Andrew Carswell: Why it sucks to be an incumbent government right now

Forget the wondrous trappings of government office for a minute. The grandeur, the rare opportunity to effect change, the private jets and corner suites. The vast sums of money to throw at chosen causes. Being central to the decisions that alter the course of a nation. The power and the glory.

Ignore the misguided edict that states that the worst day in government is better than the best day in opposition. It sounds right, but it isn’t foolproof.

Forget all that.

Because right now, it terribly sucks to be an incumbent. Life isn’t grand. It is limited, and spiralling to a quick end.

Instead of driving change and making a difference, life is a perpetual clinging to life rafts, traipsing from one crisis to the next, all the while causing collective disappointment whenever you open your mouth.

The audible groans and unmissable eye-rolling of the masses. A seven-day schedule of leaving people intensely dissatisfied. Nobody is happy, and you’re to blame.

This curse of incumbency gripping global politics doesn’t discriminate. It is not a move against one ideology over another or the result of a demographic shift.

If you’re in power, whatever your creed or colour, there is a target on your back and voters have their eye in, fuelled by a steady stream of political underperformance, rising cost of living, and a prolonged migraine from COVID where we grew tired of tyranny. Single terms suddenly loom as the norm and not the exception.

It is not like voters are enamoured with oppositions either. There is simply a yearning for a deep cleansing. To just start again. Fresh faces and fresher ideas.

Australia is not immune to this movement.

Last month a Labor government in the Northern Territory, without any obvious fatal flaws or troublesome history, was not only resoundingly beaten but effectively run out of town by an angry mob with a bloodlust that defied reason.

There is nothing like 20 per cent swings in previously safe seats to spell a mood for change.

In Canberra, the most left-leaning, social-engineering political leader in Australia is about to cede part of his power to a catalogue of independents and Greens.

After 23 years in power, Labor is likely to plunge into minority rule come October 19. This certainly isn’t a shift towards conservatism. The word doesn’t exist in Canberra.

But when boring, nauseating and moralising Canberra gets tired of boring, nauseating and moralising Andrew Barr, political norms are being ignored.

Never before has power felt so precarious.

A week later, Labor will be swept out of office in Queensland, marking the end of a most peculiar political dynasty; the whinging aunt and her bully boy who inherited the role at the death, but couldn’t shake a legacy mired in mediocrity.

Sometimes this move against incumbents is unjustified.

NSW Premier Chris Minns is one of the better-performing political leaders in the nation. His ability to combine empathy, strength of leadership and honesty is something sorely missing in his contemporaries.

But even the Minns Labor Government, barely 18 months in, is behind in the polls, trailing a Coalition that has been steady without being spectacular.

Sometimes this move against incumbents is completely justified.

The turgid, debt-riddled Victorian Labor Government is finally copping the wrath it deserves, having driven the State into a financial crisis, having gleefully pursued a lengthy COVID lockdown strategy that made even Kim Jong Un blush, having crippled the State’s energy grid and left it teetering on the edge of rolling blackouts.

From a position of unassailable strength at 58-42, to a mere 50-50 equation in a matter of months. Victorians are collectively flushing the toilet.

To put things in perspective, the Victorian Liberal Opposition is in a state of shambles, riddled with internal strife and self-obsessed bickering that is spilling out onto the streets. Its leader is locked in a bitter courtroom battle with a rogue former colleague. A coup is imminent, and blood will be spilt.

But this circus is 50-50 with the incumbent Government.

Imagine if they got their shit together. For once.

Overseas, this trend is magnified. Canadians are salivating at the thought of sending Justin Trudeau packing, desperate for anyone that actually prioritises housing and cost of living ahead of laws that make it illegal to misgender someone.

The French tried to teach Emmanuel Macron a sorely needed lesson, forcing him to make a deal with the devil to survive.

The Democrats are staring down the barrel (perhaps a poor choice of words) at a solitary term in the White House. And in the UK, buyer’s remorse has already set in, with Keir Starmer already on the nose. Change didn’t taste as delicious as people expected.

And now we await the verdict on Anthony Albanese, and whether wholesale disappointment and disillusionment with Australia’s 31st Prime Minister will see him either vaulted from office prematurely or merely forced to staple together an ungodly minority government that will only increase the ferocity of his eventual demise.

Never before has power felt so precarious.

Andrew Carswell is a former adviser to the Morrison government.