From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Christinamiot. It's Wednesday, December fourth. Billionaire Richard White has told investors his decision to step down from the company he founded was a circuit breaker and necessary to protect Wise Tech's future. It comes after details of the former chief executive's personal life were made public in court proceedings brought by a former lover. A man allegedly connected to the murders of
two women in Collingwood almost fifty years ago. Touchdown in Melbourne on Tuesday night, Perry Karimblus was extradited from Rome, where he's been held in custody since September. He's expected to be formally charged in the coming days, but maintains he's innocent of the nineteen seventy seven crime. Those stories alive right now at The Australian dot com dot a
U Who is Anthony Albanesi really? In today's episode, The Australian's Editor at Large unpacks the PM's brilliant strategic mind and asks if he's the right person for the nation's top job. There were seventy six bills on the table last week, the final sitting week of the parliamentary year. It was a hell of a mountain for the government to climb, but incredibly, thirty two of them passed in
a single day. It was during this torrent of legislation that Prime Minister Anthony Albanesi got a big win.
In a world first. Australian children under sixteen will be banned from social media as Parliament passes strict new laws. The move has attracted global attention. With the Albanesi government rushing.
The bills, Labour had every right to celebrate the social media band's passage. After making major concessions on key pieces of legia at the eleventh hour.
A bill aimed at cracking down on misinformation and disinformation on the Internet has been pulled by the federal government.
The government's proposal to ban or restrict gambling advertising has also been delayed. Still riding the high of that bipartisan victory, the PM shrewdly intervened in a dispute between Environment Minister Tanya Plibasek and Tasmanian salmon farmers, who say her attempts to protect an endangered fish are threatening their livelihoods. The Australian's Editor at Large, Paul Kelly says, these past few weeks are telling. This is who Anthony Albanesi is.
When parliament broke last week, Anthony Alberanesi was in a mood of a brilliance, who'd passed a lot of legislation through the Senate. Albanesi is essentially a tactical prime minister. He's not a prime Minister of transformation. He's not a golf Whitlam, Bob Hawk or a Keating. He's very much the transactional leader. It's all about political tactics. It's all about maintaining his position at the election. Now, all this is well and good, but the point I'd make is
we live in an age of transformation. Whether we're talking now about the strategic outlook in the world from Shi Jinping to Donald Trump, whether we're talking about the economy, the challenge of inflation, this is an age of disruption. It's an age of profound change. It's an age of transformation. Just being a tactical leader is not going to be enough.
Labour's historic twenty twenty two federal election win was followed by as good a run as any new government can hope to have. Australia's frosty relationship with China started to thaw. An ambitious twenty thirty emissions reductions target was legislated, a long promised National Anti Corruption Commission became a reality. But by the middle of this term the vibe had shifted.
Australia was plunged into a national housing crisis as inflation soared, an immigration to tension debarcle saw labor scrambling to maintain voter confidence, and the Indigenous Voice to Parliament was resoundingly defeated in a referendum following a confusing and ineffective Yes campaign captained by the Prime Minister.
My fellow Australians at the outset, I want to say that while tonight's result is not one that I had hoped for, I absolutely respect the decision of the Australian people and the democratic process that has delivered it.
We need a bolder leader. This is a time when we need bold policies. We need policies of transformation. Now. I know that's not easy, and I know that Anthony Old and Easy in particular has limits on what he can do. But he ran in twenty twenty two on a policy of reassurance. That is, he didn't run on a radical agenda. He ran on a policy designed to deny Scott Morrison the capacity to run a negative campaign against him. So he remains committed to that policy of reassurance.
It's a policy that he calls safe change. I understand this, and essentially what we've got here is the conflict between the politics and the times. The times demand bold policies from a prime minister, but the politics are based on caution. If you're a Bowld prime minister, that's high risk. The
Australian public are very hypocritical. They say they want strong leadership, but they're divided about how you define strength, and if a prime minister starts delivering strong leadership, he's likely to run into trouble.
Anthony Albanesi is widely expected to call an election for early twenty twenty five, though a promise made this week to bring parliament back in February suggests it might not be in March as first thought. So that means you are confirming that they will be sitting of parliament in February.
