Författare: Michelle Grattan Professorial Fellow University of Canberra

After rejecting calls for months, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese finally summoned a Tuesday national cabinet meeting to discuss Australia’s rising wave of antisemitic attacks and other incidents.

This followed the torching of a childcare centre in Maroubra in Sydney overnight, which saw anti-Jewish graffiti sprayed on the building.

In a statement after the national cabinet, Albanese said Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw had briefed leaders on the latest police intelligence, and the leaders had agreed to establish a national database to track antisemitic crime and behaviours. “Best practice” is to be shared across governments in fighting antisemitism.

The AFP says it is investigating whether local criminals might be being paid from overseas to commit antisemitic acts.

According to the latest figures, since AFP Operation Avalite was set up late last year, the AFP has received 166 reports, with 15 under investigation. One person has been arrested so far.

Under NSW’s Strike Force Pearl, three men – aged 20, 19 and 21 – have been charged after ten vehicles and buildings were damaged in Woollahra in November.

Thirty-six people have been charged with antisemitic related offences, including eight charged with 59 offences.

Four men – aged 31, 27, 40 and 26 – were charged after fires at two businesses in Bondi in October.

A woman aged 34 was charged after vehicles and buildings were damaged in Woollahra in December.

Under Operation Park in Victoria, 70 arrests have been made.

Albanese said the leaders “unequivocally condemn antisemitism and reaffirmed to stamp it out in Australia”.

Kershaw said in a Tuesday statment: “There is no doubt there is an escalation of antisemitism in Australia.

”I know many people feel they want more action to go with words, ” he said, outlining what had been done and what was being considered.

“We are looking into whether overseas actors or individuals have paid local criminals in Australia to carry out some of these crimes in our suburbs,” he said.

“We are looking at if – or how – they have been paid, for example in cryptocurrency, which can take longer to identify.

”We are looking into whether any young people are involved in carrying out some of these crimes, and if they have been radicalised online and encouraged to commit antisemitic acts.

”We are regularly talking to our Five Eyes and trusted international partners about these issues.”

He said that on Wednesday he would meet with state police commissioners across the country. “I will raise whether there are other tactics or matters we can consider.”

Last week, the prime minister met the premiers of Victoria and NSW on the antisemitism issue while dismissing pressure for a national cabinet, which was coming from, among others, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton said the PM had been “dragged kicking and screaming” to call the national cabinet meeting. “We are having rolling terrorist attacks in our community,” Dutton said.

Appearing on Tuesday morning at a news conference with NSW Premier Chris Minns, Albanese condemned the Maroubra attack as a “vicious crime”. “This is something that people in this great multicultural city of Sydney should never wake up to.”

Minns said to see the torched childcare centre – which is not Jewish but is near a synagogue and a Jewish school – “is completely heartbreaking”. “These bastards” would be rounded up by NSW Police, he said.

“These antisemitic attacks are the opposite of the kind of country that we all want to live in.”

Minns also defended the record of the NSW Police in catching and prosecuting those responsible for the string of hate crimes in NSW. Police resources are being increased to combat the attacks.

The federal opposition this week pledged a Coalition government would introduce mandatory minimum sentences of at least six years for Commonwealth terrorism offences.

The Faith Affairs Council of NSW called on religious and community leaders “to condemn this anti-religious act of violence, and proactively promote harmony and understanding across our multicultural and multifaith communities”.

Meanwhile Israel is continuing its pressure on Australia over antisemitisim.

After Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus’s trip to Israel to try to rebuild relations, Israel’s Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sharren Haskel, posted on social media this week that she had expressed to Dreyfus “our deep concern regarding the shocking rise in antisemitism in Australia and the clearly ineffectual response from the Australian government and state governments.

”There is no doubt this has been caused in part by the Australian government’s ongoing campaign against Israel,” she said.

“I expressed my expectation and hope that Australia’s policy towards Israel will return to reflecting our long-standing relations based on shared values and interests.”

