CAMERON MILNER: Anthony Albanese must put resentment to side to deliver Australians from cost-of-living crisis

Petrol price and supply pain is adding fuel to the cost-of-living fire already raging under the Albanese Government.

It’s a daily reminder that this Government has never looked less in control of our economy.

Australians have already suffered through an initial cost-of-living crisis in Anthony Albanese’s first term, and now they are facing down another as international events batter our already weak economy.

Though the Albanese Government has been swift to blame “international uncertainty” for the RBA’s likely rate hikes, the reality is well before the Iran war domestic inflation was already getting out of control.

The Government has confirmed Australia has just one month’s supply of diesel. For a nation that drives, mines, manufactures and runs First Nation communities’ electricity on diesel, this is a national disgrace.

And both major political parties are responsible for running our refining capacity as a nation into the ground. Kwinana and Altona North both closed in 2021 on the Morrison government’s watch and without any climate targets in place.

I understand the lazy politics of trying to blame Energy Minister Chris Bowen for the current crisis, but Australia was shutting sovereign capacity under the Liberals.

Even were these refineries open, Australia would be still vulnerable at the end of a supply chain for seaborne oil delivery.

We need to use this crisis to open up more oil and gas exploration as a nation and to do away with State-based moratoriums on gas extraction in our national interest.

But as Australians pay more than ever to fill up, there is genuine fear that within weeks there may be no fuelfor motorists, regardless of the price.

This in turn is driving further distrust in government of both major parties and One Nation is the polling beneficiary.

One Nation’s vote was already on the rise. Barnaby Joyce put rocket fuel to its rise since late last year and now this fuel crisis is putting even more momentum behind this putative contender for the official opposition party in Australia.

It’s telling that the latte sippers at the Nine Newspapers refused to publish a two-party preferred vote in today’s Resolve poll, as it would almost certainly have shown a tightening race between Labor and One Nation.

Like Reform in the UK, One Nation is no longer just a problem for conservative politics and is clearly now also harvesting former Labor voters to its cause.

This doesn’t change the numbers in the current Parliament, but it does measure the sheer anger, disillusion and disappointment among voters with the choice of either Anthony Albanese or Angus Taylor to lead Australia.

The PM is said not to be troubled at all by One Nation’s rise. His electoral maths is probably right for now, in that Labor would be returned with a thumping majority and would see both Coalition and One Nation MPs and especially senators elected.

It’s the old adage. You don’t have to outrun the lion, you just have to outrun the other guy being chased by the lion.

Still, it’s hardly a formula for inspiring government.

The other saying in politics is never waste a good crisis. On this Labor should actually take the economic reform bull by the horns and deliver lasting change.

Chalmers must take the opportunity to deliver lasting tax reform from the jaws of economic crisis.

Labor can respond now to the domestic inflation and international fuel crisis.

Both are driven by supply constraints that could be fixed by a government with both courage and vision.

On fuel supply, again Albanese could again take a Bill Shorten idea and implement it now. Theres’s absolutely an argument for Australia to build its own terrestrial strategic fuel reserve.

It beggars belief we store our army’s strategic reserve in Tennessee, USA. Pretty hard to access when we now learn we have only a month’s worth of diesel in Australia.

The second is we have to tackle housing supply and tax reform to once again open our economy to aspiration and access for all.

It’s why the reform Budget of Treasurer Jim Chalmers in May is so critical to actually effect economic changes, especially in the area of housing supply and removing the property speculators from the market.

Labor must do what Paul Keating did after the 1990s recession and Wayne Swan so miserably failed to do after the GFC. Chalmers must take the opportunity to deliver lasting tax reform from the jaws of economic crisis.

Keating used the spectre of Australia as a Banana republic to build upon his already strong economic reform credentials of the Wages Accord and floating the dollar.

Swan by contrast never delivered a budget surplus and underwrote speculative bank lending by giving a government guarantee.

Chalmers should reform the tax system and break the piggy bank of boomers with the abolition of the current capital gains tax discount and simply put a cap on the maximum annual deductions for negative gearing allowed of say $30,000 per annum. Simple and fair tax reform.

Meanwhile, the Government needs to build a strategic fuel reserve and to open up more of our fossil fuel reserves to exploration and development.

Much as wind and solar is transforming our economy for the better what this crisis has shown is our absolute vulnerability to foreign oil.

It’s just another reason the anti-migrant, isolationist politics that drives One Nation is finding so much appeal at the moment.

The Albanese Government has 94 seats in the Parliament. Reforming the economy as a Labor Government isn’t a problem of numbers, but rather of political will.

The Government should also stop rejecting Bill Shorten’s political solutions because of some twisted resentment. After all, Albanese got to be Prime Minister. Shorten didn’t.

Labor needs to start governing after four years in office. Reforming tax and securing our fuel supply future look like a pretty straightforward place to start.