It is now nearly a year since the election of the Albanese Labor government. When the election was held and Labor won easily on the night, an enormous sigh of relief swept across the working-class suburbs of Australia. The defeated Liberal/National Party government was seen as a malignant force that brutalised the unemployed and crushed workers’ rights and wages.
The conservative Liberals won their lowest proportion of seats since their formation in 1946. They were thrown out of many of their blue-ribbon seats by a wave of independent candidates and even lost their Deputy Prime Minister, Josh Frydenberg, in this massacre. With the Liberals on the ropes the question workers are asking is can Labor fix the cost of living crisis?