Labor has a monumental task ahead, but it is littered with opportunity

On election night, Treasurer Jim Chalmers acknowledged “impatience” in the community when it comes to our big national challenges, but when asked about major tax reform he demurred, insisting that “our agenda is the one that we took to the people” and pointing to the numbers in the Senate to qualify any talk of greater ambition.

The priorities Chalmers reiterated on election night – housing supply, transforming how we generate energy, increasing productivity – are certainly first-order tasks and ones where Labor could be accused of so far tinkering at the edges rather than making the kind of profound policy shifts the situation demands.

We urge the government to move quickly on its promises of universal access to childcare and to start the process of repealing some of the Morrison era’s changes to the university sector. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed that the first bill to be put to the new parliament will be its election promise to cut student debts by 20 per cent.

The question of climate change was one that did not feature prominently in this election, even in those seats held by Greens or “teal” independents, yet it persists. In our immediate region, the Pacific Islands Climate Action Network preferred Labor’s re-election to the return of the Coalition, but noted that at this “moment of urgency”, there have been “significant shortcomings” in the government’s approach to emissions and fossil fuels.

The blows being inflicted on the global trading system by the Trump administration and the question of how to manage our relations with both Washington and Beijing in an uncertain world will require Albanese to put some of his newfound confidence to use in articulating how we intend to navigate and build partnerships to address this volatility.

The treasurer was keen to label the prime minister as “practical, pragmatic, problem-solving”; Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles told us that “there is a power in universality”. Those two threads will have to be woven together if the euphoria of election night and the days that followed is to become into something more lasting.

Nothing is more universal than taxes, and while the cuts Labor took to the election are pragmatic, they don’t solve the problem of what economist Saul Eslake called “an increasingly inefficient and inequitable tax system … increasingly incapable of generating the revenue required to pay for the spending which the public clearly expects”.

Among those services are the NDIS, and it will certainly be a national challenge to keep the costs of that scheme in check while also protecting it from those who seek to defraud it. It is a challenge Labor must meet if talk of universality and kindness is to be more than a campaign slogan.

A modest and disciplined campaign delivered Albanese and his team a stunning victory. Yet already there are signs of the party’s factional divisions resurfacing. That modesty and discipline will have to be wedded to the sense of historic opportunity that now presents itself and a willingness to engage all sections of our community. We hope Labor can seize the moment.