The federal government plans to have two cabinet ministers lead the Australian delegation to the commemoration in Poland next week marking 80 years since the last people were freed from Auschwitz.

When parliament returns early next month it will consider the government’s legislation to crack down on hate speech. Läs mer…

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s Sunday “soft launch” of his campaign for election year was carefully calibrated to pitch to the party faithful while seeking to project enough nuance to avoid alienating centrist voters.

It contained nothing new – there was no attention-catching big announcement to start the year.

Rather, this was Dutton (re)introducing himself (“I was born into an outer suburbs working-class family”) with a back story focusing on aspiration; canvassing Coalition priorities and policy offerings to date, and delivering the usual critique of Labor’s alleged incompetence and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s “weak” leadership.

“Weak leaders create hard times – but strong leaders create better times. And the next federal election is a sliding doors moment for our nation,” Dutton told his handpicked Melbourne audience. “A returned Labor government – in majority or minority – will see setbacks set in stone.”

Tony Barry, a one-time Liberal advisor who is now with Redbridge political consultancy, says: “In our research the biggest differentiated but salient leadership attribute between the two contestants [Dutton and Albanese] is strength and weakness. Dutton has a huge lead on perceived strength versus the perceived weakness of Albanese.

”So he’s framing his campaign around that attribute. But it’s important he also uses shared values to demonstrate other leadership attributes – trust, empathy, vision and hope.”

Barry also says it’s vital in appealing to “soft” (that is, undecided) voters to make clear the contest involves a choice, which Dutton played up on Sunday with the “sliding doors” reference.

A man who often appears two-dimensional and sometimes sounds extreme, Dutton in his address sought to present tonally as rounded and reasonable, while giving plenty to his base, including his stress on the importance of “coming together under our one flag”.

In outlining his credo, Dutton declared he believed, among other things, in egalitarianism, individual freedom, the rule of law and “in pushing back on identity politics”.

He also tried directly to counter what will be a sharp point of Labor attack in the campaign – his record as health minister in the Abbott government.

“As health minister, I created the $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund and increased hospital funding. Indeed, bulk billing was 84% under me compared to 77% today.” After the speech, the government was quickly out to remind us that Dutton had tried to introduce a co-payment for people to see their GP.

There were some neat lines in the address. “Mr Albanese says ‘this election is about the future versus the past’. I think the past three years are a good indication of what the future will look like under a returned Labor government.”

And, “with Labor acting like an opposition in government, we’ve acted like a government in opposition.”

There was also some wild, inaccurate exaggeration. Condemning the surge of antisemitism in Australia, Dutton claimed, “every incident of antisemitism can be traced back to the prime minister’s dereliction of leadership in response to the sordid events on the steps of the Sydney Opera House”.

It was notable Dutton chose Victoria for the event. Two years ago he was routinely described as being “toxic” in that state. Now Liberal sources say things have changed – there are still challenges with him there but he is more palatable.

The Victorian state Liberals have been a shambles, however, in the wake of the extraordinary Moira Deeming affair, culminating in the state party replacing its leader just before Christmas. Liberals worry about the preparedness of the Victorian party organisation ahead of the federal battle.

Nevertheless, the Liberals are in a serious hunt for seats in Victoria, hoping to capitalise on the unpopularity of the state Labor government. That unpopularity will be tested in a February 8 state byelection in the Labor seat of Werribee.

One Liberal target seat is Chisholm, where Sunday’s event was held. Chisholm was lost in 2022 by Gladys Liu, a Liberal MP of Chinese heritage. The Liberals this time are running Katie Allen, former MP for Higgins, who was also defeated in 2022.

The party faithful gathered in the seat of Chisolm for the campaign
Diego Fedele/AAP

Allen was set for another tilt in Higgins but the seat was abolished in the redistribution. She then replaced the male candidate who’d been nominated for Chisholm. Labor holds the seat on a 3.3% margin.

One question is how the large Chinese vote will go. Labor claims the reservations about Dutton among Chinese-Australians are as strong as they were about Scott Morrison.

