somewhere, Scott Morrison is smiling. Because when independent watchdogs say you’re worse than he was on transparency, that’s not just disappointing voters.
That’s betraying the very reason they voted for you in the first place.
Urban Wronski Writes 
And last night there was Albo, dining with tRump at the Hilton, right beside him like the good little puppy he is. tRump’s jackbooting his country for all he’s worth and dare not mention it. Sovereignty? It’s being sold off, and cheaply.
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