The many ‘new’ faces of Labor’s on-the-road leadership

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese just can’t catch a break. After a distinctly wobbly start to his campaign — which went beyond the media’s obsession with gaffes, though that didn’t help — he gets his stuff together for a solid performance in the first leaders’ debate and promptly gets COVID-19, something he’d managed to avoid in the first two years of the pandemic.

Albanese’s isolation for the next week will force a change to a campaign that’s been largely leader-focused so far. Let’s take a look at the candidates who’ll take the baton.

Richard Marles

As if on cue, The Australian’s front page was emblazoned with an attack piece on the Labor deputy leader‘s record on China and the Pacific. Marles is, paradoxically, one of the lower-profile members of Labor’s leadership team. He ascended to his current role thanks to the yin-yang approach to decision-making in the Labor Party: Albanese is of the left and from New South Wales, so the deputy more-or-less had to be of the Victorian right. He’s from a real establishment background, attending elite boarding school Geelong Grammar — his Betoota Advocate nickname “Timbertop Marles” is a reference to the school’s Mansfield campus, where ninth graders go skiing and hiking.

After a period as assistant secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Marles was elected in Corio in 2007. He’s become a senior member of the party right since — having been influential in getting Labor’s current policy in favour of boat turn-backs in place, he’s known to be pro-US and has been described (even by himself) as a “touch hawkish” on China. 

Penny Wong

Wong is, in some ways, the anti-Marles. Labor’s leader in the Senate (in every sense of the word) is of the left and higher profile, particularly on account of her exacting performances in Senate estimates. Just ask Mathias Cormann.

Wong has obvious talents as a politician — her grasp of policy and her media performances are invariably assured. This seriousness sometimes results in the sense she lacks a common touch — she is not, as one colleague puts it in Margaret Simons’ biography Passion and Principle, the “having a beer with the locals” type. Her conviction that you have to be “in the room” to effect change, rather than registering a loud but ultimately fruitless protest outside, has resulted in her having to back ALP policies she clearly hates.

Jim Chalmers

The figure, apart from Albanese, who has been getting out there the most is probably Labor’s shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers. His start in politics came through a variety of advisory roles at state and federal level, including former treasurer Wayne Swan. Indeed, he wrote a book defending Swan and co’s handling of the global financial crisis called Glory Daze.

He’s a senior figure in the Queensland Labor right, and has been in the media regularly over the election campaign — it was noteworthy he was the lead on the response to the Coalition attacks on ALP energy policies. He described the figures Energy Minister Angus Taylor put forward as a “bin fire of lies“. Chalmers’ National Press Club debate with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg on May 4 could be a key moment in the campaign.

Tanya Plibersek

Deputy leader during Bill Shorten’s leadership and current shadow minister, Plibersek has had a fairly quiet campaign so far, largely sticking to the talking points of the day.

The daughter of Slovenian immigrants whose background is in advisory roles, she’s been in Parliament since 1998. She’s subject to much of the same do-si-do as any high-profile member of the Labor left: earning sympathetic coverage from The Australian where she can, and playing up her religious upbringing.

She’s an assured media performer, memorably dominating then-troublesome Liberal backbencher Craig Kelly at the beginning of last year over the flurry of COVID-19 misinformation flooding from his Facebook page.

Jason Clare

Right faction MP Clare has represented Blaxland since 2007, but despite holding various portfolios under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard, he hasn’t been particularly high profile until landing the gig of campaign spokesman this year. As such he’s been in the news more than anyone else aside from Chalmers and Albanese. Indeed, it was Clare who lead the defence of the Labor leader after his early stumbles and the first press conference after Albanese was diagnosed was held this morning by Clare, attacking the government’s “epic fail” over the pact between the Solomon Islands and China, and continuing the line of attack aimed at Morrison’s tendency to “go missing”.

“You can’t sit back on the deckchair in the Pacific and just assume that everything’s going to be OK,” he said.