Dutton will likely be pleased enough with his Sunday outing. But the reality is in the cliche, “the devil is in the detail”, on which he gave nothing fresh.

During the Voice referendum Dutton constantly complained the government wouldn’t give enough detail, or that the detail didn’t stand up. Much the same can be said of key policies Dutton is putting forward for the coming election.

The modelling for his nuclear plan has been dismissed by many well-qualified critics. His initiatives on the housing crisis hold no guarantee of delivering the number of homes needed in the time required. There are well-founded doubts over seeming inconsistencies in his immigration plans.

Dutton keeps promising more answers later, but at some point this will start to look like a ploy for concealing the vacuums that need filling with finer print.

Meanwhile, we are still waiting for him to announce his reshuffled frontbench, including a new shadow foreign minister, that was expected before Christmas. Here he has the choice of doing some patch-ups – adding vacant portfolios to existing ones – or making more substantive changes that he would expect to take into government if he won the election. Läs mer…

Women and their issues were at the centre in the 2022 election. They were an important reason why Scott Morrison was turfed out of office.

Morrison, his party and the government were seen to have a much-touted “women problem”, ranging from mishandling the Brittany Higgins affair to the under-representation of women among Liberal MPs. Issues around equality for women were to the forefront in the campaign of the “teals”, helping a cluster of professional women winning seats from Liberals.

Will gender again be important at the 2025 election? Potentially – positively and negatively. Both sides hope that it will, in different ways, work to their advantage, while also fearing its downsides.

There has been a big turnaround in how women vote, compared with decades ago, when they leaned more conservative than men. Now they tilt to the progressive side of politics.

A priority for the Albanese government has been to deliver for women, and it has done so in a big way – from appointments to pay rises.

A female governor-general succeeded a male; a woman followed a man to head the Reserve Bank; it was the same story at the Productivity Commission. This week Treasurer Jim Chalmers highlighted that women form the majority on both new boards of the Reserve Bank. (They are also a majority in the caucus.)

At a policy level, Albanese has already implemented major child care reform. This month he promised Labor would guarantee three days subsidised care a week with no activity test. There is more to come in this policy area.

The government legislated to have the Fair Work Commission promote “gender equality” in minimum wage reviews and for expert panels to assist in gender-related cases.

It pressed for better wages for child care workers and is paying for the rises in the immediate term, at a cost of $3.6 billion over the forward estimates. More generally, it says the gender pay gap has never been smaller, and pledges to do more in closing it.

Apart from reflecting the personal convictions of Anthony Albanese and Minister for Women Katy Gallagher, the strong support for lower paid women is closely linked in with Labor’s trade union base. With an ever-expanding “care” economy, the union movement (currently led by two women) is being feminised in growth areas. On the latest figures 14% of all women employees are union members, compared to 12% of male workers.

Women voters are now vital to Labor’s support base and it will be relying on its record for them to deliver for it at the election.

Albanese also has a strong political interest in the teal women MPs holding their seats. These are not electorates Labor can win – they still belong naturally on the conservative side of the ledger. For Labor, however, they form a firewall against Peter Dutton.

The polls show the partisan gender divide on voting and leadership. This week’s Essential poll, on a two-party basis, has the Coalition on 51% among men, and Labor on 44%, with 4% undecided. Among women, Labor is on 49% and the Coalition on 46%, with 5% undecided.

The Resolve poll earlier this month had, as preferred prime minister, Dutton polling 40% among men, and Albanese 34%, with the rest undecided. Among women, Albanese was on 36% and Dutton on 31%.

Rather counter intuitively, given his background as a hard man of the left, Albanese’s style gives him an advantage over Dutton with female voters.

Dutton is aware of the possible dangers of particular issues weakening his position with women. The Queensland election, despite the sweeping win by the Liberal National Party, showed the risks of a scare campaign on abortion. Dutton acted quickly to shut down the abortion issue federally, which some right-wingers had wanted to ignite.

