Rates Climb, Promises Die, Voters Check Out

Five Reserve Bank interest rate hikes since February. A broken budget promise. A $6 million federal grant to the Marrickville Golf Club. That's the ledger ABC political editor Jacob Greber laid out for a government that, by his account, is now "floundering" — and the people paying for it aren't the ones drawing up the budgets.

Who Has the Power

Greber recalled that 12 months ago he wrote that "these are Anthony Albanese's salad days." The prime minister had defenestrated Peter Dutton in the May 2025 landslide, was about to marry partner Jodie Haydon at the Lodge, and was weeks from passing environmental approvals laws. Then came outrage over Communications Minister Anika Wells's expensive trip to New York and a row over MPs' travel entitlements at the end of last year. A Sydney Morning Herald editorial in early December said something in the government was "beginning to rot at the core."

The May budget broke election promises on changes to negative gearing and capital gains taxation. Legislation on trusts is due before the Senate next week. The government has also backed down on the sale of some Defence properties and a plan to crack down on backpacker visas. The treasurer faces criticism over fiscal settings, which the opposition has linked to high inflation and rising interest rates.

One prominent pollster told Greber to brace for gloomier figures early next week: "It's the worst set of numbers. Everything is bad."

The Palace Intrigue

While households absorb five rate hikes, the machinery of the party has turned inward. Talk of a Cabinet reshuffle has shifted from the second half of next year to the first half, perhaps early 2027. Labor backbencher Ed Husic told Nine newspapers last month that the prime minister should ensure rank-and-file members get to vote on the party's next leader if he resigned next year or after the election. "If you do it more than 12 months from the next election, you've got that opportunity," he said.

Greber wrote that a leadership upheaval seems unlikely soon, but the chances are no longer zero. Albanese insists to his caucus he can turn things around before the next election, due in 2028, two years away. He could become the second-longest serving Labor prime minister, behind Bob Hawke and Andrew Fisher, in mid-March. The fight, in other words, is over who gets to hold the job. Nobody in that conversation is asking those on the receiving end of the rate hikes.

Who Gets Crushed — and Who Walks Away

Sussan Ley, a former leader of the Liberal Party, a writer, and a non-executive director of Snowy Hydro, wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald about a road trip through the Midwest of the United States six months ago. In Omaha, Nebraska, a woman told her the American flag meant "A memory." Ley wrote that she noticed a similar resignation at home: "The prevailing emotion was apathy."

In far western NSW pubs, when someone reminded patrons she used to be in parliament, nobody asked a question or offered an opinion. "They weren't angry. Just indifferent," she wrote. She cited the latest McKinnon Index, which shows voters aged 18 to 24 are the most disillusioned.

A trades apprentice in his early 20s put it plainly to her: "Politicians don't listen to us and they're not helping. The only promise we hear is that you'll get less than your parents. If you're lucky."

Ley recalled the energy before the 2004 election, 22 years ago, when the Iraq War, Medicare Gold and Tasmanian forestry were debated in workplaces, pubs and kitchens. Now people respond with: "Oh, I don't know. I'm not really following it." Then, with a warning glance, they change the subject.

What They're Calling "Democracy"

Ley's prescription: "Democracy depends on people believing their participation matters." She pointed to record turnout in the US midterms and a "youthquake" of record numbers of 18- to 29-year-olds voting, and concluded that democracy "must give them the confidence to believe they can own it."

The apprentice's complaint isn't about turnout. It's about a system where the promise is less, where a broken budget pledge costs the people who made it nothing, and where a $6 million golf club grant gets coverage only after ABC News digs it up. The politicians fighting over the leadership are asking for the same thing from voters they've asked for all along: show up, tick the box, wait. People in the pubs of far western NSW have heard the pitch before, and they've stopped listening.