1970s redux

Once upon a time, Australia elected a Prime Minister who crashed into Canberra like a bull in a polyester suit. Gough Whitlam didn’t just think big, he thought huge, confusing grandiosity with governance and reform with barely contained chaos. His Cabinet operated with all the cohesion of a soap opera cast on an amphetamine high. Economic mismanagement? Check. The Loans Affair? A political farce in three acts. Whitlam didn’t so much lead as detonate.

Fast forward 50 years and the pendulum hasn’t swung to stability but rather swung to sedation. Enter Anthony Albanese: the human equivalent of a grey drizzle. If Whitlam’s flaw was doing too much, too fast, Albanese’s is doing nothing, very slowly.

His idea of vision is launching an inquiry, mumbling a few talking points, and disappearing into the nearest beige corridor. Medicare? Whitlam built it. Albanese clutches his Medicare card like it’s a magic wand and hopes nobody notices he has no idea.

Foreign policy? Whitlam had guts, sometimes misguided, but undeniably gutsy. He recognised China when it was bold to do so. Albanese, meanwhile, recycles press releases and calls it strategy. AUKUS a masterstroke: a multi-billion-dollar defense pact that says "We might buy some submarines. Eventually. Maybe.”

And then there are the Jims.

Jim Cairns, Whitlam’s deputy and Treasurer, was a romantic radical with more ideology than tact. He wanted to wrangle capitalism into socialims, frequently face-planting along the way.

Jim Chalmers, by contrast, is all vibes and no vision. Treasurer Lite™. Disciple of the Swan Doctrine™. He dabbles in economic rethinks via think piece, then produces budgets so wasteful, they might as well be laminated gold dipped. He speaks in soothing jargon, but governs with a wet noodle. Cairns wanted to break the system. Chalmers wants to balance the spreadsheet.

Same party. Same name. Worlds apart.

The ALP under Whitlam and Cairns was loud, chaotic, and terminally incapable. The ALP under Albanese and Chalmers is dull, vague and terminally incapable, and somehow even less competent.

They’ve turned the spirit of '70s reform into a Netflix reboot: flatter, slower, and with worse economics. "Progressive Patriotism"? Please. It's more like bureaucratic cosplay.