A triumphant Anthony Albanese started his victory speech on election night addressing “My fellow Australians”—and went on to invoke Australia no fewer than 43 more times over the next 22 minutes. Values also scored six mentions.
In a typical passage he declared, “For Australia to realise our full potential, for our nation to be its very best, every Australian must have the opportunity to be their best. To serve our Australian values. We must value every Australian. And Labor will govern for every Australian.”
It was a festival of Australian nationalism, ending in a sly dig at Trump (and therefore at Dutton). “Our government will choose the Australian way … We do not need to beg or borrow or copy from anywhere else. We do not seek our inspiration overseas. We find it right here in our values and in our people.”
Albanese was not the only one to talk of Australian values. Earlier, in outlining the Liberals’ priorities, Peter Dutton wrote, “It is our compact with Australians to govern with respect for the views, values and vision of everyday Australians.” His soon-forgotten Get Australia Back on Track document mentioned values eight more times.
“Values” is a weasel word. It’s used by politicians as a short-cut that avoids spelling out concrete policies and disguises their real agenda. When former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard talked of values, he was promoting, in the words of academic Carol Johnson, “Anglo-Celtic identity, social conservatism, the Christian Right and a neo-liberal ‘entrepreneurial culture’.”
Class hatred
Dutton’s version of values was resoundingly rejected on 3 May. Many voters looked at Dutton and saw greed, racism, class hatred and inhumanity—and they said, No thanks. It was a progressive reflex that showed that most workers weren’t fooled by the Coalition and its Murdoch echo chamber.
But Albanese’s “Australian values” are shot through with contradictions.
He hopes that people understand him to be talking of fairness and kindness. Indeed, he gave his slogan from 2022 another outing—“no one held back and no one left behind”.
Yet Labor in practice has embraced the racist argument that migrants and international students are to blame for the housing crisis, smeared supporters of Palestine as antisemitic and supported the gas company Santos over the rights of the Gomeroi people in the Pilliga in NSW.
Where is the fairness in putting the construction division of the CFMEU into Administration and stripping rank-and-file workers of their rights?
Where is the kindness to asylum-seekers trapped in the wreckage of the fast track system or the 80,000 people potentially facing deportation under Labor’s Trump-like new laws?
The heavily nationalist flavour of Albanese’s speech was not an accident. Labor has a pro-business agenda that runs counter to the interests of workers—so Albanese wraps himself in the green and gold and waves his Medicare card to try to convince us that he stands for us all.
As he said in his speech, “Australians have chosen to face global challenges the Australian way.”
National interest
But Australia is a country bitterly divided by class. Since December 2019, consumer prices have risen 18.1 per cent while wages have grown by only 14.5 per cent. Workers have suffered with Australia being the only advanced country to suffer a real fall in disposable income over the past two years.
Meanwhile in the last quarter, business profits roared ahead by 5.9 per cent.
While workers struggle to pay household bills, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has declared Australian supermarkets to be among the most profitable in the world.
Households are struggling to make mortgage payments while in 2024 the major banks made a combined profit after tax of $29.9 billion.
There is no “national interest”, however much Albanese declares, “Together we are turning the corner and together we will make our way forward.”
There can be no unity between overpaid vice-chancellors and the hundreds of university workers they are aiming to sack.
No unity between supporters of Palestine and those who applaud genocide in Gaza and turn a blind eye to military exports to Israel.
And no unity between those who want to demonise trans people and ban puberty blockers and those who stand for trans liberation.
If Donald Trump’s tariff wars lead to global recession, Albanese will take the side of Australian capitalism. We can expect him to preside over job losses and cuts to services in the name of restoring profitability.
Workers and the oppressed will need to reject the “we’re all in it together” spin and fight.
By David Glanz
