Albanese finishes the year at the Lodge, will he finish 2024 there?

When Anthony Albanese became Prime Minister last year, it surprised many who had seen him fumble only a month (or so) from polling day on interest rates and the RBA cash rate, two of the most talked about parameters in fiscal and money management credentials of a potential leader.

I still believe the result was hardly a Labor win, being more of a Coalition loss due to some important factors, also unattributable to Scott Morrison and his team. That issue perhaps is for another time.

Anthony Albanese was in, and his team was welcomed from the heart as they deserved. The election was fought on a whole lot issues other than the Voice.

Right at the top was the cost-of-living pressures, and the complementary guarantee by the then Opposition leader Anthony Albanese to give at least $275 relief per household on energy bills, among other sweeteners offered.

Since Anthony Albanese became Prime Minister, we have been inflicted with energy rate rises, increased supply charges, and the bills have gone up. It is hard to feel if the government has provided any net relief.

And the Prime Minister, spent the first 18 months globe-trotting and at home campaigning for the Voice referendum – one of the myriads of small promises his party made in opposition – seemingly running the parliament in his spare time.

I may be wrong, but to me the Prime Minister seems more comfortable doing gigs, other than running the country and offering himself to be answerable to Australians.

Everything that goes wrong is someone else's problem, not his or his government's. EVER.

So much so, that he, talking to Neil Mitchell of 3AW radio in Melbourne, even publicly refused to be responsible for the way his own Ministers conducted themselves in their official capacity. This was in reference to his Home Minister Clare O'Neil claiming that the Opposition leader Peter Dutton was 'protecting paedophiles'. Minister O'Neil had made the comments while responding to questions on the steps the government was taking to mitigate its asylum seeker debacle. The 'mess' according to her, had originated under Dutton.

By any assessment, the comment was outrageous and should be placed in the 'below the belt' category.

While Prime Minister Albanese could not muster any better expression than 'I'm accountable for what I say', it was instead his deputy Richard Marles and his Minister for NDIS and Government Services Bill Shorten who showed leadership by refusing to endorse that characterization of Peter Dutton.

In my view, that interview will go down in Australia's political history as evidence of the Prime Minister having little or no control over his own government and an indirect admission of personal surrender by a sitting Prime Minister to some faceless authority.