RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

For months now, federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese has been facing growing speculation about his leadership. This week, there were the strongest signs yet that his party isn’t happy with his performance, but a sweeping reshuffle of his frontbench looks like an attempt to try and quell some of that discontent.

So, with 2021 shaping up as an election year, what is Albanese’s plan - and how likely is a challenge? Today, contributing editor to The Monthly, Rachel Withers, on the future of the Labor leadership, and how the party is placed to take on Scott Morrison.

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RUBY:

Thank you for coming in… How are you?

RACHEL:

I’m alright yeah, how are you?

RUBY:

Good yeah it’s all happening!

RACHEL:

So many things are happening!

RUBY:

Yeah yeah, I know! Did you watch 7:30 last night?

RACHEL:

I just watched it this morning…

RUBY:

Um cool, alright are you good to go?

Yep.

RUBY:

Rachel, let's start with former Labor leader Bill Shorten and what he said last Sunday, because his comments seem to have really kicked off the latest round of leadership speculation within Labor. So tell me about what it was that he said exactly.

RACHEL:

So Bill Shorten was giving a speech at a Labour right book launch at a bookshop in Melbourne on Sunday.

Archival Tape -- Bill Shorten

“It’s great that on a Sunday afternoon we’ve got the opportunity to be at the launch of an important and timely book.”

RACHEL:

And in those remarks, which were leaked in advance to the Nine papers, Shorten said that a tiny policy agenda was not the way for Labour to go.

Archival Tape -- Bill Shorten

“We must be an opposition that stands for something. Labor can not simply be the negative party of opposition.”

RACHEL:

Acknowledging that too cluttered or too large an agenda had obviously not been the way to go in 2019 either.

Archival Tape -- Bill Shorten

“I have learnt that the party must understand and appreciate the dangers of taking too large, too cluttered, too detailed policy agenda to the election”

RACHEL:

And he said that there was plenty of room between being the party of too many ideas and the party that is such a small target that nobody actually knows what it stands for.

Archival Tape -- Bill Shorten

“Labor is judged by a higher standard, and Labour is best when it offers a positive and exciting vision for people, not just the repudiation of the sterile views of the right”.

RACHEL:

Those comments have been widely seen as an attack on Anthony Albanese’s leadership. I think no less than six outlets referred to it as a “thinly veiled swipe”, and it's certainly set tongues wagging again about whether Anthony Albanese's leadership is secure, and how the party's feeling about having him at the top going into what might be an election year.

RUBY:

OK, so these comments, which, as you say, are being interpreted as a fairly deliberate attempt to stoke leadership tension within Labor - does Shorten stand by them?

Archival Tape -- Frank Kelly

“Bill Shorten, welcome back to breakfast!”

Archival Tape -- Bill Shorten

“Hi Fran, but just before we start, I think...that’s not quite right what you just described as what I’ve said…”

RACHEL:

So he has since gone on ABC radio and said, you know, he's not planning to challenge Anthony Albanese, he doesn't have any more leadership ambitions, and that he doesn't think Labor has a tiny policy agenda.

Archival Tape -- Bill Shorten

“No, I don't think we have a tiny policy agenda, but I do think it's important that we learn the lessons of the past, but we don't learn the wrong lessons. And being...having a no policy approach would be, I think, a mistake-...”

RACHEL:

But he's an experienced politician, he would have known that this was going to be all over the news cycle, and it seems clear that he was trying to get this leadership chatter off and running again - if it's not for himself to challenge, it might be a stalking horse for somebody else to come forward. Certainly, he has made it clear that there are deep, deep concerns in the party about the direction that Anthony Albanese is taking them.

RUBY:

Hmm, can you tell me more about those concerns from within the Labor party. What direction is the criticism of Albanese coming from?

RACHEL:

So it's really been coming from the right side of the party. Joel Fitzgibbon was the first member to express some serious misgivings about Albanese's leadership - last November he got into a huge fight with Albanese over climate targets and ended up quitting the frontbench, going to the backbench where he continued to throw little pot-shots. He is calling for the party to return to its traditional base, and he's particularly worried, being from a coal mining region, about Labour going too hard on climate and alienating some of those workers.

But he's really been vindicated now, I think, by Shorten's comments, and he's come out and said he welcomes the comments. There's been a few other little rumblings. The CFMEU leaked some polling showing that Labour was likely to lose some of those Hunter Valley electorates under Albanese's leadership. And one of the organisers of the CFMEU, Elizabeth Doidge, actually called for Albo to go publicly last week and she suggested that Tanya Plibersek might be a viable alternative.

