Brick by brick, Albanese is finding faith … that voters will see reason

June 29, 2026 — 5:00am

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At this particular moment in history, how much faith do you, personally, retain in people’s rationality? Overseas, we have seen wild myths take hold – the birther conspiracy around Barack Obama, the insanity of QAnon, the anti-vaccine movement. In Australia, you could add the increasingly popular Hansonian delusions: that by cutting migration and renewables you can magically fix the economic plight of Australians. How big a bet would you be willing to place on facts being an effective challenge to these ideas?

If you are Anthony Albanese, it seems, the answer is: a lot. On Friday, in the aftermath of Labor’s tax changes passing parliament, he predicted scare campaigns would fade in the face of voters’ experience. Grandfathering meant that “anyone who has a negatively geared property will not have that negative gearing change, for example. And so, they’ll actually see that a whole lot of people think at the moment that they are impacted. They’re not.”

His faith in voters’ reason applied to other topics, too. On renewable energy, the prime minister said on Thursday: “I could recall when the mandatory renewable energy target was 2 per cent ... It’s now providing more than half of Australia’s energy needs. And I think that what … I really hope happens in a couple of years’ time is that we end the ridiculous debate and nature of some of it.”

Albanese’s optimistic mood was understandable. Just occasionally, in politics, it is worth pausing to note the significance of what has just........

© The Sydney Morning Herald