Commonwealth of Australia July to December 2023

As the year 2023 unfolded the Albanese government initially seemed buoyed after the by-election win in the Victorian seat of Aston, improving their majority to five seats in the lower house, and the seeming inability of the Coalition parties under opposition leader Peter Dutton to become a formidable opponent or offer alternative policy agendas. The May Budget, with some modest cost of living relief of $14.6 billion to welfare recipients, had largely sank like a stone by the time parliament returned on 31st July after the winter break. Rising community concern was caused by rising inflation still trending over 4 per cent in December 2023, and a recent spate of cash rate increases by the Reserve Bank (12 increases of 0.25 per cent over 13 months in 2022–23; only one under the Coalition, and 11 under Labor) which had seen mortgage rates accelerate rising to between 5 and 7 per cent depending on loan terms and type of borrowing (interest only or standard). Inflation was spurred principally by a variety of factors, including home mortgages and rents, meat and groceries, insurance increases, petrol and electricity costs, medical and health costs, and transport.

Australia was also witnessing a slowing of economic growth with GDP falling to 1.4 per cent by December, unemployment rose to 3.9 per cent and job vacancies declined, business investment was modest, while household savings were at a historically low 3.2 per cent. There was considerable media commentary prediction a looming recession, and only increased government spending prevented one from actually occurring. The PM and Treasurer attempted to put a brave face on these austere developments while pre-occupied, and some would argue distracted, by the political priority of holding a referendum on Indigenous recognition. As politics took centre-stage on the government's agenda, the government was accused of neglecting its primary responsibilities of sound economic management and protecting national security.

Anthony Albanese was increasingly accused of breaking a long list of election promises, including reversing Labor's full commitment given innumerable times to the Stage 3 tax cuts, adverse changes to superannuation “nest-egg” entitlements purely to raise taxation, the much heralded election commitment to lower electricity prices when prices were sky-rocketing, reversing many labour market reforms to reinstate union influence and the near-abolition of casual work and the gig economy, pursuing anti-productivity agendas, the absence of any coherent water management plan for the Murray-Darling Basin. Labor was also criticised for either poor policy development or mismanagement in a range of portfolios, including inertia in defence, confused energy policy, inadequate aged care management and a pharmacists revolt over scripts, a poor inquiry into the COVID responses and lockdowns, uncontrolled migration, including unauthorised entries, and the reckless proliferation in international student visas, the lack of social housing, the massive blowouts of entitlements under the National Disability Insurance Scheme including now mental health sufferers, neglecting regional development by slashing 50 projects amounting to $120 billion, and not allowing more flights from Qatar Airlines to compete with Qantas. This litany of failings slowly began to be reflected in opinion poll support for the government with slight shifts towards the Coalition opposition. Polls in February 2023 had the government on 55 per cent support in two party preferred terms to 46 per cent for the Coalition, and this was largely held until September, but then support declined to 50–50 per cent by November 2023 as the government appeared to lose direction (Newspoll 2023).

Albanese's determination to conduct a referendum to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution and provide for an advisory “Voice” (and perhaps many sub-voices) not only to parliament but to executive government and all federal public institutions, rashly proved a step too far and a setback for reconciliation. Given economic pressures, there was also ample criticism over the political attention to this issue and the costs involved in conducting the referendum. Estimates put the total cost in excess of $1 billion when both the electoral administration and advertising costs were added to the sponsorships and campaign costs of the Yes and No camps. While there was a lot of goodwill towards some form of recognition and reconciliation, there was also as the ABC argued a “hesitant electorate.”

As the polling for the Yes case declined and the No case increased, a number of Indigenous spokespeople questioned why non-Indigenous people were entitled to vote in the referendum at all — completely ignorant of the entrenched constitutional provisions of a double-majority of eligible voters and states for it to be legitimate. One pollster conducting regular polls on the referendum reported that whenever one of the main spokespersons for the Yes case, Professor Marcia Langton, spoke in the media the Yes vote went down by a few percent and the No vote rose.

