Anthony Albanese is a man who likes props. In the 2022 election campaign, he regularly brandished a one-dollar coin to emphasise his support for a pay rise for workers on the minimum wage. And in the lead-up to this year’s election, he employed his Medicare card as a talisman to ward off Peter Dutton’s supposedly evil plans for the nation’s healthcare system. Clearly, his approach has worked.

Everyone has a Medicare card and Albanese was wise to embed in the public consciousness that Medicare is a Labor Party creation, implemented by Bob Hawke’s government in 1984 against the fierce opposition of the Coalition. Because Medicare, for all its shortcomings, is an entrenched and popular feature of everyday Australian life, the Labor Party of today has been able to leverage Hawke’s long-ago policy success to its great advantage.

Illustration by Dionne Gain

There’s upside for the ALP in portraying itself as a defender of institutions, as it can make the party look less risky, and Albanese leant into this heavily during the election campaign. At his recent post-election address at the National Press Club, he outlined the reasons Labor had won a second term. Electors, he said, had voted for Australian values and for doing things “our way” – that is, not like Donald Trump and Trump-wannabe Peter Dutton. He also cited Labor’s “commitment to fair wages and conditions, universal Medicare and universal superannuation” that “set us apart from the world”.

In some respects, it’s a conservative formulation for a centre-left party: preserving what’s already in place. And that signals some potential downside for the government. Universal super was the joint brainchild of Paul........

© The Sydney Morning Herald