Will Albanese walk in the footsteps of Whitlam?

Where the paths diverge

However, some differences suggest Albanese could be more radical than Whitlam, yet more long-lived.

The electorate was ready for a change after 23 years of the Coalition government, but not too much. They found much of Whitlam's agenda unsettling, and it was said Labor tried to do too much too soon. He was swimming against the tide.

Albanese is much more in tune with contemporary Australia. Surveys show that millennials, for example, trust socialism more than capitalism.

The culture that is pumped out through educational institutions and the media is more radical and left-wing than it ever has been. Added to that is the new social media, also a haven for the mavens of the left.

He also has recent experience in government to draw on. It's argued Whitlam was shambolic because no one in his cabinet had been in a government before. However, Albanese has a cadre of ministers blooded during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, with 70 percent having served in previous governments.

Whitlam was also handicapped by control of the Senate, being in the hands of his enemies. In the case of Albanese, it is controlled by his frenemies-Greens and independents-who will surely not be as obstructive to his agenda as the Liberal-National parties were to Whitlam.

Or maybe they will, as arguments over the government greenhouse agenda are starting to suggest.

And then there is the quality of the opposition. Fraser was playing with a fairly powerful deck when he beat Whitlam, but the quality of the current opposition has been significantly degraded as a result of the Teals and Greens eating into heartland metropolitan seats.

Another element, lacking in Whitlam's time, is the potential security threat to Australia. Australia was moving away from its Vietnam engagement in 1972 but now appears to be moving into an engagement with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. External threats tend to encourage citizens to rally around the government.

The same is not true for bad economic times, which tend to see governments punished.

The final arbiter of Whitlam's success was a recession. But, unfortunately, it may also be the executioner of the Albanese government.

It's always better to win an election than to lose it, but some victories have harder landings than others: 1972 was not a good year to win government, and 2022 was the most challenging in the 50 years since.