In the recent United States presidential election, where abortion was a hot issue, the Harris campaign hoped that it, and gender identification generally, would bring a wave of support for her. That surge didn’t happen. Broader concerns across genders, notably inflation, boosted Trump’s vote.

So is it possible that when our election comes, Labor’s advantage among women fades to some degree, reduced by more general cost-of-living concerns?

Simon Welsh, of Redbridge political consultancy, says: “what we’re seeing in the [focus] groups is that [working class women] don’t like Dutton, but they are open to him. That is, he needs to provide an economic platform they can support, but there is no longer an entrenched resistance to the idea of voting for him among working class women”.

If Labor has an advantage with women, Albanese currently has a “man problem”. Labor’s position with men, especially younger men, has become difficult since 2022, partly due to Albanese being head-to-head with Dutton.

Dutton is heavily targeting outer-suburban seats. The persona of a tough, blunt, un-nuanced former Queensland policeman goes down well with men in these areas. This is reinforced by the fact that in the last few years men (especially younger men and not just here but in other countries too) have become more alienated, feeling they are not being adequately heard.

Welsh says: “the sense of disempowerment, alienation, among young men means that what they want is a ‘shock’ to a system that they no longer believe operates in their interests”.

The opposition’s nuclear policy feeds into the gender split, with pluses and minuses for the Coalition. Men are more likely to see the policy as Dutton having a go; women are more inclined to have reservations.

Mid year, Essential asked people to rank the desirability of three energy sources. Only 48% of men ranked renewables first; 69% of women did so. Nearly a third of men (32%) ranked nuclear first, but only 13% of women. There was little gender difference among the few who put fossil fuels first. (One male observer quips that men “like big techy stuff”.)

Labor is worried about Dutton’s ability to erode its vote among men, and will be making what efforts it can to counter it. This includes running hard on how a Coalition government could wind back industrial relations protections that the Albanese government has brought in, and claiming a Dutton government would de-industrialise the country.

But it’s a hard slog. Compared with 2022 when the women were grumpy, it’s now the men who are grumpy, and they are very grumpy. Labor is highly alert to the problem, but is still searching for the answers. Läs mer…

Appropriately, we finish our podcast for 2024 talking to Treasurer Jim Chalmers and his shadow, Angus Taylor because, as the saying goes, “it’s the economy, stupid!”

This week’s mid-year budget update showed Australia’s economy in poor shape and the buget’s trajectory mired in a decade of red.

Chalmers acknowledges the problems, but looks for positives:

yes there are pressures on the budget. Yes, some of those pressures are intensifying. But don’t forget, the budget is $200 billion stronger because of our efforts. That means we avoid $177 billion in the debt that we inherited, and that saves us $70 billion in interest costs. And so I understand that people are focused on the fact that the budget position remains difficult, but it is much, much stronger than it was two and a half years ago.

Looking to the next election, Chalmers outlines his ambitions for a second Labor term, if the government is re-elected:

well, the energy transformation, for me, is the most important thing. If you think about the earlier reform periods in our economy and in our politics, I think the thing that comes closest to the magnitude and the importance of those earlier waves of reform is the energy transformation. I genuinely feel that people in the future will look back on the 2020s and they’ll judge us on whether we succeeded or failed to get this energy transformation right. And obviously, that’s a big political contest now because of this nuclear insanity from the opposition.

I’m very interested in the intersection of technology and human capital and the way our industrial base is changing. So that’s a big part of the story. And then thirdly, where competition policy and productivity policy intersect, trying to make our economy more productive, more competitive and more dynamic. Those are the three things. In addition to all the things you’d expect me to say ongoing budget repair, cost-of-living relief, getting on top of inflation.

For Taylor, the economic challenge is getting the supply side right:

we needed a plan from this government to restore Australians’ prosperity, to restore their standard of living. We’ve seen a reduction of well over 8% in their standard of living since Labor came to power. And in fact, if anything, there’s a downgrade in Australians’ standard of living in this statement.

