Labor pursuing 'Project Albo' as it seeks to turn Anthony Albanese into prime minister material

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Given Anthony Albanese now holds the job he coveted for so long, some in Labor are rather surprised that Project Albo still needs a fair bit of work.

A developing view in Labor's parliamentary ranks is that Mr Albanese has not yet made the necessary transition to Opposition Leader.

But for the time being, Labor's giving their new leader a lot of slack. This year's a write-off. Absolutely no point, MPs reckon, expecting anything too much.

After all, everyone's either too knackered from the relentlessness of 24-7 campaigning or too emotionally exhausted from the election shock to invest too much, just yet.

But next year's going to have to be different, senior Labor folk say.

There will have been some changes, both in Project Albo and the broader Labor strategy.

Politicians are hard markers, especially those who thought they'd been led to the Promised Land, only to find a bloke in a baseball cap got there first with his blue army.

Albanese seeks to stamp authority on party

Mr Albanese's prowess as a tactician is not doubted. It's his other attributes, evident since becoming Labor leader, that've been causing some concern in Labor ranks.

Firstly, he has to learn when to stop talking and practise the art of distillation, they say.

One of his colleagues said that Mr Albanese's (Beazleyesque) prolixity is evident in private, as well as public, and that shadow Cabinet's political and strategic discussions are too often dominated by long Albanese monologues.

It's hoped that his new chief of staff Tim Gartrell, a political professional with a significant ALP pedigree, will be able to bring greater discipline on this front.

Another view from the Labor trench is that a return of the Albo who "loves to fight Tories" would be welcome.

Combative with a light, often humorous touch, the old Albo has largely been locked in the cupboard since he became leader.

Constructing a relatable image to contrast with ScoMo's honed ordinariness is not a superficial consideration, it's a necessity.

Public perception of any leader is critical at the ballot box. Bill Shorten's a case in point.

And what you stand for is obviously important too.

Labor has made the strategic decision to serially retreat from legislative fights with the Coalition since the election. On personal income tax cuts, this was understandable given their potency during the election campaign.

Other retreats have caused murmurings of displeasure notwithstanding Mr Albanese's insistence that the next election will be decided in the final quarter, not now.

But even if you accept his long game strategy, it's time he developed a theory of opposition, as one Labor frontbencher calls it.

This doesn't mean being oppositionist, but establishing where Labor wants to take on the government and hold its ground. Albanese lieutenants say it's still early days and this will come.

Just don't leave it too long, might be the reply from caucus. Their nerves are still jangling from a three-year delusion that lasted right up until the close of polls on election day.

Minutes before one of the election television broadcasts started at 6pm, a Labor panellist inquired with ALP HQ if there was anything it needed to pass on before the cameras went live.

"Don't put a number on it but confident Labor will win," came the message to the MP on WhatsApp.

"One good point to make is we have only reached 52 2PP once in the last 12 elections. Set expectations early so people don't think 51 isn't a good number. It's bloody great."

Labor didn't get anywhere near 52 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote. Or 51 per cent for that matter.

It got just under 48-and-a-half per cent.

"How did we get it so bloody wrong?" the MP said this week. It's not a bad question. And not just why their polling was so poor.

Labor reassessing after election defeat

It's about 100 days since the May 18 election but another 60 or so will pass before Labor's official autopsy of its campaign is delivered by Labor veterans Jay Weatherill and Craig Emerson.

Most in Labor have theories, guided by punter feedback, some of it quite potty.

One fellow, a NSW party member, reported that his brother-in-law was delighted that Labor hadn't won.

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Why? Because if Labor had won, he told him, children as young as three would be able to get gender reassignment without their parents' consent.

This ludicrous reasoning was relayed to a Labor frontbencher, who's concluded that the election showed truth in modern politics is a wobbly concept.

"It's like (French philosopher) Jacques Derrida was running the campaign, that meaning is what you want it to mean," the frontbencher said.

Labor knows it'd be stupid to blame the loss on the subterranean campaign that spewed talk of Labor's "death taxes" or gender reassignment for toddlers into voters' news feeds.

They don't deny that Bill Shorten's unpopularity was a dead weight on Labor's appeal or that this contributed to voters' general lack of enthusiasm for change.

Nor do they deny there was a misplaced sense of confidence in Labor's ambitious policy agenda, from negative gearing to climate change, and that in retrospect some problematic policies were indulged, simply because Labor thought it would win.

But senior folk who got briefed daily on how things were going during the campaign believe some fundamental things went wrong - and not just being horribly misinformed on polls.

What's the message? they'd ask ALP HQ during the campaign. The answer they'd get would be about a "fair go", "schools and hospitals, not banks" or something of that ilk.

"That's a slogan, not a message," said one Labor figure.

Election autopsies, when properly conducted, tell parties what worked but more importantly what didn't and why.

They are meant to help parties avoid repeating mistakes.

Election review to shape Labor's future

The Weatherill-Emerson report will inevitably conclude that the Shorten pitch, for a variety of reasons, misfired in the mortgage belt. A disconnect emerged between what Labor projected and where it was meant to land.

The suburbs of entrepreneurial, middle income folk, many of whom have a direct line of sight to their boss, are the ones that Shorten's Labor forgot in its bashing of the big end of town.

A Liberal strategist close to Scott Morrison puts it brutally. He reckons Labor, like progressive political parties elsewhere in the world, has become obsessed with the politics of "inner city, university-educated, economically secure, virtue-signalling trendies".

Then again, a Liberal strategist who presumes to be closer to Scott Morrison's "quiet Australians" would say that, wouldn't he?

But this thesis ain't too far from the what some in Labor express, albeit more politely.

In any case, Labor's more interested now in what Anthony Albanese can do to reconnect the party with this mob.

No-one's listening out there at the moment, so Labor knows it's still got time to sort this out.

But next year, when voters start tuning in again, it will have to have Project Albo in full steam.

Topics: government-and-politics, bill-shorten, scott-morrison, anthony-albanese, alp, australia