We fully expect to be sitting in February.
So does that give Anthony Albanesi enough time to become the leader Australia needs right now.
He's not going to change. He's defined. He's defined as a transactional and tactical prime minister and he will use these skills in this approach when it comes to the election next year in twenty twenty five. So it's going to be a tight contest between Albanesi and Dutton. But the challenge Peter Dutton faces as Liberal leader, it's essentially the same. Dutton has got to devise what's going to be an effective policy framework for himself. He hasn't that.
Peter Dutton has told us virtually nothing about the agenda that he's going to take to the election campaign. And all these people confidently telling us that Peter Dutton's got a very high chance of winning the election. I don't see how they can possibly make this claim, seeing we don't even know yet the fundamental policies that he's going to take to the election, and we know from what's happened in the past that there are great dangers here.
Once an opposition leader has got to be defined by his policies, then it's a great opportunity for his opponents. This is what alban is He is waiting for he's going to wage a savage negative campaign against Peter Dutton. He's going to wage it on his character. He's going to wage it on his negativity, but he's going to wage it above all on his policies. When Dutton's policy has eventually come out, I think this is going to
be very important. What will be the nature of Dutton's policies and to what extent will they give Albanizi the chance to really campaign against them?
Coming up? Does the PM keep his friends close or his enemies closer? Anthony Albanesi won the twenty twenty two election by the slimmest of margins, and Labor has governed with just a one seat majority in the House of
Representatives ever since. They're staring down the barrel of a federal election at a time when incumbent governments around the world are being toppled by frustrated voters, it's rare for second term governments to increase their majority, and that means if Labour gets up at the next election, it might need to form a coalition with the Greens if it
wants to move forward with its legislative agenda. So how does the PM deal with the perception or the reality that he's in bed with an old foe this close to an election.
The interesting thing about last week was most of the legislation which was passed in the Senate was passed on Labor Green votes, and this was a win for Albanesi. There's no question about that. He didn't offer many concessions to the Greens and they came on board. But it's quite interesting, isn't it, Because if in fact, in the next parliament there's going to be a minority Labor government, a minority Albanesi government, then that will be a government
that functions with a large degree of Green support. So in a sense, Albanesi's success in the parliament last week is a forerunner of what might be the future a Labor Green minority government as far as the Labor Party is concerned. Dutton will campaign on this, There's no question about that at all. He's basically going to say the future is between a coalition government that you know and
an experimental Labor Green toel government. What Alberanizi will argue, in turn, is what happened last week proves that he can dictate terms to the Greens that he won't be beholden to the Greens when he's dealing with them, he'll be a strong leader, and the fact that he was able to successfully dictate terms to the Greens on that legislation last week will be put forward by Alberanzi as an example of what he can do. If Albanesi is
forced into minority government. He won't do what Julia Gillard did. If he's to get a commission from the Governor General. Only one thing counts. That is, he doesn't have to do a deal with the Greens. All he's got to do to get a commission from the Governor General is
to have the confidence of the Parliament. So I think in that sense Alberanzi, who lived through the Gillard experience, will know that he's in a strong position when it comes to that question of confidence, provided he's got more seats in the Parliament than Dutton.
Just lastly, Paul, the Greens did unexpectedly well at their twenty twenty two election thanks to some savvy maneuvers on the campaign trail. What are their prospects coming into twenty twenty five do you think and what does that mean for Anthony Aubeneasy.
This I think is a difficult question because the Greens have made a number of mistakes, but they've also exploited a number of opportunities. If we look at housing for example, certainly the Greens have been running on housing for the last few years in order to build up their support among renters, among young people, and so if one just looks at that, you might suspect that the Greens are
in a good position to increase their vote. But if you look in a broader sense, the Greens have become a far more radical party, and particularly when it comes to the conflict in the Middle East, so that may well be undermining them in the electorate. And the fact that last week they came on board to support a lot of the legislation they'd previously been opposing suggests that the Greens themselves are concerned about their standing in the electorate.
So it's hard to tell at this stage how they'll perform. There are opportunities and negatives for them in terms of their performance in recent times.
Paul Kelly is The Australian's editor at large. You can read his column right now at the Australian dot com dot au