Can Albanese re-engage voters amid the shock and awe of Trump 2.0?

When Donald Trump left the White House after the 2020 election, what had become a daily habit for millions around the world upon waking — checking Twitter with dread to see what wild new idea was floating forth — gratefully came to an end.
With his return this week, there’s a 2025 version of the same phenomenon, though one that is also significantly different.
The similarity in the disruption factor of Trump 2.0 is in the relentlessness, to date, of a blitz of new pieces of information to try to absorb every 24 hours.
The difference is in the much more detailed and deliberate agenda he is setting out, no matter how disruptive it might be, compared to that of a man — and team — who had never expected to win in 2016.
Amid the uncertainty, the focus in Australia has tended to be on potential first round effects: the prospect of tariffs on Australian goods, or in our defence relationship.
But much more ominous is the cacophony of decisions and pronouncements that the 47th president has unleashed this week on everything from tax to investments in technology, from climate policy to taking off all the limitations on oil and gas exploration, from walking away from all sorts of forms of global cooperation like the World Health Organisation, to an assault on any kind of issue regarded as “woke”.
The impact of any one of these big announcements that Trump has made, if implemented, is almost impossible to say, let alone all of them at once.
A massive increase in oil and gas production — just in economic terms — could, as he says, help drive global inflation downwards. But it would also obviously disrupt one of our largest export markets.
Tax reform is back on the agenda
This week Santos shelved the $3 billion Dorado oil and gas project off Western Australia. While there have been questions about the project for some time, the prospect of a plunge in prices on the back of a huge increase in US supply hardly helped.
On climate, as former Australian Ambassador to the United States Arthur Sinodinos told 7.30 this week, in addition to changes in energy prices, the second element in terms of the broader climate debate is that China will see this as an opportunity. So, the danger here is that in areas where America vacates, there may be a temptation for China to play a bigger and more influential role.
But Sinodinos’s assessment was that “on green energy generally”, the wall of money that is going into green energy across the world, the way in which the prices of renewables and other energy alternatives are coming down, means that it is not a lay down misère that the energy transition is halted in its track. There is so much momentum in that transition.
Trump’s pledge that the US will walk away from the so-called Basel III rules — post GFC reforms designed to ensure banks have enough capital to absorb losses — don’t just worry bankers here but raise competitive questions for them, and regulatory questions for central banks.
For Australian politics, his pledge to produce “the largest tax cut in American history”, and to walk away from an OECD global tax deal which commits countries to a minimum corporate tax rate of 15 per cent and the taxation of digital companies without a physical presence, puts tax competitiveness, and therefore tax reform, squarely back on the agenda in the next four years.
The definition of political bravery?
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was not going there when asked about this at the National Press Club on Friday in his first major address of this election year.
But be assured the pressures Trump is unleashing will make the need to change inevitable.
Of course, we don’t really have tax policy discussions in Australia anymore, even though so many of the tax bases we rely on to fund government services are degraded. We get tinkering around the edges, or uncosted bits of political flummery like the Coalition’s announcement in the past week about making business lunches free.
Being brave on good policy is not a great recipe for political success these days, particularly when the balance of power is so evenly balanced between the major parties.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addressing the National Press Club on Friday. (ABC News: David Sciasci)
The definition of political bravery on tax these days was highlighted by the prime minister wanting to remind people that the government had been brave last year in breaking a promise and redesigning the stage 3 tax cuts of the Morrison era to assist lower-income earners deal with the cost-of-living crisis.
Just as Donald Trump is galvanising the world with all his wildness, the PM has clearly decided that stability and calm is the best, and most natural, persona that he can offer voters as our own election approaches.
It feels like he’s been doing a lot of work over the summer on his presentation.
There’s more clarity around the messages so that instead of just mechanically rattling off a list of achievements that make your eyes glaze, he tries to give them some context and the spectre of being part of a bigger plan
Loading
Albanese’s headline achievement
At the centre of his message is reminding people that, no matter how tough they are doing it, inflation is coming down, wages are going up, lots of jobs have been created and Australia has avoided a recession.
Asked on Friday what the headline achievement has been for his government, he did have a list.
“Keeping us out of recession. 1.1 million jobs. Getting inflation from a six to a two. Making sure that people’s living standards are looked after — from a six to a two. Completing the NBN. Finishing Gonski … Turning the decline in Medicare around and, importantly, moving towards — just as Labor governments have created Medicare, [and] universal provision of superannuation — we’re taking the steps, and I announced in December, for universal provision of childcare.
“This will transform the way that Australia functions, will transform opportunity and will make sure that every young Australian gets the best start in life.”
There’s plenty that he can rightly point to having been achieved amid the chaos of global inflation and uncertain Senate numbers.
Whether people are listening, or grateful, remains uncertain. And whether he can re-engage them in a global political landscape of shock and awe is even less certain.
Laura Tingle is 7.30’s chief political correspondent.