Comment

Chris Wallace
Has government by spin had its day?

The lazy summer days between the end of Test cricket and the start of the Australian Open tennis usually allow time for musing.

This year the absence of a recognised spin bowler in the Brisbane and Sydney Test matches raised the question of whether Big Bash-style cricket has made spinners redundant in the modern men’s game.

The anguish of old-school cricket lovers is likely redundant, however: the fact we’re talking about whether spinners in the men’s game are superfluous means they probably already were. We can be slow to see not just what’s ahead but what is already here.

Noxious developments long brewing internationally are now shuddering into view – more shocks to the system as we struggle still to process December’s Bondi terror attack.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers talked critical minerals collaboration at a g7+ ministerial meeting in Washington this week, while across town United States Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell pressed back on criminal charges over the renovation of his agency’s headquarters.

It’s the latest in US President Donald Trump’s campaign to break Powell and, through him, the independence of the Federal Reserve.

Imagine Reserve Bank of Australia governor Michele Bullock facing sham criminal charges under the Albanese government over building works at the bank’s Martin Place offices in Sydney – that’s how ludicrous it is.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen declared this week it would be “the end of NATO” if the Trump administration persists in trying to take over the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland.

She and the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland issued a joint declaration that “Greenland belongs to its people, and only Denmark and Greenland can decide on matters concerning their relations”.

To put this in context, you could fit the entire population of Greenland into the Melbourne Cricket Ground and still have 43,000 seats left over – and Trump is risking the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance to get it.

If the Trump administration is willing to prey on loyal US allies such as Denmark, who’s next? Australia?

Trump coveted Venezuela’s oil reserves and was annoyed that, in his view, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro mockingly “tries to imitate my dance”.

So he had the US military kidnap Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, on January 3 and imprison them in New York on criminal charges comparable to those he pardoned convicted former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández for last month.

What next? Trump kidnaps Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and wife, Jodie Haydon, because he covets our critical minerals and is peeved that good-looking Irwin kid bested Americans on Dancing with the Stars?

Don’t think we’re more special than Denmark and couldn’t be targeted. Like us, Danes died fighting alongside Americans in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. With Trump, it counts for nothing.

Washington politics has become too mad even for Kevin Rudd, who announced he would step down as Australia’s ambassador to the US in March, a year early, in favour of heading the global Asia Society think tank.

This puts an extra card in the prime minister’s hand as he pursues a 2026 political reset. It creates the option to send someone like Defence Minister Richard Marles to Washington and fundamentally rejig cabinet.

Albanese had his best week in a month on the back of his decision, finally, to hold a royal commission into anti-Semitism after the Bondi terror attack.

Relief that he managed to explain his way through inconvenient truths about how long the royal commission had been in the works was palpable. Situation normal, he was keen to project.

However, the combination of the Bondi massacre and escalation of the currently unhinged behaviour of our longstanding US ally has plunged Australia into a situation definitely not normal.

The political environment is far more challenging than the one in which Australians voted just eight months ago.

Among other things, it has led to the fastest political education of new federal MPs for many parliaments.

Labor’s huge Class of 2025 – all 27 newcomers to the 123-strong caucus – naturally have special feelings towards Albanese as the leader who helped them get elected. They have witnessed several months of the prime minister at the peak of his post-landslide pomp.

Those 27 new Labor MPs then saw a spectacular Albanese flub in his handling of the Bondi terror attack.

They’ve seen how he can be made to change course through sustained public and private pressure.

Some of the public pressure came from former Labor MPs, led by ex-Australian Army colonel and former defence materiel minister Mike Kelly, who invoked the old military saying, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”

Some came from serving Labor MPs Mike Freelander, Ed Husic and Senator Michelle Ananda-Rajah. Backbenchers need to show leadership, too, and these three did.

Caucus finally got an online briefing from Attorney-General Michelle Rowland and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke on January 9, 26 days after the Bondi attack.

Freelander, a Sydney MP, said at the meeting caucus should have been briefed sooner. He was backed in, somewhat more diplomatically, by colleagues Susan Templeman, Meryl Swanson and Tony Zappia.

Burke responded that he’d been in contact with numerous caucus members individually since the attack. That’s fine as far as it goes but also part of the problem.

The practice of MPs’ representations being handled individually by ministers via Signal messages, rather than through caucus discussion, has reinforced the divide and rule dynamic stopping Albanese from getting clear, timely messages on pressing matters.

It’s part of the suite of techniques through which the prime minister keeps his MPs mute.

Three Labor MPs speaking up in public this month, and four speaking up in caucus, is a healthy development. It shows that, done constructively, caucus members can speak up and out without the sky falling in politically.

This needs to be the start of bigger things if the government is to rise to meet the moment. On the other hand, if the level of discipline imposed on caucus by Albanese continues, it would suggest his government is too brittle to lift and perform to the higher standard current politics demands.

Caucus will get a further insight into Albanese’s approach in the coming week.

The prime minister recalled parliament to meet on Monday and Tuesday for condolence motions in both houses on the Bondi attack, and to secure passage of its Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism bill.

Disappointingly, even if predictably, the opposition has vehemently criticised the bill, including for incorporating the new gun buyback scheme into it. On Wednesday, Opposition Leader Susan Ley announced the Coalition would vote against it.

Labor’s Class of 2025 and their caucus colleagues are more attuned to the critique of the independent member for Wentworth, Allegra Spender, whose electorate includes Bondi. Spender endorsed the bill as a “step forward” this week but one that “regrettably ... will also create an unjustifiable double standard” because it’s restricted to cases of racial hatred.

Spender wants a bill that makes all Australians, “regardless of faith, ethnicity, sexuality or any other characteristic, feel safe”, and says Jewish community leaders think so too – “to their great credit”.

Spender was already the talk of Labor circles in Sydney for having struck the right tone after the Bondi attack.

Labor mutterings grew during the course of this week, supportive of Spender’s critique of the bill.

This view sees Albanese’s minimalist approach, which also includes a large religious text loophole, look like the least he can get away with in the circumstances rather than a robust response to the hate problem overall – another own goal.

It’s not about being anti-Anthony Albanese, these Labor voices say. They’re just reaching the limits of their tolerance for the barely-good-enough outcomes Albanese’s governing style and practices deliver.

The escalating madness of the Trump administration and creaking AUKUS nuclear submarine deal add a whole extra layer to the challenges facing Australia. Those problems are now, not some time in the future.

Retired British rear admiral Philip Mathias, formerly the UK Ministry of Defence’s director of nuclear policy, warned this week there is “a high probability that the UK element of AUKUS will fail”.

“It is clear that Australia has shown a great deal of naivety,” Mathias told the Nine newspapers, “and did not conduct sufficient due diligence on the parlous state of the UK’s nuclear submarine program before signing up to AUKUS – and parting with billions of dollars, which it has already started to do.”

Does Albanese’s defensive batting approach still cut it in the modern era of political extremism and the unravelling of the postwar international order? Has government by spin had its day?

The events of the past few weeks have given the prime minister an opportunity to reset his government and focus on bolder delivery over the next few years. When parliament resumes caucus will be watching closely for signs that Albanese is willing to trade some of his control for better government performance overall.

Paul Bongiorno is on leave.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on January 16, 2026 as "The bare minimum".

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