It seems impossible that the Coalition could hope to win government with policies more popular than Labor’s over the next two terms of parliament.

If, indeed, Sussan Ley is in charge, it is almost impossible to imagine her ever taking a Coalition Government into power. The chances of a conservative Liberal leader, such as Angus Taylor, or Andrew Hastie, taking the Liberals, or a Coalition over the line seem even more remote.

Labor is exploiting the many fissures within the Coalition and within the Liberal Party. So far, it’s for the short-term, without any regard for hopes that the public interest can be served by a relatively bipartisan policy on, say, climate change, or defence spending, or the flirtation with fairly frank racism being injected into immigration debates. Labor, after all, believes that it has already settled the middle ground on such matters to the electorate’s satisfaction.

If Ley cannot draw her party and the National Party to a similar place, it can only hurt their standing, and public perceptions of unity, and guarantee longer periods of exile to the opposition benches. Moreover, public perceptions of extremism, particularly on net zero, will prevent any chance of a long-term rapprochement with the community-based independents and Teals. The strategists and tacticians around Albanese, in short, think that Ley, or Liberal moderates, can stew in their own juices and that the opposition must face its own contradictions.

But if Labor thinks it is comfortably insulated against losing any argument about ideas and philosophies to a united opposition, it must surely be aware that it can still lose elections because of its own deficiencies, or by a loss of public confidence in its leadership or direction.

Perhaps because of obvious incompetence, mismanagement or corruption – signature Labor problems in public perceptions. It could be because the public perceives that Labor has abandoned public virtue in a shift towards divvying up the spoils of office.

Labor could lose office because it was seen to lose charge of the economy, not necessarily because of bad stewardship. Further downturns in world trade, including ones caused by war and conflict in Palestine, the Middle East, and old Soviet Union states, cannot necessarily be avoided by deft steering of the Australian ship alone. Nor can the uncertainties caused by the erratic policies of Donald Trump, whether on tariffs, America First policies, and constitutional lawlessness. The US is not the only nation which can attempt economic coercion.

Labor has done well in advancing its social policy agenda, including in public health, childcare, aged care and disability care. But it has not yet mobilised the public and private resources to achieve its ambitions in public housing, and it is far from clear that it has a plan which will work. It has shown no real willingness to be bold about policies which keep the prices of houses high, and which sustain the wealth of older Australians who already own their own homes and would be irate if house prices — their financial security in their old age — fell. The government is still well behind in developing plans to provide present and future workforces with the skills, the education and the flexibilities for 21st century economies. There is yet no revolution in university research, in Australian minds and aptitudes, or in vocational training, because too much public money has been withdrawn from such sectors. That’s one big horn of supposedly flat productivity growth.

Beyond health and childcare promises was a vow of a higher standard, better and more honest government

But there is another Labor vulnerability which some in Labor’s leadership seem to be ignoring. It involves the suggestion that Albanese has been walking away from the moral mandate he gained when he won the 2022 election. That was an election in which Labor had a limited policy platform agenda, if one to which Labor, once elected, attached high significance, often refusing to go beyond promises it had made.

There were........

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