Is Labor taking the country in the wrong direction? This former Albanese adviser thinks so

August 9, 2026 — 5:00am

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It’s vanishingly rare to see a party loyalist publicly mourning his own party while it’s in power. Former Albanese economics adviser Alex Sanchez exudes a deep melancholy in delivering his message that the party he loves is headed in the wrong direction. The economist has been a Labor Party member for over 40 years – almost as long as Anthony Albanese himself.

He has written a paper published by the classical liberal Centre for Independent Studies (at which I’m a senior fellow) warning that both Labor and Liberal governments have drifted away from the growth and prosperity that followed the Hawke-Keating reforms. The paper argues that while Keating recognised how important it is to live within our means as a country, lest we become a “banana republic”, the savings and reforms introduced by that government have given way to waste over the last decade. Spending has increased by as much as Keating was able to rein it in.

It’s a timely warning that we’ve squandered the national inheritance. But I’m most struck by Sanchez’s explanation for why he and the prime minister see the Labor project so differently. It goes right back to childhood. And it also reaches to the heart of the schism in social democratic movements around the world.

In Sanchez’s telling, his parents fled General Franco’s Spain and were faced with the decision of whether to go to Argentina, where they would’ve had the advantage of already speaking the language, or to Australia. They chose Australia, despite the additional challenge it posed.

Their first home was in the Green Valley........

© The Age