[AUS] Anthony Albanese takes over Labor Leadership - Polidicks

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/i-m-not-tony-abbott-albanese-s-message-to-morrison-as-he-takes-over-labor-leadership Anthony Albanese has become the new leader of the Australian Labor Party. Nominations for the role closed on Monday morning and Mr Albanese was the only person to put his hand up. "I understand that it is a big mountain that we have to climb ... There are only three Labor leaders who have led Labor into government from opposition since World War II," he told reporters. "I want to reach out to those who didn't support Labor last Saturday." Mr Albanese said there were "many lessons we need to learn" from the shock election loss and he "intends to hasten slowly when it comes to policy development". He said Australia has "conflict fatigue" after years of confrontational federal politics. "I say this to Scott Morrison - I'm not Tony Abbott. People want solutions, not arguments. They have conflict fatigue. Some reforms require bipartisan support," he said. He briefly addressed climate change, saying "the science is in, climate change is real, we must act". "The business community ... is crying out for certainty and it is time that the government worked with the opposition to deliver that certainty going into the future. So, I am neither a climate sceptic, nor am I a market sceptic, when it comes to action on climate change." Sounds like Labor has learnt its lesson and will be pulling back from its ambitious policy platform from the election, expect lots of 'middle-ground' positions on issues like climate change and wealth disparity.

I know it's frowned upon here, but middle ground is what we need. Pushing to the extremes push the people you're trying to persuade away. And this is why humans as a collective, are fucked. Middle ground will be slower for progress, but we won't be taking as many potential steps backwards. This won't be quick enough to solve our problems though.

Oh, I agree absolutely. Trying to push things too quickly seems to just piss off the people being steamrolled over and make it more difficult to push more reformist policies in the long run, but I still hope that we're able to adapt quickly enough to avoid the most negative consequences of inaction on climate change.

I reckon Labor can afford to go a bit extreme on climate and energy policy, they should have the public support. Maybe moderate on tax as the general public seem to have no idea how tax works and fear monger as a result

if they just run on climate and energy and dont mention the words 'tax' and 'budget' they will be fine. morons who vote for liberals dont seem to understand how taxes and the budget work cos they think any government spending is bad and any tax they have to pay is bad.

It's ridiculous because the ABC were even publishing very easy to understand guides on the proposed tax reforms and people still didn't understand Baby steps are needed next time.