how hard is it to govern?
- Written by Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
Is governing harder in the 2020s than in earlier decades? The instinctive, and popular, answer would be “of course it is”. While that’s also a correct answer, we should insert some qualifications.
Making the right or best decisions, especially in times of actual or looming crisis, has always been difficult. Consider the choices facing decision-makers, in Australia and abroad, during the Great Depression, when there was less understanding of how financial and economic systems worked than contemporary policymakers possess.
Consider also the choices that confronted leaders in past wars. Wartime prime minister John Curtin, grappling with decisions on which hung the lives of thousands of Australian troops, paced The Lodge grounds at night. And what of the challenges facing public health authorities trying to cope with the influenza epidemic that followed the first world war, compared with responding to the COVID pandemic in a time when vaccines could be developed quickly?
While keeping history in mind, however, it is undoubtedly true that contemporary governments face extraordinary changes and complexities. These come from many sources.
More demands for the provision of services. An interconnected world but fragmented public squares. Populations in democratic countries that have lost trust in government and in many other institutions. The rise of populism and the desire for instant answers to political and economic problems that do not lend themselves to easy, if any, solutions.
Modern travel, communications and technology have facilitated governing, as well as bringing their own challenges. Easier, faster and more comfortable travel means greater opportunities for face-to-face interaction, while imposing its own burdens. Email and “virtual” meetings have transformed interactions.
The internet is a massive information hub, the scale of which was beyond imagination only decades ago. It is also a monster that disseminates misinformation and disinformation on an industrial scale, and facilitates political intimidation.
Past reforms ‘not easy at the time’
Comparing the Bob Hawke and Anthony Albanese eras, “It’s become a truism of Australian politics that important economic reform peaked in the 1980s and 1990s. Sometimes the first two terms of John Howard’s government […] are given credit as well”, John Daley, of the Grattan Institute, wrote in Gridlock: Removing barriers to policy reform, in 2021. That report looked at the fate of a plethora of reforms the institute proposed between 2009 and 2019, finding more than two thirds of them had not been adopted.
In Australia, the Hawke–Keating government is often looked upon as a sort of “gold standard” for a reforming Labor government. It is unfair to measure a first-term administration against one that lasted several terms, and especially one that has been so mythologised. All the same, some critics have argued the Albanese government in its initial term was not pitching its aspiration high enough – let alone anything like as high as that earlier government.
Leaving aspiration aside, there is the other question. Was it easier in the Hawke–Keating days for a government to get things done – in particular, really difficult things? The answer is, almost certainly. But let us not romanticise the view through the rear vision mirror. Ken Henry, a public servant and Keating staffer during those days, told the National Press Club in 2025, “these reforms of the 80s and 90s mostly enjoy broad business and political support today, but they were not easy at the time”.
Moreover, some observers see downsides. “In recent months, there’s been a lot of breathless praise for the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. But where did some of those reforms lead?” ABC economics writer Gareth Hutchens wrote in 2025. “Some eventually led to appalling scandals that ended in royal commissions (banking, aged care, Robodebt). Changes to Australia’s labour market in that period contributed to the rise of underemployment and precarious work.”
Much momentum for Australia’s economic reforms in the 1980s, stretching into the 1990s, was imposed from outside. Australia was under pressure from external forces to open its economy to the world. This produced winners and losers, but in many cases the losers (whether from tax changes, or slashing tariffs) could, where considered necessary, be compensated. This didn’t prevent pain, but it could ameliorate some of it.
‘More pessimistic, fractious and negative’
By the time of the Albanese government, much of the big reform had been done, or tried. The public had become pain-averse; the drag of “reform fatigue” had been canvassed for years. Trust in government, declining for decades, was down again after a brief revival during the pandemic.
The more difficult territory – such as improving productivity, which had languished for years – proved to be harder to navigate than some of the landmark changes under Hawke, Keating and the early days of John Howard. With a tight budgetary situation, there wasn’t money to compensate losers – and there was less tolerance for policies where some people would lose.
