A wish for 2026: Less grandstanding, more attempts to truly tackle nation’s challenges
When our daily language is one of condemnation, how can we make space to work together and listen to one another?
A wish for 2026: Less grandstanding, more attempts to truly tackle nation’s challenges
Editorial
December 31, 2025 — 5.00am
The way that 2025 has ended – with the worst terrorist attack ever carried out on Australian soil – is likely to shape our understanding of the year that preceded it and the one to come.
Before the massacre at Bondi Beach, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was already being chided – not least by our columnists – for leading a government that shied away from doing difficult things.
Bipartisanship following the Bondi massacre has evaporated: Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Credit: Aresna Villanueva
After the atrocity, such criticisms took on a darker tone. Now Albanese’s political caution and his foreign policy shifts were parsed as grievous moral failures that marked him as responsible for the massacre, with the niece of one victim calling him a coward. The bipartisanship at first promised in response to a sickening crime evaporated faster than water on Bondi’s pavers.
One has to wonder if any of the major challenges facing us as a nation can be tackled effectively in such an atmosphere. Can we make space for consultation and act in concert when our daily language is that of condemnation?
Before Bondi, questions around the federal government’s course often returned to weakness and division within the opposition. Here in Victoria, Jacinta Allan’s Labor government enters an election year having benefited from a similar lack of focus from the Coalition.
After landing the leadership of the Victorian Liberals on the eve of 2025, Brad Battin couldn’t see out a year in the job. The divisions that sank him may have been different from those that accounted for his predecessor , but the pattern of instability and infighting was the same.