Albanese is a politician who has relied on luck. Finally he seems to be making his own

As Anthony Albanese headed home from Washington, DC, at the most triumphant point of his long political career, did he reflect on how much he owes Donald Trump?

A large proportion of Australians cannot abide Trump and are alarmed by his disruptive ways. The Labor Party won a massive parliamentary majority at the May 3 election in part because Albanese was the safe, known option running against Peter Dutton, who stood by while one of his frontbench favourites, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, championed Trump and promised to Make Australia Great Again during the campaign.

Tuesday’s meeting showed that Trump likes Albanese. What’s the one thing guaranteed to make Trump look favourably on a foreign leader? That they’re a winner, and Albanese is a winner. Thank you, Mr President.

Getting the breaks going your way is an often-underappreciated factor in a politician’s success or failure. No matter how you view it, Albanese’s meeting with Trump was a triumph not just for him but for his senior ministers and for his ambassador and old political mate Kevin Rudd.

A combination of good fortune, hard work and astute judgment brought about the result. Most successful prime ministers have had a whopping helping of good luck at some point. The Joh-for-Canberra push helped Bob Hawke win a third term. Mark Latham as Labor leader gave John Howard a fourth term and a Senate majority.

Some unlikely fairy godmothers besides Trump feature in Albanese’s story. A basic expectation of any modern government is to secure its borders. Witness the rapid fall in support for the Labour government of Keir Starmer in the UK as it has failed over the past year to stop the boats coming across the English Channel.

Trump told Starmer last month that he should use whatever means necessary to stop the boats; after all, Trump retook office in 2024 by promising to secure America’s southern border, which Joe Biden had ignored as an issue.

Like it or not, that is how it must be. In Australia, this is hardly a revelation. John Howard as prime minister in 2001 understood it and secured an unlikely election victory. The Rudd and Gillard Labor governments in which Albanese served failed to learn the lesson and paid the price. Scott Morrison, as a minister in Tony Abbott’s government, implemented boat turnbacks in 2013, which instantly secured Australia’s borders against unauthorised arrivals.

Bill Shorten, who defeated Albanese in a contest for the leadership in 2013, took the risk of arguing for the Labor Party at its 2015 national conference to accept boat turnbacks. Among those who opposed the proposal was Albanese, along with Penny Wong and Tanya Plibersek. Shorten prevailed.

Imagine for a moment how much more difficult it would have been for Albanese to be elected prime minister if Labor hadn’t dropped its opposition to boat turnbacks. Thank you, Tony. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Bill. But also consider this: Albanese and his fellow opponents of boat turnbacks copped the defeat. The policy had been implemented by Labor’s opponents. It worked. The public was happy with it. So Labor moved on. It acknowledged reality.

Contrast that with the Coalition, which is yet again revisiting net zero, which for many of its MPs is code for action on climate change, almost 20 years after Howard sought to establish a carbon emissions trading scheme. And that’s just one issue they’re squabbling about. This really is about luck for Albanese: how lucky he is to be leading the ALP just as the Coalition parties seem determined to head over a cliff.

Sussan Ley has been dogged by bad luck in her five months as opposition leader. Her run began early with the Nationals briefly walking out of the Coalition. There was Price joining the Liberal Party in a bid to walk straight into the leadership group and then freelancing on policy so egregiously that she ultimately had to be sacked.

Add to that the odd frontbench exit of Andrew Hastie. Hastie does not try to disguise his leadership ambitions, which makes his highly individualistic approach to being on a political team all the more intriguing. Based on what he’s said, he believes that if a frontbencher loses an argument over policy, it’s perfectly reasonable to resign. How he would run a cabinet, where the convention is that every member is obliged to advocate for a policy once it’s approved even if they don’t like it, is far from clear.

But external misfortunes aside, Ley does very little to help herself. Having done a good job of selling her varied background as a punk, commercial pilot and shearers’ cook, among other things, as her introduction to the wider public, she has been unable to break out of the habit of griping when it would be better to say much less or nothing at all.

Her demand, immediately after Albanese’s audience with Trump, that Rudd be removed as ambassador was bewildering. She is a parliamentary veteran, a former minister, who knows there is no way that Albanese would sack Rudd. She also could see, as could the entire nation, that the meeting had gone well and that Rudd would have been deeply involved in making it happen.

So why did she say it? Because this story precedes Ley’s ill-fated stint as leader. Over a long period, the Coalition has allowed its base of political skills to decline. Essentially, the Labor governments headed by Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard destroyed themselves, allowing the Coalition parties to walk into office without being match fit. The main achievement of the Coalition governments that held power for three terms under three prime ministers between 2013 and 2022 was that they kept the ALP out of office.

And, as indicated by its current dire state, the Coalition continued to do little to re-equip itself with ideas and political acumen during its first term of opposition under Dutton. Just about every MP locked in behind Dutton and declined to challenge the direction of his rhetoric and his policies.

How do such things come about? Obviously, assuming past success is an indicator of future successes is part of the problem. But the more significant element is a refusal to see the world as it is. You don’t have much hope of making your own luck out of whatever might turn up if you’re inhabiting a fantasy.

Shaun Carney is a regular columnist, an author and former associate editor of The Age.

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