CAMERON MILNER: Lame duck Jim Chalmers’ job is safe for now amid reputation hit
Constant backdowns and white-anting from the Prime Minister have left Jim Chalmers’ reputation and career aspirations in tatters.
Jim Chalmers has been kneecapped by his Prime Minister so many times he’s looking like a lame duck, a Treasurer in name only.
Last week’s backdown to temporarily halt the ATO’s ban on credit card surcharges was Chalmers’ fifth backflip since his disastrous May Budget.
There was backdown on capital gains for small businesses and start-ups, changes to tax rates on trusts, removal of the birth tax on trusts, and removal of the perverse widow tax.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.The only consistency since the May Budget has been Anthony Albanese’s willingness to give his Treasurer enough rope, brief against him and then to add insult to humiliation by saying he had forced the change.
Last week saw a flurry of Labor ministers and backbenchers all expressing concern and exasperation in equal measure at just how badly Chalmers is doing his job.
Speculation across nearly all major media outlets was that the Treasurer might have to be moved to give the Government any chance to regain electoral support.
Not one elected representative was on the record defending Chalmer’s record of reform and his economic leadership. It was a deafening silence made worse by wall-to-wall Andrew Charlton coverage and a one-word answer from the Prime Minister’s media unit in response to speculation about Chalmers’ job security — “nonsense”.
Reports of the ongoing dysfunction weren’t denied while Chalmers’ performances of recent times have made even Wayne Swan look like he knew what he was doing.
Backbenchers complain that when they raise voter issues, Chalmers is shrill and short with them and is seen to belittle their genuine concerns.
Voters meanwhile see Albanese’s lack of faith in his Treasurer and think Albanese should project more confidence in his economic No.2 if he was genuinely backing him.
Whether it’s losing the fight on domestic inflation, RBA rate rises or Jim’s decade of deficits, the Treasurer only ever seems to be delivering bad news and backflips.
It means Chalmers has moved from the list of future PMs to the list of current problems.
To be fair to him, it’s not as though the rest of the Albanese Government is doing much better.
The PM is about to rack up almost as many hours on a private jet as Oliver Curtis, attending climate conference snoozefests and G20 talkfests. It’s left him with barely enough time to do “comedy” podcasts.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke will be left to explain that even though we don’t negotiate with terrorists, we apparently seem happy to fund their recruitment and radicalisation on our own shores. Under the guise of fighting Islamophobia, hate preachers and domestic jihadis have been taking the collective piss.
You have Communications Minster Anika Wells, recently anointed one of the “world’s most influential rising stars” by Time magazine, who just can’t seem to confirm the meeting she says she had with South Australian minister Chris Picton that she used to justify claiming taxpayer funding for the trip during which she also attended the birthday party of Picton’s wife.
You have Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong searching in vain for a Palestinian politician who isn’t corrupt, has served Hamas or both to lead her doomed two-state solution.
Housing Minister Clare O’Neil is still trying to distract from housing construction failure by going off-brief on credit cards, while Matt Keogh is taking his medicine from the veterans it’s his job to serve, as Small Business Minister Anne Aly busies herself taking selfies as rumours swirl of the imminent collapse of the Australia Indonesia Business Council.
The Albanistas are doing such a great job at governing they could teach the bankers behind the failed Firmus IPO a lesson in self-delusion, denial and shameless spin.
The brains trust around Albo believe it can’t get any worse and are prepared to sacrifice two Labor State governments to show voters how divided One Nation actually is.
The thinking is that a massive Labor loss in Victoria will see a swag of One Nation malcontents elected. Chris Minns losing in NSW to One Nation is seen by the Albanistas as an acceptable cost of doing business so they can run the One Nation chaos fear campaign come their own election from August 2027 onwards.
In a further slight to the Treasurer from Logan, one Albanista has even speculated Federal Labor could “afford to lose Queensland to One Nation” as they had 94 seats to play with nationally.
Loyalty has always been a one-way street for Albo. Premiers, ministers and even treasurers are all expendable, a mere transactional cost to distract voters from the policy failures and mistruths coming from the PM.
The challenge for Chalmers is his lack of vocal backers and the plethora of detractors happily briefing key reporters.
The continued public humiliation by his Prime Minister just add to the Treasurer’s woes.
They say the perception of power is power. Chalmers’ perception and reputation among business leaders, backbenchers and the Canberra gallery is increasingly of someone who champions lost causes.
Any constituency adversely affected by Chalmers’ reforms simply know they can put pressure on a weak Albanese and have the Treasurer perform yet another backflip in the full public glare.
Some of Chalmers’ colleagues have raised the transactional cost and the challenge of instability for Albanese as being too great to contemplate the Treasurer being dumped to a lesser portfolio.
After yet another bruising backdown on Friday further trashed the Treasurer’s authority, Labor hard heads also acknowledge the cost of keeping a lame duck Chalmers in such a critical role as leading Labor’s economic management.
