It is mere common sense that Anthony Albanese should seek to stop the nutty Left of the Labor Party from condemning the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine initiative, or demanding a specific date on which Canberra must extend diplomatic recognition to a non-existent Palestinian state.
At one level you have to admire the Labor Left. The sheer folly of its addictive demands for pointless gestures and empty, counter-productive symbolism, its determination to embarrass and harm even the friendliest government, to cut short if it possibly can the electoral acceptance of Labor by the mainstream Australian electorate – in all this there is a kind of grandeur of absurdity.
No one will ever accuse these people of being reasonable, or of selling out to common sense.
The Albanese government is the most left-wing Labor administration since Gough Whitlam. It is delivering bucket loads of policy to the left, on industrial relations, industry policy, climate change, welfare, tax, every form of identity politics, support for far-reaching constitutional change, etc. But for the Left, too much is never enough.
The two senior figures in the Labor Left are Albanese himself and Foreign Minister Penny Wong. If the Left cannot abide government by them, it cannot abide anything in the real world.
Read the article by Greg Sheridan in The Australian.