As polling for the Yes case began to collapse, the Coalition stepped up its opposition to the referendum making it a partisan issue. In political terms it was not clear that many members of the Labor government were as enthusiastic as Albanese, or his Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus were. Australia slid into the referendum held on 14th October with pockets of enthusiasm among certain elites, business notables, and some Indigenous groups, but with rising opposition and a certain bewilderment among many voters across the country.

The final results of the referendum confirmed that not a single state voted in favour of the proposals, and overall 60.06 per cent electors voted No while 39.94 per cent voted Yes, although interestingly around two million electors chose not to vote despite its ostensible compulsion (15,895,231 cast a vote — with 155,545 informal — from a total enrolment of 17,671,784, a turnout of 89.95 per cent). Queensland had the highest percentage No vote with 68.21 against, followed by SA with 64.17, then WA with 63.27, NT with 60.30, NSW with 58.96, and Victoria with 54.15. Only in the ACT did a majority say Yes with 61.29 per cent approval versus 33.71 per cent against. Nationally 33 electorates voted Yes, and 118 voted No, while three-quarters of Labor's own electorates also voted No. The referendum result was immediately seen as setting back reconciliation and stalling the government's Indigenous policy agenda, while Indigenous leaders called for a “week of silence.”

Albanese also did not learn from history about the difficulties of achieving a successful referendum requiring a double majority (of popular votes and at least four states). It should also be remembered that the 2023 referendum on Indigenous recognition in the Constitution was the second such proposal similarly to fail badly, with PM John Howard's attempt to insert a preamble recognising Indigenous ancestry in the Constitution in 1999 failing to win over any state and suffering a 61.06 per cent national vote against such an inclusion, an almost identical outcome to the Albanese attempt.

The ABC's Particia Karvelas reported feedback from regional Australian forums in the lead-up to the vote suggested many in the audiences were hostile to the proposals, with many arguing that Indigenous peoples already had it so good, would want more if the vote succeeded, and “got free cars and houses” which other Australians did not. Such views were reflected in the stronger No vote in remote, regional and outer-metropolitan areas than in the “woke” inner city electorates. Some of the most working-class Labor electorates recorded the highest No vote (Hunter, Blair, Paterson, Dobell, Spence, and Blaxland).

After the referendum defeat attention gradually returned to issues of Indigenous disadvantage and sexual abuse in communities.

Due to the resignation of former Employment minister Stuart Robert, the by-election in the safe Queensland LNP seat of Fadden with a healthy margin of 10.2 per cent was held in July, with mounting concerns over another Coalition loss after the Aston by-election loss in 2023. The LNP's Cameron Caldwell managed to increase his margin to 13.35 per cent over the perennial Labor candidate Letitia Del Fabbro. Then in September, NSW Liberal Senator Marise Payne, a senior cabinet minister from 2013 to 2022, resigned from parliament. She had held portfolios of Human Services, Defence and Foreign Affairs, and then was immediately replaced by the former lower house member Dave Sharma.

Three women Labor members of parliament died while in office in only two years: Senator Kimberley Kitching (see last federal chronicle), Peta Murphy MP in December and then Senator Linda White in February 2024. Significantly, Murphy working through a parliamentary committee had almost single-handedly championed a proposal for extensive restrictions on gambling advertising covering many mediums and venues, which was then largely ignored. The resulting by-election in the seat of Dunkley was retained by Labor after considerable policy recalibration by Albanese over the summer.

In December Senator Pat Dodson announced he would also be resigning from parliament due to ill-health. Much had been expected of the Indigenous leader, hand-picked in 2016 by opposition leader Bill Shorten, but the Senator had not risen to any great office in Labor during his eight years in parliament although was nominated as a “special envoy for reconciliation” by Albanese despite earlier being promised the job of Minister for Indigenous Australians. It was announced he would be replaced by Labor barrister Varun Ghosh.