RUBY:

So given all of this, the CFMEU polling and Shorten's comments at this bookstore, how serious would you say the threat is to Anthony Albanese?

RACHEL:

Well, nobody has put their hand up so far, but there's certainly a few people still waiting in the wings, people who stood aside in 2019 so that Albanese could come forward unchallenged. We've got Tanya, obviously, who's from the same faction and is being really promoted in strange quarters; Alan Jones is a big Tanya Plibersek fan, The Australian seems to be really behind her.

But there's also, of course, a couple of people on the right: Jim Chalmers, who is probably still a little too inexperienced, but has certainly been a high profile Treasury spokesperson over the past 12 months, and Chris Bowen - currently sitting in health, but probably not for long, but from the right, which would mean probably a factional switch up at the top of the ticket because the left and the right will usually split the leadership and the deputy leadership between them.

RUBY:

And at this moment in time, how serious do you think any of these contenders are?

RACHEL:

Well, it's not clear that anybody actually wants to take it, considering Labor is likely to lose the election either way, more likely to lose it under Albo many would say. But it would be a poisoned chalice to be taking on at this point. Perhaps a new leader could save a few seats, but they'd be taking it on probably to lose and to hopefully come back around in 2024.

RUBY:

We'll be back in a moment.

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Archival Tape -- Laura Tingle

“Anthony Albanese, thanks for joining us.”

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese

“Good to be with you, Laura.”

RUBY:

Rachel, on Wednesday night, Anthony Albanese went on the ABC's 7:30 program, where he faced some fairly tough questions, I would say, from host Laura Tingle. Can you tell me about what was said?

RACHEL:

So Laura Tingle asked Anthony Albanese a lot of the questions that people inside and outside the Labour Party are asking, but to his face on national television.

Archival Tape -- Laura Tingle

“Let's talk about Anthony Albanese. I've been quite shocked in the last couple of days by the extent of disappointment and despair felt by your colleagues about Labour's position and yours. They're deeply pessimistic that you can lead them to victory. How is it that you are confronting speculation about your leadership after such a short time?”

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese

“Well, my... my leadership is secure…”

RACHEL:

She asked him point blank about the speculation about his leadership, asking “what's the point of your leadership”, and even asked him head on about the fact that he didn't seem to have any burning desire to be prime minister.

Archival Tape -- Laura Tingle

“Somebody made the observation to me that the problem for you is that in finally defeating Bill Shorten and becoming opposition leader, you've achieved your lifetime ambition and that you'd seem to lack that burning desire to actually become prime minister…”

RACHEL:

And he sort of addressed those questions - he denied that his leadership was in doubt, but he didn't do a great job at laying out any particular vision.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese

“My ambition is for Labour to be in government. My ambition has never been about myself. It's about what Labour governments can achieve for the sort of people that I grew up with, the sort of people who need Labour governments…”

RACHEL:

He said that a lot of people in this country need a Labour government and that that should be the only focus of the party right now, focusing on winning government for those people, and said that anything else was self-indulgent, which seemed like a bit of a thinly veiled swipe back at Bill Shorten and anyone else talking about the leadership right now. One thing he did do, though, was confirm that a long expected reshuffle is coming, and in time for members to go back to Parliament on Monday.

RUBY:

Right. And that reshuffle - that was actually announced yesterday afternoon. Can you tell me about what Anthony Albanese said, and how his announcement tied into these bigger conversations about his leadership?

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese

“So this is a strong team. The reshuffle is all about putting jobs at the centre of what we will do.”

RACHEL:

Yeah so Albanese came out on Thursday with that cabinet reshuffle which looks like it was brought forward a little bit because of the leadership speculation, and some reports already about what it was going to look like.

Archival Tape -- Anthony Albanese

“And most of our changes do reflect the existing government portfolios so that there's a consistency there. And I think that is something that will be a positive.”

RACHEL:

And it certainly does look like it’s aimed at shoring up support - it looks like he’s buying off some key factions that he needs support from. Some of his own allies have been demoted, while people whose votes he needs, or perhaps is hoping to get, have been promoted.

