Paula Matthewson theguardian.com, Wednesday 15 October 2014

Anthony Albanese broke ranks on Labor’s support for the Abbott government’s enhanced national security measures – but whose interests did he really serve by doing so?

Anthony Albanese: ruthless politician, or man of principle? Photograph: Lukas Kock/AAP

After having endured four years of then opposition leader Tony Abbott’s devastating negativity during the Rudd-Gillard years, Labor’s true believers have become increasingly concerned their own leader’s more nuanced approach is ineffectual.

This is particularly the case with Bill Shorten and the rest of the Labor leadership team’s determination to remain in lockstep with the government on matters of national security, despite concerns in the media and elsewhere over new curbs to press and personal freedoms.

Many Labor supporters therefore breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday when the opposition spokesman on infrastructure and transport Anthony Albanese broke ranks on the party’s support for the Abbott government’s enhanced national security measures.

Albanese became the first senior Labor MP to voice concern about the lack of parliamentary debate on the nevertheless bipartisan decision to participate in the joint military action in Iraq. More importantly, he cautioned that the new counter-terrorism laws had not received enough scrutiny by the parliament and, by implication, from the Labor party. He said:

When it comes to the so-called anti-terrorist laws I believe there has to be proper scrutiny of them. You can be fully supportive of our engagement in the Middle East and still say we don’t protect freedom by giving it up and I don’t believe there’s been enough scrutiny.

Albanese’s intervention has been welcomed, at least in some parts of the Labor camp, and certainly by supporters on social media. This small act of rebellion no doubt reinforced Albo’s standing as the darling of Labor’s left (who incidentally still feel they were robbed when their man won the popular vote for the Labor leadership but ultimately lost out to the powerbrokers of the right who used their numbers in the ALP caucus to install their man Shorten instead).

But whose interests did Albanese really serve when he chose to speak publicly against his party’s agreed position? Was this the act of a principled politician trying to demonstrate the ALP can still be relevant to its disenchanted left? Or was it the first public move of a ruthless politician audaciously undermining his party’s leadership and positioning himself as the alternative?

Granted, this doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition: Albanese may well have been seeking to do both. It can also be argued that it’s not only healthy but necessary for political parties to have both the scope and flexibility to permit internal dissent and accommodate the opinions of rebels and outriders.

As Guardian Australia’s Katharine Murphy wrote earlier this year, the alienation and disaffection that characterises our current political environment have produced a climate that actually suits boundary riders:

The conditions suit protagonists who want to protect their personal political brands, and if that involves contrasting their gestures of independence with the mute soldiering of their colleagues then so be it.

Major party politicians face a choice: stay within the disciplined party structure and risk being tarred with the pervasive and corrosive “out of touch, out of ideas” brush, or break with that framework in order to make direct appeals to the voters. Speaking your mind in the current environment is less a gesture of theatrical ill discipline, and more a down-payment on longevity.

There’s no doubt Albanese is doing his best to tap into this zeitgeist.

But Albanese also knows that if he wants a genuine discussion within the ALP over what should be the acceptable limits for Labor’s bipartisanship on national security, he should have done his colleagues the courtesy of raising it in the caucus first. This would have given all Labor MPs the opportunity to vent any concerns and Shorten the chance to resolve the matter before it could publicly be depicted as one that is creating internal dissent.

Instead, Albanese chose to participate in a television interview in which he traipsed far and wide from his ostensible responsibilities as the opposition spokesperson for infrastructure and transport.

On this basis, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Albanese was once Rudd’s loyal lieutenant not only when Rudd was prime minister, but also when serving as a senior cabinet member in Julia Gillard’s ministry. Albo was Rudd’s tactician right through that time, and would have been at the very least privy to the ongoing campaign of destabilisation that Rudd waged against his successor.

It doesn’t take much of a logical leap to therefore conclude that Albanese could now be trying out a few of those tactics on Shorten.

Why now? Well, as Shorten’s star is waning, another is rising in the form of deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek. Another member of Albanese’s NSW left faction, Plibersek has acquitted herself well since taking on the role as opposition spokesperson for foreign affairs. Back in June this year, Plibersek overtook Albanese as the second most preferred Labor leader and is now being touted (by the media at least) as a future PM.

It’s no coincidence then that Albanese’s shot across Shorten’s bows also implicated Plibersek as being willingly complicit in the curtailment of press and personal freedoms. (For her part, Plibersek “insists they are justified, will only be used rarely and include adequate protections for public-interest reporting.”)

Whatever strategy Albanese has in play, either in trying to keep the disenchanted left in the Labor tent, or making Labor more competitive by wresting the leadership from Shorten, it’s hard to fault his overall motivation. Whatever his personal ambition, Labor’s fiercely tribal warrior exists mainly to “fight Tories” and see his beloved party returned to government.

But if Albo does hold greater ambitions for his party than he does for himself, he’d do well to remember one thing: there’s only one thing voters will reject quicker than an uncompetitive Labor party, and that’s one riddled with the internecine wars that brought down the Rudd and Gillard governments.

The questionable loyalty of Anthony Albanese | Paula Matthewson | Comment is free | theguardian.com