Morning all. Amy has brought your attention to the rituals that are deployed at the opening of the parliament.
A trip to the Australian War Memorial. A church service. It’s worth noting that the Labor leader Anthony Albanese raised the frontier wars during his remarks at the War Memorial last night – and in stark terms.
Albanese’s point was the stories Australians tell themselves about sacrifices made during armed conflict are not complete.
These stories often omit the war unleashed on the original inhabitants of the land by British settlers. Here’s an excerpt from his speech.
Anthony Albanese:
Our nation has stood against darkness and won, but darkness is not vanquished from the world. Freedom is not something we can keep carelessly. Nor is freedom free. We gather here to remember those who have paid its price. But there are holes in our memory we need to fill. Not least the Indigenous soldiers who went and fought. Those First Australians who donned the khaki and left their homes to fight for a nation that was not prepared to fight for them. A nation that did not treat them as equals. Not when they went. Not when they returned from those distant battlefields. Yet they went. They fought for a continent that had been the home of their people for a long, unbroken chain of millennia. A continent for which their ancestors had fought so desperately during the frontier wars — wars we have not yet learned to speak of so loudly. They died protecting their loved ones. They died protecting their way of life. They died for their country. We must remember them just as we remember those who fought more recent foes.
A little more detail about the Labor caucus meeting this morning, where the opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, warmed up some of his lines for the next election.
After thanking the caucus for all of the well wishes after his recent car accident, Albanese referred to the twin themes of “no one held back” and “no one left behind”. Both of these lines are expected to feature heavily in Labor messaging in the lead-up to the election that could be held in the second half of this year or the first half of next year.
The Labor leader argued that the “no one held back” line should be seen as “a call to aspiration”.
Albanese also reported to his colleagues that the national campaign committee is now meeting – but he noted it had not met for over a decade.
(A short bit of background here: the Labor review of the 2019 election defeat said no formal campaign committee had been established, “creating no forum for formulating an effective strategy or for receiving reports evaluating progress against the strategy”. The review called for a formal campaign committee to be established early, with representatives of the party and the leadership group.)
Albanese said that at the next election, Scott Morrison would be asking for the Liberal-National Coalition to have more time in office than John Howard had.
Albanese portrayed the Coalition agenda as cutting jobkeeper, jobseeker and wages.
“Once we get past March, and it will be after parliament rises, workers and businesses will feel the impact of these cuts,” Albanese said.
“People in Queensland haven’t forgotten that Scott Morrison came to Queensland to campaign against decisions Annastacia Palaszczuk took to keep people safe. People in Western Australia haven’t forgotten that Scott Morrison joined with Clive Palmer to oppose decisions that Mark McGowan took to keep people safe.”
Updated
at 7.50pm EST
