Photo by Marcel Eberle on Unsplash
By Mark Kenny
A version of this article was originally published by The Canberra Times.
It was just half an hour yet somehow it captured the political year like a photograph.
It came on the final scheduled sitting day for 2025 and its message was as strident as it was simple: Labor united, ascendant. Coalition divided, in disarray.
Of course, images can be deceptive and in politics, fortunes do change, so if you looked closer, it was also a kind of warning.
Let me set the scene.
The clock had ticked over to 2:00pm and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was on his feet at the despatch box, his mood buoyant. It had been a year in which he had helmed Labor's emphatic re-election in proportions rarely seen in Australian politics.
His stock soaring, Albanese held the attention of a full House of Representatives and all three of the public galleries. Only the pews set aside for journalists up behind Speaker, Milton Dick, were partially empty.
The atmosphere made for a startling contrast with the subdued air not 30 minutes before, where the biggest name in the National Party in two decades, Barnaby Joyce, had snagged a fleeting "90-second address" slot to quit the party he'd led and which had made him deputy prime minister.
Delivered then to a sparsely populated chamber, Joyce's sullenness was manifest as he registered an internal vote of no-confidence in mainstream conservatism.
Downbeat and dejected, it felt like a right-wing bookend to the rejection by moderate Australians in May.
Back in question time, Albanese warmed to his theme: "The once great parties of the Liberal Party and the National Party are reduced," he chortled.
"They've gone from being either the party of government or the party of alternative government to Play School, while the person who was deputy prime minister when they committed to net zero is outside doing a press conference, reporting his defection from the National Party."
Across from the Prime Minister sat Sussan Ley, Opposition Leader pro tem, putting on a brave face. She had started her leadership nobly with a purposeful headland speech promising to attract more women and draw Liberals back on to the centre-ground.
Since though, she had caved to every right wing demand against net-zero, quotas for women, and other things. Immigration is next.
The centre-ground it seemed, is too radical for today's conservatives. Imagine. At 2025's last question time of the year, Albanese had many reasons to be happy having secured a thumping 94-seat haul while reducing his opponents to a woeful 43.
Also, he was getting married two days later, not that this was known by anyone in the chamber, bar a few selected guests sworn to secrecy.
Big majorities of course, come with their own problems. Roiling ambition - especially from the middle tier MPs who feel they've waited long enough, and from impatient newcomers convinced they are the next big thing.
Discipline can be tricky with so many MPs to keep busy, enthused and on message.
But the real killer for all-conquering parties is hubris. This is a vanity that begins right at the top and if you watched and listened carefully, there were hints of it in what Albanese said next, amid general uproar.
To drive the nail home, the PM quoted a gallery stalwart who had found the real culprits for Australia's energy woes: "My learned colleague up there, Phil Coorey, had this to say" ... (interjections, inaudible).
A storm of opposition protests ensued as Liberals pointed out (rather too gleefully) that Coorey was not in his customary seat. Nor indeed, were several other reporters.
Quickly recovering, Albanese shot back, "They're all outside watching you go down to 42!" before finishing his Coorey quote: "... in reality, the climate wars of the past two decades, caused primarily by recalcitrance from the conservatives, is the reason why the energy grid today is such a dysfunctional and costly mess as it tries to play catch up That is what that radical journal, The Australian Financial Review, had to say!"
Moments later, another Liberal was punted by the Speaker for unruly behaviour, eliciting a triumphant "41!" from Albanese, keen to keep count of the Coalition's dwindling numbers.
As parliamentary theatre it was a bravura performance, yet it was also a window into a dangerous sense of political invulnerability.
Labor had won in 2022 against a deeply unpopular Morrison government which had become a byword for secrecy, dodgy process, and policy intransigence.
Now, in just its second term. Labor was becoming known for similar instincts. The "jobs for mates" report by former public service commissioner Lynelle Briggs had been kept secret for two years and its eventual release saw its key recommendations downplayed and rejected.
In a telling irony, a report about transparency had been denied transparency. That the government felt relaxed about such obvious secrecy and then about retaining what are clearly flawed processes, is a bad sign. These are matter pertaining directly to public trust.
As discussed in these pages last week, Labor's response to another 2023 report on gambling advertising also remains mystifyingly unaddressed.
The late Madeleine Albright wrote a wonderful book in 2018 called Fascism: A Warning. Perhaps Labor MPs should ponder if a similar epitaph might summarise their decline: "Arrogance: A Warning".
Mark Kenny is the Director of the ANU Australian Studies Institute and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast.