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On Thursday, Anthony Albanese told Labor members that one of the most rewarding things about putting together the party’s draft platform was taking things out. This was not because the policies were unimportant, but because they had been achieved. Once the public rhetoric had served its concrete purpose, it could be abandoned.

The same might be said for a government’s talking points.

Anthony Albanese at the Labor national conference in Brisbane. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

In the same speech, Albanese once again wheeled out his argument that the government is there not only to get things done, but to endure. For the moment, this is important rhetoric: there are plenty of ALP members who wish Albanese was acting faster. But when will the PM feel he can stop making this pitch? That will be the moment it is no longer necessary: when nobody is in any doubt that this government is getting big things done and that its pacing is an electorally smart approach. The fact Albanese is still making the argument is an indication we are a little while away from that yet.

There are aspects of his case for slow and steady government that do not get enough attention – on both the for and against sides. To start with the case against: when Albanese suggests reforms by a long-term government are more likely to last, he means they will have had time to be completed and firmly bedded down before a government is voted out. But doesn’t this in turn shift the bias back towards acting sooner rather than later? The longer you wait to act, the more chance you’ll be tossed out before a change has taken root.

There is also an underlying implication in all this that Labor has learned from its last term in government not to move too quickly or boldly. But was this really the cause of Labor’s troubles? Perhaps. But there are plenty in Labor who have made precisely the opposite case: that it was Labor’s failures of nerve in 2010 – postponing an emissions trading scheme, failing to go to a double dissolution election on the issue, then abandoning a prime minister – that brought the government undone.

On the pro side, an aspect of change that does not get quite enough attention is how difficult it is to shift the intellectual landscape of a country. Political change, when it comes, often depends on a set of important ideas, and a political culture open to those ideas. A government wanting to make lasting change must also work to change the ideas that dominate discussion. This work – including the generation of new ideas – takes time.

Illustration: Jim PavlidisCredit:

Arguably, this part of a government’s work has become harder. I had the pleasure last week of helping launch the first biography of Donald Horne, famed author of The Lucky Country. Horne’s book was a sensation – distributed to public servants, supplied on Qantas flights, used as a prize on a game show. As the biography’s author, Ryan Cropp, says, it is hard to imagine that type of book having such impact now. There is less space for public intellectuals; for high-quality debate. Our universities are factories, our media more sensationalist, our public service hollowed out. Where can new ideas come from and how can they spread?

I have written before about the Albanese government’s attention to institutions. It abolished the AAT, created a new arts funding body, an anti-corruption commission. It is reforming the Reserve Bank. Perhaps more important than all of these are the new appointments: a new RBA governor, some new board members, new Fair Work commissioners, a new Productivity Commission chair.

There are two underlying forces here. One is a recognition of the way power works: real change is often diffuse. The second is an understanding that, with the assumptions underpinning both economics and politics shifting dramatically in recent years, new ideas are needed. This is not a simple matter of tapping a couple of people on the shoulder and asking for suggestions. It involves shifting the entire context in which public debate takes place. This is the situation into which Jim Chalmers will launch the latest Intergenerational Report this week. Remember, too, that at this conceptual level the treasurer has been preparing the ground for some time, with interventions like his article in The Monthly and the national wellbeing framework.

This work is important. At the same time, none of it matters politically without practical action. As James Massola noted yesterday, it feels like a pivot of sorts is going on in Labor right now, to focus on exactly that. Labor’s actions on housing got plenty of airtime last week. Here, the Greens probably did Labor a favour by creating conflict. Old rules of politics always make their presence felt eventually, and this is one of them: conflict helps attract the attention of voters. The coming industrial relations debate will do the same.

But while the opposition of the Greens and business groups have put those economic debates up in lights, in each case the action that kicked off the conflict was simple: the government put forward policy. This is another old, reliable rule. Often, the most effective way to focus people on the debate you need them to have is by proposing solid action. That debate will not necessarily go your way – but that’s politics. It’s better than voters not noticing anything at all.

In another era, perhaps governments could have expected such debates around ideas to begin elsewhere. It seems unreasonable to expect governments to do this as well as everything else. It is also true that the demands of high-quality public debate – time, space, thought – seem at odds with the demands of politics: fast, concrete action. In these times, though, an ambitious government has little choice: it must do both.

Sean Kelly is author of The Game: A Portrait of Scott Morrison, a regular columnist and a former adviser to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.

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