Around the cabinet table, 2025 was viewed as a year that should be preoccupied with a focus on delivering election promises. Next year, senior ministers say privately, the government will shift focus to a new agenda that might include controversial tax changes.
Many centre-left and centre-right parties which have governed in Western democracies in recent decades have either been cannibalised or face challenges from populist parties.
The Liberal Party’s membership base is dwindling and right-wing politics in Australia is threatening to fracture. This masthead reported on July 28 that during the brief Coalition split, Liberal MPs were privately discussing the prospect of creating a new city-based party to avoid compromises with the Nationals. Former prime minister Scott Morrison canvassed the idea among his close colleagues after the 2022 election.
Swan said it was a sad fact that the biggest bloc of Labor members were those who, like him, became activists during the Whitlam era in the 1970s.
While Albanese’s Labor was ascendant, Swan said, he noted: “We have seen time and time again that complacency is the handmaiden of decline.
“History has sobering reminders. In March 1993, every commentator declared Paul Keating finished, but he stunned the nation with an increased majority. Three years later complete devastation. Hero to zero in three years in a single electoral cycle. This pattern repeats across democracies and decades.
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“To continue to be successful, we must build our movement and make our party much more vibrant, larger and imaginative. Contemporary democracy requires more boots on the ground. Activists, organisers and agitators who are active and more engaged with their local communities.”
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