But the most significant change, and the one that everybody was waiting for, was the fact that Mark Butler who’s from the left - a key ally of Albanese - he’s been moved out of climate, which he’s held since 2013, into Health, and Chris Bowen who had Health and is from the right has been moved into Climate, and this is certainly something that’s going to appease Joel Fitzgibbon who has been calling for this ever since he stood down from the shadow cabinet. And at the same time, it’s taking a key Albanese ally out of a really important position.

RUBY:

Right. As you say - even before the reshuffle was announced, Joel Fitzgibbon was talking about how he thought this was something that he thought Labor needed to do… Can you tell me more about what Fitzgibbon is angling for?

RACHEL:

Yeah so Joel Fitzgibbon's been out on radio again saying that changing jockeys is not enough...

Archival Tape -- Joel Fitzgibbon

“I believe it's a good start. It's…. Well, it will send the right message to our traditional base, but it won't be enough alone.”

RACHEL:

...that there needs to be confirmation from the cabinet that they won't be taking a more ambitious climate goal.

Archival Tape -- Joel Fitzgibbon

“The message for Labour is that to take meaningful action on climate change, you have to be elected. And you can't be elected unless you do demonstrate that you do have a plan for meaningful action that doesn't threaten the jobs of the people who we were born to represent.”

RACHEL:

And Chris Bowen, being from the right, it seems likely that Labor is going to really back off on climate now, taking Joel Fitzgibbon's line of let's leave it, let's not announce anything that's going to make us a big target and it's going to upset people in those coal mining electorates.

RUBY:

Mm ok. And that goes to the heart of it - the electorates that Labor thinks that it can and can’t win - and ultimately whether it can return to government. Is the sense within Labor that it’s going to be fairly impossible for them to win the next election?

RACHEL:

That's how it seems on the face of it, especially following the year that was 2020. It was a really incumbent-favouring year that was very hard for an opposition leader to get a word in without seeming extremely negative. And that's something that Albanese has defended, is that he was constructive in order to not be, you know, a Michael O'Brien type opposition leader in Victoria. But I think a lot of people in Labour still think it's possible that they could take this one.

There's a lot of challenges on the horizon for the coalition. We're coming to the end of JobKeeper and the JobSeeker Coronavirus supplement. We've got the vaccine rollout and concerns that we may have picked the wrong vaccine. And also the government's major industrial relations reforms, which depending how hard they decide to go on it, it might turn the government into a target for Labour to go after. And Albanese certainly indicated that's something he's going to be more willing to do this year.

So it's still not clear whether Labour's totally out of the running - I mean, it's looking pretty bad for them. Albanese trails as preferred prime minister, 60 to 28 in the end of the Newspoll, but the parties are actually still split 51/49. And so with a different leader potentially, that could narrow further.

RUBY:

Right. And so how likely is it that there will be a potential different leader by the time we head to the polls - is Albanese still in danger or does this reshuffle signal the end of leadership speculation, at least for the time being?

RACHEL:

I'm sure Anthony Albanese hopes so, but ultimately the concerns about more than just his position on climate, the concerns are about what a weak opposition leader he's been, how ineffective he's been in attacking the government. And it's the internal pressure from the party. But it's also this particular focus on these seats that he might lose, these seats in the Hunter Valley that polling does show would rather Labour didn't take the more ambitious climate goals. But it's also going to upset a lot of people on the left side of the party who do want to see Labor step up and be a leader on this. Ironically, this is exactly what Bill Shorten said not to do, because this is certainly a tiny policy agenda direction.

RUBY:

Rachel, thank you so much for your time today.

RACHEL:

Thanks, Ruby.

RUBY:

You can read Rachel Withers’ column analysing the tensions within the Labor party in The Saturday Paper tomorrow.

As a listener of 7am you can subscribe to The Saturday Paper for half price. It’s a great way to support the show, and fund the independent journalism that drives it. A half price digital subscription works out to less than a dollar a week. Go to thesaturdaypaper.com.au/podcast offer to subscribe. This special offer for 7am listeners is available until the end of February.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today - It’s been revealed that a 16-year-old in Singapore was detained in December after allegedly planning to attack two mosques on the second anniversary of the NZ Christchurch attacks. According to authorities it was ‘clear’ the teenager was influenced by the Christchurch shooter’s actions and manifesto and had taken steps to carry out a violent attack.

And Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews has flagged that changes to the state’s border arrangement with NSW are likely to be made today. It’s anticipated that most of Sydney will be reopened for travel to Victoria. On Thursday, the Queensland government announced it was opening borders with greater Sydney.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See ya next week.