By the 2020s the community had grown more pessimistic, fractious and negative, uncertain where the country was headed. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer’s Australian report highlighted the extent of “grievance”.
It found 62% of Australians had a moderate or high sense of grievance. (This was defined as a belief by the person that government and business make their lives harder and serve narrow interests, and that wealthy people benefit under the system while ordinary people struggle.)
Fewer than one in five people believed things would be better for the next generation. Nearly two thirds (64%) worried that government leaders purposely mislead by saying things they know are false or are gross exaggerations. The barometer found a “zero sum” mindset increasingly permeating Australian society:
Those Australians with high grievances are twice as likely to feel that ‘what helps people who don’t share my politics will come at a cost to me’ compared with those with low grievances.
An environment marked by distrust and grievance makes governing difficult, let alone the pursuit of reform. Moreover, the modern plethora of well-resourced interest groups will be positioned to exploit grievance – indeed that is often central to their business models. Social media is god’s gift to those fanning grievances.
On the whole, people are more trustful if they feel they have agency – the opportunity for a voice, however small. The increasing professionalisation of politics, and the thinning out of the memberships and power within the major parties have further weakened the connection between citizens and the political process.
In today’s world, for multiple reasons, fewer people are “joiners” of parties, or other organisations. At the same time, the major parties give less encouragement to the political amateurs who want to be involved.
‘Cartel parties’
As late as the 1980s and early 1990s, ALP rank-and-file members had some clout, with the party’s national conference fights over policy (for example, uranium mining and export, reform of the banking system, privatisation) carrying weight. Progressively, however, the extra-parliamentary Labor Party membership declined in importance (with the exception that it gained a 50% say in choosing the parliamentary leader).
This is in line with an international trend. John Daley and Rachel Krust write in their Institutional Reform Stocktake (2025) that “major parties around the world have increasingly become ‘cartel parties’ in which members promise each other the benefits of government patronage, part of the machinery of government operated by a professional political class”. As modern ALP national conferences became much bigger in size, they took on the nature of stage-managed rallies, losing policy teeth.
At the 2025 election, for the second time running, only about two thirds of electors voted number one for Labor or the Coalition. The loss of faith in the major parties has been accompanied by people seeking agency in part through the “community candidate” movement.
Independent candidates (“teals” but others, too) have attracted large numbers of enthusiastic followers. The number of House of Representatives crossbenchers swelled in the 2020s, compared with the preceding decades.
Independent candidates, like ‘teal’ Monique Ryan, have attracted large numbers of enthusiastic followers.
Diego Fedele/AAP
This fragmentation, however, does not necessarily promote reform. Crossbenchers can sometimes achieve change by advocacy on particular issues, or by using positions of power to extract concessions (for example, in the Senate). To achieve transformational change, however, may require a government with a substantial, or at least a comfortable, majority. We saw this with Howard’s GST reform, when a big majority went to near defeat.
The “localism” reflected in the community candidate movement has been matched to a degree in the big parties, which often feel the need to preselect a “local champion”, such as someone who has served as mayor, from the particular electorate, making it hard to get policy-oriented “high flyers” into seats, especially when these days fewer seats are “safe” for the party.
The electoral cycle as ‘permanent campaign’
Short federal parliamentary terms – a flexible three years – are not conducive to bringing in potentially unpopular policies. Addressing the British Labour conference in 2025, Albanese noted that in the United Kingdom, which has five-year terms, they had “the most valuable resource for any Labor Government” – time.
Both sides of politics acknowledge the handicap of short terms, but by now have accepted that terms cannot in practice be lengthened, because (on recent history) it would seem impossible to pass the required referendum.
Terms could be made fixed by legislation, however there has not been the bipartisan will for that. (After the 2025 election, the Special Minister of State, Don Farrell, did ask the parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters to examine fixed four-year terms and increasing the size of the parliament.)
