Labor luminary and economic reform maestro Paul Keating once berated the Coalition for squandering its long post-war run in office under Robert Menzies.

An era, Keating taunted, when conservatives injected Australia with a "near-lethal dose of fogeyism".

"When they put the country into neutral and where we very gently ground to a halt in the nowhere land of the early 1980s, with a dependency on commodities that would not pay for our imports".

History doesn't repeat but there are plenty of echoes. Australia is a nation adrift, confronted by staggering global, intergenerational, welfare, security, energy and climate challenges, seemingly unsure which way to jump.

There's little sense of policy ambition. Not much passes the test of real reform. Much is tinkering at the edges, usually by spending more money.

A nation with European appetites for spending, wedded to an American-style aversion to raising revenue.

At least a quarter century has passed since the last meaningful tax system change, with John Howard's GST.

Across those years there were multiple attempts to address how revenue is raised and impose lasting budget discipline.

But almost all collapsed under the weight of special interest campaigns and short-term political opportunism. China's hunger for resources has filled the fiscal cracks.

Ken Henry, the former Treasury secretary, characterised this month what is being hoisted onto younger generations as an insidious mix of "reckless indifference" and "wilful acts of bastardry".

Voters will shortly face a choice between two sides of politics pursuing small target strategies wrapped in rhetorical bromides, mired by political meekness.

Both sides pursue small targets

As in the 1980s, Australia remains dependent on exports for its wealth and economic wellbeing, even as the shadows of a new global trade war threaten the snug notion that the last four decades of economic expansion will continue unabated.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is yet to put any real meat on the bones of his plan for the nation beyond a taxpayer-funded nuclear program that will not — as MPs on his own side have pointed out — do anything to bring down electricity bills any time soon.

There is currently barely an economic policy or reform on the table that would rouse even the slightest flicker of interest from the likes of Keating, Howard or Peter Costello.

So far the Coalition has promised to cut spending by sacking bureaucrats, provide a tax break for business catering, and clear "roadblocks" to housing by funding utilities, something that is arguably better handled by the states.

If Dutton wins on his current platform, his mandate for action will be limited.

At the same time, costs for defence and an aging population mean spending is only going in one direction, underpinned by a tax system held up by commodity prices and fiscal drag.

A feature that — as Henry puts it — "robs" young workers by forcing them to "pay higher and higher average tax rates, even if their real incomes are falling".

Spending without cuts 

The federal budget forecasts a future of structural deficits and mounting debt interest costs, yet both sides of politics continue to lure voters with spending promises on the credit card without identifiable spending cuts or tax hikes.

Last week's Medicare bulk-billing expansion — Labor's $8.5 billion promise (over four years) was immediately matched by a $9 billion Coalition plan — is just the latest example of what passes for "reform" in 2025.

On the other side of the political aisle, pollsters tell us that Labor is dangerously adrift, steaming, on a good day, towards the rocky shoals of minority government.

The party's worst case is a historically humiliating loss to Dutton after just one term, something that has happened only once since Federation and not since the Great Depression.

Labor insiders acknowledge the threat even as they feel helpless about how to respond.

This week the government's focus was on character attacks against Dutton.

Labor portrayed the opposition leader as an opportunist share-trader taking advantage of the global financial crisis. He may have questions to answer, but the timing of these attacks only deepen voter cynicism.

It also suggests a prime minister with little else to fight on. Ever since he spent what political capital he had on the collapsed Voice campaign, polls and surveys indicate voters regard him with indifference.

Liberal and Labor pollsters alike report that Albanese's vote is "soft". Which is jargon for a candidate that has lost the public's support but is not actively loathed or hated by voters.

What it means is that Dutton does not have the looming election in the bag. Many voters are yet to make up their mind.

The dream of a Labor legacy

Albanese has made a virtue of winning the Labor leadership from the wreckage of a 2019 defeat to Scott Morrison with a singular promise; that he would win successive terms to bed down long-term Labor goals.

History, he suggests, shows that lasting reform, such as Bob Hawke's introduction of Medicare, requires ongoing Labor governments. That ensures changes become embedded in the community and too popular for the other side to unpick.

The chaos of the last Labor government gave Tony Abbott a mandate to dismantle Julia Gillard's carbon tax and mining tax.

Yet the irony is that Albanese's overwhelming desire to avoid the failures of those years appears to have driven an excess of caution.

The prime minister's Overton window is the size of a porthole. The paradox of Albanese's policy conservatism is that he's left Dutton with very little to unwind should the Coalition win.

Former National Party leader and deputy prime minister Tim Fischer used to say that the second term is the sweet spot for governments under the Westminster system. It's when big things can happen.

But that requires using the first term to build an agenda that voters embrace and endorse. On track for oblivion in his first term, Howard took up the GST ahead of the 1998 election to save himself. It worked.

The wrong thing or the hard thing?

There was a telling moment from the PM on Wednesday that points to why so many people say they are disillusioned.

Asked by the Herald-Sun at the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Melbourne about the need to adopt a "bold approach" and overhaul the tax system across state and federal governments, Albanese responded that "tax reform is really hard".

He then lamented last year's attempt to revisit Bill Shorten's 2019 promise to limit negative gearing on investment properties. The initiative was revealed by newspapers in September, triggering a week of fevered speculation before being ruled out.

"If you have Treasury, which are supposed to come up with ideas and analysis, have someone looking at something somewhere that Jim Chalmers or I or Katie Gallagher will never meet and know nothing about, people lose their mind," he said. 

"It becomes a page one, will-you-rule-in rule-out business. And that makes it really tough."

It's an extraordinary response and one that mirrors what he says privately.

The reason we're not doing tax reform, it implies, is not because it's wrong or might harm the nation. It's because it may cause a media storm. And some voters will need a lot of convincing.

The idea that people don't want big change ignores the cost of doing nothing.

Labor has a positive record from its first term, including aged care and NDIS changes, as well as bedding down the first carbon emissions policy in more than a decade.

But negative gearing and capital gains discount reform might have been Albanese's GST.

It would have set up a fight against the Coalition on an issue close to the hearts of voters locked out of the property market. Like it did for Howard, it might yet save his skin.