EDITORIAL: As election looms, judge Labor on economic record

On May 17, 2022, Anthony Albanese fought back tears as he made a promise to the Australians who had just voted to put their trust in him as Prime Minister.

He pledged he was there “not to occupy the space, but to make a positive difference each and every day”.

Three years have passed. Now, he’s asking Australian voters to give him another go.

And Australians are evaluating whether he has lived up to that promise he made to them on election night 2022.

Starting today, The Nightly takes a look back at the first term of the Albanese Government.

Chief reporter Aaron Patrick will dissect the legacy of the Prime Minister who has been involved in politics ever since his days as a hard-left student radical at the University of Sydney.

The first in the series looks at Mr Albanese’s economic record.

He ascent to power came at a challenging time. As the danger from the coronavirus pandemic receded, another peril emerged.

Governments the world over grappled with a surge in inflation, fuelled by oil price rises and global demand shocks.

Australia was not immune. In Labor’s first year in power, inflation surged by 7.8 per cent, plunging households into a crippling cost-of-living crisis.

But as other nations eventually got a handle on the drivers of inflation, prices just kept on increasing in Australia.

As Patrick writes, part of the reason it proved stickier in Australia than elsewhere was the Federal Government’s big spending agenda.

As fast as the Reserve Bank could take money out of the economy through punishing interest rate rises, Mr Albanese and his Treasurer Jim Chalmers were shovelling it back in through relief measures and other spending programs.

The result was a long and painful cost-of-living crisis and a decline in living standards.

In fortuitous timing for Mr Albanese, the tide finally appears to be turning, just as an election looms.

Statistics released a fortnight ago showed the economy had grown for the first time in two years when adjusted for the size of the population.

But the impact of this period will last for decades to come. The March 25 Budget is expected to show a sea of red, with deficits forecast across the forward estimates period.

Those deficits are driven by hugely costly election promises, including $36 billion in pledges towards Medicare, a Queensland highway, the national broadband network and a train line to Sydney’s second international airport.

One of the lines Mr Albanese is leaning on through this election is that his Government has provided “responsible economic management” through challenging times. As evidence, he offers up two surpluses racked up in the opening years of his term.

Those days are over. It will be harder for Mr Albanese and Dr Chalmers to pick out kernels of good news from this month’s Budget.

That will play on voters’ minds as they evaluate whether the Prime Minister has lived up to his election night promise.