But the problem is not just the short length of terms. The electoral cycle has progressively become the “permanent campaign” with the government, especially the prime minister, seemingly never off the election trail, physically or mentally. This may have become so entrenched that longer terms might not significantly change things.
The contemporary phenomenon of the “continuous campaign” is reinforced by the frequency of opinion polling, and the attention given to it. It shapes much of the media discourse, and the use of it by the parties themselves means their eyes are, much of the time, on what the “focus groups” are saying. These trends were present in the 1980s but had reached new heights by the 2020s.
Leaders ‘crucial’ in driving reform
Much of the Hawke–Keating Government’s success in achieving economic reform was that it could harness the power and co-operation of the trade unions. The formal “Accord” between the government and unions meant the government could achieve trade-offs with the union movement – wage restraint in return for “social wage” benefits (Medicare, for example, and later a national superannuation contribution scheme).
The union movement of the day covered a much larger proportion of the workforce and had some impressive leaders who were willing to sign up to the government’s often controversial reform projects.
The Albanese government delivered significantly to the unions in its first term, including support for wage rises and a raft of changes to industrial laws, but it did not get offsets. The coverage of the union movement had shrunk drastically, and its leadership was not of the 1980s–90s calibre.
The Albanese government delivered significantly to the unions in its first term, including support for wage rises and a raft of changes to industrial laws.
Lukas Coch/AAP
It is hard to recall how different the media landscape was in the Hawke–Keating years. This was the time before social media, and when the mainstream media were more influential for a government that wanted to drive change and achieve ambitious policy outcomes.
As a reforming treasurer, Keating was able to skilfully win influential parts of the media to his causes. Keating used to say, with his typical exaggeration, “if I’ve got the top five journalists in the press gallery supporting a policy, I’ve got the country”.
In the 2020s, not only are the media splintered every which way by the growth of social media, but traditional media are also increasingly polarised and less influential, especially with younger voters who obtain their information elsewhere.
The new round-the-clock, digital media environment has brought extra pressures on governing. How to sell measures has become almost as important in formulating policy as the substance. More generally, the government feels it imperative to fill the media space, which requires deploying ministers to the extensive round of morning TV and radio programs, interviews on the news channels through the day, evening current affairs, Sunday shows, and the like.
Arguably, the extent of the media burden on ministers takes away from the time and attention they can focus on detailed policy work.
Reform in any age requires leaders who can identify what needs to be done; grasp the policy challenges; are able and willing to be bold; and can persuade the public. The centrality of leadership in driving reform is crucial. In Hawke, Labor had a leader who could draw on strong personal popularity and was willing to spend political capital (although not be profligate with it – he acted as a restraining hand on his treasurer).
Albanese in his first term was a much more cautious brand of leader, mostly unwilling to exceed what he saw as his mandate. He also had a thin majority. Effective leadership must extend beyond the leader. Keating as treasurer was willing to stretch the boundaries. Albanese’s treasurer, Jim Chalmers, began his career by studying Keating attentively, but is still to be seriously tested himself.
Importantly, the Cabinet of the Hawke–Keating era was deep in its talent and its ambition. Its expenditure review committee was exceptionally hard-working. While the dynamics of the Albanese Cabinet are more opaque, there is not the breadth of talent or common reform purpose of its predecessor.
With Labor’s massive 2025 victory, calls immediately redoubled for the government to set its sights high. Slow economic growth, flatlined productivity and an uncertain external environment added to the push.
Stakeholders dusted off their reform proposals. A roundtable on “productivity”, which the treasurer immediately branded an “Economic Reform” Roundtable, was summoned by the government. That was the easy part.
Whether Albanese’s second-term government would have the will to significantly break the reform “gridlock” will be quite another matter. The prime minister might be a restraining hand on those inclined to hasten too fast.
This is an edited extract from The First Albanese Government, edited by John Hawkins, Michelle Grattan and John Halligan (New South), published on February 1.
Authors: Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraRead more https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-how-hard-is-it-to-govern-273572
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