ANDREW CARSWELL: Labor’s on-again, off-again Nature Positive reform points to a party with an identity crisis

The timing, and the place, was almost too perfect to be a mere coincidence.

Here was Team Tanya Plibersek, handing out pamphlets at the famed Orange Grove markets in Sydney’s inner west, bowing before a new set of constituents who are fiercely environmental, and notoriously vocal about it.

On these dangerously progressive streets, the Greens dominate at nearly every level of government. If not for their personal loyalty to former local MP Anthony Albanese — before an electoral redistribution took him elsewhere — they’d likely vote Green federally too. They just might now.

It is ground zero for basket weaving. A haven for that fabulously ironic breed of wealthy socialist. More food scraps and recycling bins than car spots.

Ever since a redistribution added Balmain and Rozelle to her electorate, Plibersek has been on a desperate mission to show her green credentials, and win over the eco-friendly warriors on the pious peninsula.

But her problem on this very Saturday was 300km away, in a Canberra studio, where that former representative was making life difficult for the new representative.

Here was Anthony Albanese running a sword through Plibersek’s key environmental reform. For the second time in two months. The third time he has been forced to intervene in her portfolio to save Labor from itself.

Dead, buried, cremated — RIP Nature Positive. It’s been a hoot. So declared the Prime Minister, who, remember, only last week resurrected the previously dead, buried and cremated legislation with his tacit support for the minister to seek stakeholder consensus. Saved from the scrap heap for reasons unknown, only to be put down again days later.

A whirlwind. Even for political strategists, following along was difficult.

You’re doing what now? But why? That sounds like the opposite of smart.

Thus ended a strange, tumultuous week for the Albanese Government, dominated by its on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again Nature Positive legislation which at best showed the awkward dance it is forced to play between its progressive inner-city voters and its steadily diminishing suburban core. At worst, yet another chapter of its inability to control the narrative and its propensity to trip over itself.

A wasted week that did untold damage to its brand, especially in WA, where such invasive environmental reforms are kryptonite to a State heavily reliant on mining and agriculture. A State that will likely decide whether Albanese deserves a second term.

So what on earth was the point.

It’s not easy being Tanya Plibersek in an Albanese Government. The chances of being trampled upon by the PM’s ungainly boots is extremely high. It’s bordering on an OH&S issue.

Some of the stomping is payback for Plibersek’s factional treachery at having supported Bill Shorten in the Labor leadership contest over Albanese. Their detestation for each other, after all, is palpable. And their memories, long.

But mostly it is sheer confusion within the party. An identity crisis, caused by a sharp shift to the left in inner-city electorates, and a gradual shift to the right in traditional working-class suburbs where people vote red because their father/mother/grandparent did. The end result is political schizophrenia. A party continually tying itself in knots trying to work out where their collective true north is.

Even if this latest debacle was deliberate — a calculated distraction from the Prime Minister to placate Labor’s anxious left flank and reassure its increasingly aggrieved supporters (“See, we are trying to do something for the environment”) — the outcome remains the same.

Mess.

And if reassuring Labor’s inner-city supporters was the point of this strange incursion, hasn’t the Prime Minister now aggravated this super-sensitive cohort further by giving and taking away in one fell swoop; by showing his unwillingness to put his proverbials on the line for an environmental policy the party faithful likely supports?

Perhaps more alarmingly, is the school of thought that suggests this latest political shemozzle is yet another round in the tortuous tit-for-tat between frenemies at large, Plibersek and Albanese.

The former desperately drumming up momentum for her signature policy. The latter asserting his power to diminish hers. The former getting revenge after the latter pushed her into a corner on her looming decision on Macquarie Harbour salmon farming, rightly backing the industry and jobs over foreign-funded activists and a fugly fish which loves to play hide and seek.

Whatever the reason, there is no question Albanese was right to take Nature Positive off the table. Once again, of course. Industry and business were in furious agreement that the Bill was flawed and would damage the economy without any material gain for the environment, a message backed by WA Premier Roger Cook. It is possible to undertake environmental reform without hurting the economy, and such reform should be pursued.

But allowing this defective bill back on the legislative lazy Susan just weeks from two critical elections showed poor judgment; an inability to conceptualise what his gamble would look like, if it inevitably failed.

It was cover the eyes, and hope for the best.

Again.

Perhaps understandably, it didn’t work.

Again.

Andrew Carswell is director at Headline Advisory and a former adviser to the Morrison government. He has clients in the mining and energy sectors