CAMERON MILNER: Why Jim Chalmers may pay the price for Anthony Albanese’s failures

Labor is under such huge pressure on cost of living and the economy that its hard heads have drawn up a shortlist of sacrificial lambs.

That shortlist is indeed short: either Albo or Chalmers are seen as needing to be rolled as a circuit breaker against One Nation and show voters Labor is serious about the current economic crisis.

The traditional Labor choice is to roll the leader.

Gillard rolled Rudd, Rudd rolled Gillard and more recently Ben Carroll from the minority Right faction ended Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan’s reign.

Labor’s factions could always keep unpopular leaders in check by having a ruthless attitude that the party always came first and politics was never personal, just business.

But that all changed after Rudd changed the rules and made it near impossible to mount an old-style Caucus-led leadership change.

Rudd, with the help of Albanese, changed the rules to include rank and file ALP members as voters in future leadership elections. This adds huge complexity, but most importantly huge time delays in any challenge for a change of leadership.

Carroll only avoided this by being the only nomination for Victorian Premier.

The view also is that Albo so loves the trappings of office, the gravy train of freebies and is so self unaware that he’ll never have the good grace to step down.

That means the focus is now firmly on Chalmers.

A onetime leadership contender Chalmers is now deeply vulnerable having shown recently the role of Treasurer to be beyond his capabilities.

His colleagues were shocked by just how badly his latest Budget was delivered by him.

So much of Labor’s economic credibility has crashed since the May Budget, but was already under pressure from a Treasurer who claimed to be all ears to the plight of Aussies under pressure but has had no real answers.

Since May house prices are down dramatically, fuel prices up, rents up, inflation out of control and a once compliant RBA now openly at war with the Treasurer over his reckless spending.

Chalmers is in a world of hurt and also has a PM that briefs against him and just plain doesn’t trust either his judgement or loyalty.

Albanese and Chalmers have gone through periods when they wouldn’t speak. They contrived date nights at the Lodge for social media, but it hasn’t stopped the view that their relationship is dysfunctional.

This in large part is because Chalmers’ naked ambition to be PM after Albo was seen as an affront to the PM’s authority, but it goes back further than that.

Chalmers is actually a legacy of the Shorten economic team. He was shadow finance minister and featured prominently in the 2019 campaign that Albanese ever since has wanted to erase with his small target strategy.

There’s been Chalmers push for productivity changes snuffed out by Albo and only after months of destabilisation from Chalmers did the PM finally concede the need to change the Stage 3 tax cuts.

Albanese has knee-capped his Treasurer at every opportunity even allowing him enough rope on super changes before publicly humiliating him and pulling support.

Chalmers has tried to do his best to manage the Budget by backing the hard decisions only to have Albo go weak at the crucial moment.

Labor’s economic and electoral crisis are firmly intertwined and as much as it’s been Albo’s failure to back Chalmers, it now looks like Chalmers will have to pay the ultimate price.

Chalmers knows he’s under extreme pressure which is why he brought in a wartime consigliere, Sam Crosby as his new chief of staff. Crosby is from the NSW Right and is there to protect Jim’s back.

The issue is it may all be too late. The NSW Right are already briefing that popular Premier Chris Minns might lose in March to One Nation. This is still the state of whatever it takes and they sheet the blame home to the federal Labor government for their predicament.

Labor’s federal vote is now at election-losing levels. Cost of living in a recent poll is seen as being better handled by One Nation than Labor.

Just like a Scott Morrison hug and a he’s my guy line a Charlton pat on the back for Chalmers is actually a reconnaissance mission for where to place the knife.

Labor’s crop of corn is failing and Machu Picchu-style a human sacrifice is being called for and if it’s not the 94 seat Sun God, Albo, then his distrusted Treasurer fits the Albanistas’ brief.

Some will argue the transaction cost is too great a risk and that Chalmers should simply be moved post election.

But these aren’t usual times and the One Nation juggernaut is already threatening to smash electoral politics as we know it.

The crowds in the Colosseum are baying for blood and a price to be paid for their pain and suffering right now.

Caucus members have been horrified by Chalmers’ recent performances and channelling his inner Black Knight from the Holy Grail.

Jim must know just how stuffed he is when his arch rival for the role of Treasurer, Andrew Charlton was his biggest backer in recent weekend media.

Just like a Scott Morrison hug and a “he’s my guy” line a Charlton pat on the back for Chalmers is actually a reconnaissance mission for where to place the knife.

Jim has also alienated much of the business lobby and could probably only rely on Twiggy “Handouts” Forrest to endorse him while Burke and Bowen have taken away his union backers.

He has barely a quota of Queensland Right votes to keep him in Cabinet. His mentor, Wayne Swan, is also no longer ALP President.

It would be a genuine tragedy for Chalmers to pay the price of Albanese’s weak leadership and lies.

It comes down though to putting up a circuit breaker for Labor’s electoral woes. A sacrifice that matches the severity of the crisis and recaptures voters’ attention.

It was already a short shortlist for the hard heads, but increasingly it looks like it might be whittled down to just one name – Treasurer Jim Chalmers — to be sacrificed.

Cameron Milner is a former Queensland Labor State secretary