Albanese ready for takeoff
ANTHONY Albanese will board a plane to Tokyo for a meeting with key global allies within hours of becoming Australia’s new prime minister, while his Labor team grapples with a brewing economic storm.
As vote counting resumes Labor is on track to form a majority government, but Mr Albanese will be forced to forgo any honeymoon period amid pressing international and cost-of-living demands.
Mr Albanese and his soonto-be foreign affairs minister Penny Wong will be sworn in by Governor-General David Hurley in Canberra on Monday morning so they can fly to Japan for a critical Quad leaders meeting.
The truncated swearing in ceremony will also include Labor’s deputy leader Richard Marles, who will be acting prime minister while Mr Albanese is away, as well as economic portfolio holders Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher.
As Australia’s next treasurer and finance minister respectively, Mr Chalmers and Ms Gallagher will then be able to “start work on Monday morning” in line with Mr Albanese’s wishes. The new PM is expected to secure 76 seats – enough to govern in his own right – but has been swept into power with lowest primary vote of a winning major party in history. As of the latest count on Sunday, Labor had secured just 32.82 per cent of the primary vote, a drop of 0.5 per cent on 2019, as Australians registered “protest votes” against the two major parties in record numbers.
Mr Albanese was in his own electorate of Grayndler on Sunday visiting the Marrickville Library and cafe with new Reid MP Sally Sitou and NSW Transport Minister Jo Haylen.
“Jimmy Barnes did ring at 3.29am which was very nice of him,” Mr Albanese told the packed crowd as he sat for a coffee. “I didn’t take it (the call). Never take a phone call at 3.29am.”
He posed for selfies with excited locals ahead of being whisked away into briefings in preparation for the Quad meeting.
Economists are warning the incoming Albanese government will next month be handed the biggest interest rate rise in Australia in more than two decades, with the Reserve Bank of Australia tipped to increase the cash rate by 40 basis points.
Seeking to tame raging inflation, the RBA is expected to follow this with another rate hike in July. Mortgage stress will be a major problem for the incoming Albanese government, with economists expecting the cash rate to rise from 0.35 per cent currently to as much as 2 per cent by the end of this year.
Mr Chalmers and Ms Gallagher will also have to navigate Australia’s ballooning gross debt, which is expected to peak at more than $1 trillion in the next three years.
Mr Chalmers will deliver an economic statement to parliament when it next sits, in late June or July, before handing down a new budget in October. Mr Albanese and Ms Wong will attend the “Quad” meeting with US President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo on Tuesday, and are also expected to hold separate bilateral talks with the leaders.