I have so often criticised the Albanese government for timidity and gutlessness that I feel honour-bound to admit that neither of these words are at the top of my list in describing the budget handed down by Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Tuesday. But they are not the last words I would use.

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Having gathered some courage, some circumstance and some sense of direction, the government took a few tentative steps forward in reforming the income tax system, and, it claimed, in turning back some of the intergenerational inequity built into the existing system.

It could have done so boldly, given the hopeless disorganisation of the opposition, and the incoherence of its leader, Angus Taylor, and the fact that Senate support was forthcoming from the Greens if only the budget was pointed in the right general direction, particularly on housing.

Additionally, the petrol crisis, rising inflation, and, consequently, rising interest rates created a sense of urgency and demand for change, rather than for more of the same. It suggested not so much a need for caution or tentative steps but firm and determined action, and a campaign that confided in and engaged the public and its major policy problems.

It was an opportunity for the government to show its fundamental character as a Labor government, to take charge and to make it clear that its leaders knew what they were doing. They should have taxed gas and moved on subsidies for the coal industry. They could have been less generous in grandfathering provisions. The value of any generational shift towards younger generations is minor because they don't want to hurt the feelings of wealthy older Australians, people who wouldn't vote Labor in a fit.

It was a political moment ripe with opportunity, the more so with the confusion caused by Pauline Hanson's One Nation movement. One Nation may ultimately cause as much damage to Labor as it has to the opposition. Its destructive energy is focused on parties its leaders think have most let it, and the nation, down.

Labor has no votes to mine, or to neutralise by pandering to anti-immigration sentiment. Indeed, the Liberal Party, already seemingly in its death throes, is being the more contemptible by coded calls against multiculturalism, Islam, and Chinese, Indian and African Australians.

In the long run, some Labor grit and "bottom" on what once were bipartisan policies will serve Labor and Australia well. Even more so when many traditional supporters of the conservative parties, who appreciate the need for, and the role of immigration in the nation's economy, culture and community will prop before adopting the crude racism of One Nation. That is, of course, if Labor has the guts and principle, and the opportunism to campaign on traditional egalitarian and "fair go" values and on tolerance, rather than running a million miles from the subject as though the Australian people have become stained by the ranting of Hanson.

Hanson is completely right in insisting that she has been consistent for more than 30 years on being hostile to Aborigines, Indo-Chinese and non-white migrants. But even most voters who support her do not agree with her on the subject, or on many of her other protest points. They simply agree, reasonably enough, on the hopelessness of the mainstream political parties, their inconsistencies and self-interest, and voter sense of powerlessness and despair.

Principle, not pandering

Labor will do better by standing on principle than pandering, as the coalition is, to Pauline Hanson. She doesn't represent a new racist consensus.

The mainstream political system is being tested as never before, and not only in Australia. We may be already witnessing the demise of the two........

© Canberra Times