Although pledges of support were made to Ukraine in its enduring resistance to the Russian invasion, now well over a year in duration, comparatively little actual logistical support was offered. A small number of armoured Bushmaster vehicles produced in Australia had already been sent and in July a further contingent of 30 were approved for transport to Kiev, taking our total commitment to around $1 billion on the government's costings. But the government refused to send other equipment such as Hawkei helicopters or any fighter aircraft, and when the ageing Taipan helicopters were to be decommissioned it refused to agree to send 45 airframes to Ukraine, insisting they be dismantled and buried here in the ground! A confounding decision, much to the annoyance of the Ukrainians, with the pretence that the helicopters could prove unreliable and non-serviceable. The defence department was certainly not anxious to hand over any major equipment mainly because it was informed there would be no compensation given from budgetary funds for any items given, but also we had little that was often operational. Notably, in last December the government had similarly refused a US request to attacks. The government was much happier in March when it announced that 123 Boxer Heavy Weapon Carriers produced here would be sold to Germany.

In July it was confirmed that Philip Lowe would not be extended as the Governor of the RBA and instead Michele Bullock the standing deputy would replace him, the first woman to hold the post. She joined Danielle Wood head of the Productivity Commission since November as one of the senior economic advisers to government. Former Infrastructure secretary Mike Mrdak was appointed as director of NBN in October. Kathryn Campbell the former departmental head of Human Services, Social Services and then Foreign Affairs was suspended and eventually sacked by the “Secretaries Board” in July over the Robodebt scandal after the Royal Commission report found her negligent and “failed to act.” The APS Secretaries Board took the decision to sever Ms Campbell as a collective leadership decision to underscore the importance of integrity and the public service coded of conduct. The Robodebt saga raised the issue of what do senior public servants do if they believe the minister of government were acting illegally or improperly (shades of the Canadian Gomery Commission's investigations).

The High Court threw a spanner in the works when it decided in late November that “indefinite detention” of illegal migrants hoping to live in Australia and refusing to go back to their countries or other third-party countries was suddenly unconstitutional! Effectively the court said that it was illegal for the government to imprison illegal migrants and economic transients indefinitely, and that only the judiciary could issue the punitive decision not the minister or department. The decision was based on an imputed but contentions notion of a “separation of powers” between the executive and judiciary (of which there is no mention in the Constitution, unlike the USA). Many of the 140 “illegal” detainees were detained because they were dangerous criminals who had committed murder, rape, bashing and paedophilia (and one was a notorious Malaysian “hit-man”), but this did not seem to worry the High Court judges. The two principal ministers involved, Clare O'Neil (Home Affairs) and Andrew Giles (Immigration), were caught like stunned deer in the headlights, unable to explain government policy, looking inept and incapable of responding to the decision, even though they had been given some warning by members of the judiciary. Giles proved unable to provide any substantive answers to questions in parliament except to restate that the government had to accept the court's decision. Accordingly, 140 detainees were released into the community, to much community outrage and concern among the public anxious these people would reoffend in their neighbourhoods (but most likely not where the judiciary elect to reside).

While the maverick MP Bob Katter was caused to ask Albanese: “who runs this place, you or the High Court?,” the government struggled to get legislation into parliament to help clarify its powers over immigration deportation and restricting visas from countries that would not take back supposed asylum-seekers who were to be sent back (e.g. Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, Afghanistan). Unfortunately for the government the introduced bill was passed only by the lower house before the Xmas break, and was delayed in the Senate which sent the bill to a review committee. A number of Labor back-benchers soon criticised the Labor bill on the grounds it contravened the human rights of deportees!

Towards the year's end opinion polls dived for the Labor government. The referendum failure and the High Court's release of serious criminals, plus cost of living pressures, caused Labor's primary vote to drop to 31 per cent compared to the Coalition on 38 per cent. A total of 53 per cent were dissatisfied with Albanese's performance even more than Dutton's on 50 per cent disapproval. While the Murdoch press increasingly became hostile to Albanese, The Australian declared in a major review of the government's performance that the government had “fallen into a state of inertia.” Moreover, a former Labor insider claimed at the same time that the new government was in a mid-term malaise, opining: “did anyone think that the wheels could come off so fast” (The Australian 17 November 2023, and Weekend Australian 18–19 November). He firmly accused Albanese of a lack of preparation for office while in opposition and a lack of responsiveness while in government. Another Labor MP told the Australian Financial Review “the wheels are not falling off, but things are sticky” (17th November 2023). C'est la Vie!