At the heart of this statement is a big spending, big taxing, high immigration Labor government. $233 billion of red ink over the forwards and deficits as far as the eye can see to the end of the decade.

What Labor is seeking to do is make government the centre of the economy. What we need is a private sector that’s mobilised, that’s investing, that’s employing, that’s taking risks and not being crowded out by the public sector. If you want to see sustainable lower inflation and lower interest rates, we know from history the answer isn’t a cash splurge. The answer is getting the supply side of the economy right and encouraging the private sector to get out there and invest.

Asked whether, as has been suggested, the Coalition had walked back its migration target, Taylor says:

the answer is there’s been no change. It’s as simple as that.

But I tell you what has changed. The baseline we’re dealing with on migration has changed quite dramatically. Labor has consistently failed to meet its targets. Its migration targets have increased by over 700,000 over the forwards since Labor came to power. Every time they put an update out, we see an increase in the numbers. The increase in MYEFO was another 80,000 over the forwards, much of which is in the short term in the next year or two. Labor has lost control of immigration.

That means that to get to our targets, which we’ve been very clear about, 160,000 in the NOM [net overseas migration] in the short term, bringing down permanent immigration by 25%, it means that the starting point is higher. Läs mer…

The federal budget is headed for a deficit of $26.9 billion this financial year – $1.3 billion better than the estimate in May – but in the following three years the budget is forecast to be deeper in the red than earlier forecast.

The budget update, released by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher on Wednesday, shows a sluggish Australian economy and a cumulative deficit of $143.9 billion across the four years of the forward estimates. This compares to $122.1 billion in the May budget.

The update predicts a return to budget balance only in 2034-2035.

The Mid-year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) shows a comparatively modest potential election war chest of up to $218.6 million this financial year and $828.1 million in 2025-26. These are labelled in the update “decisions taken but not yet announced”.

But these annual figures are deceptive in relation to what will be actually promised for next year’s election, because much of the cost of promises would also be pushed into the outer years. Over four years the figure is $5.6 billion in payments.

A portion of the unannounced decisions would be for confidential commercial payments and the like.

The government has flagged more cost-of-living relief to be announced in coming months.

Average real spending growth is estimated to be 1.5% over the six years to 2027-28, which would be under the 30-year average. But real spending growth this financial year is put at 5.7% (26.5% of GDP).

The update includes gross savings of $14.6 billion.

The update says: “In the face of significant economic headwinds, the Australian economy is on track for a soft landing”.

Despite difficult circumstances, “there has been encouraging progress on a number of fronts. The economy has continued to grow, inflation has moderated substantially, over a million jobs have been created since the middle of 2022, the participation rate is near record highs, real wage and disposable income growth has returned, the gender pay gap is at record lows and business investment is at near decades highs.”

The update shows inflation of 2.75% in 2024-25, within the Reserve Bank’s target range of 2-3%. But this will still include the effect of government cost-of living relief, which the bank discounts when considering interest rate movements.

Unemployment, at 3.9% currently, is forecast to rise to 4.5% this financial year.

Economic growth is forecast to be 1.75% this financial year, up from 1.4% in 2023-24, and 2.75% in 2025-26. The improvement in growth is “expected to be supported by a gradual recovery in household consumption”.

Wages are forecast to grow 3%, down from the outcome for the 2023-24 year of 4.1%.

“Government’s cost-of-living tax cuts, together with the anticipated easing in inflationary pressures and continuing employment and wage growth are expected to drive growth in real household disposable incomes in 2024–25,” the update says.

The upgrades in tax receipts are much more modest this year than the $80 billion upgrades on average in the last four budget updates.

Excluding GST and policy decisions, tax receipts have been revised up by $7.3 billion over the years to 2027-28. For the first time since the 2020-21 budget company receipts have been revised down, reflecting weaker commodity volumes as a result of the weakness of the Chinese economy.

Net debt in 2024-25 is $540 billion, a decrease of $12.5 billion from the budget. Läs mer…