Labor might portray this week’s unscheduled gathering of the Parliamentary party in Canberra for policy talks and social drinks as just another event during a crowded year but the stakes are really much bigger.

There’s great pressure on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to relaunch himself after what was a year of failure, disappointment and reluctance to face up to the realities and challenges of modern political life.

It’s no accident this get-together of the House and Senate MPs is occurring the day before Albanese delivers a critical address to the National Press Club.

This kind of political and policy launch pad used to be a firm fixture of the political calendar. Sometimes it really does make history as happened on January 30, 2013 when a wounded and struggling Julia Gillard used that day to shock everyone – making the earliest ever announcement of an election date for Saturday, September 14, seven and a half months down the track.

Of course, the election was held a week earlier on September 7 and Gillard was nowhere to be seen. Kevin Rudd had staged a reverse ferret coup and took back the leadership with Albanese as his deputy.

So, don’t ever underestimate what might be in one of these “big event” Australia Day week speeches.

We can safely rule out Albanese announcing a late 2024 election, unless he has completely lost his grip on reality. For one thing the election will most certainly be in the first months of 2025.

What we’ll most likely hear is a suite of policy measures aimed at digging the government out of its polling slump, revitalising the mood of a Caucus as grumpy as the voters since mid-2023 and providing a path ahead for the next 12 months.

The government is right to hang a lantern on the problem of cost of living pressures felt in the community. It is sweeping into the kitchen table conversations, the dinner table daily post-mortems and just about every encounter people have through the day.

Housing costs are just as relentless now as they’ve been during the past 12 months, despite talk of an “easing” of interest rate increases. This talk has to translate into more than just words and become a reality over time.

Rental increases are even worse, covering a greater cohort of voters – especially in lower income brackets and younger age groups. These people, as many as one in three in many electorates, feel locked out of home ownership with no sight of the door in, let alone the key to the door.

Grocery prices are on a one escalator upwards. Clueless bosses of Coles and Woolworths, making up three quarters of the market, and Aldi and Metcash making up another five percent or so, have little or no regard for their customers.

Politicians might not be able to wave a wand to fix the problem of checkout price sticker shock but they can demonstrate they are on the side of the consumer – and voter. This is why state premiers like Queensland’s Steven Miles and Chris Minns in NSW have had the supermarket bosses in for a “please explain” session, talks intended to be followed with a parliamentary inquiries into pricing transparency.

Federally, Albanese has rattled the Labor cupboards of old and found one-time Queensland minister Craig Emerson – now a consulting economist – to do his own desk top review.

The LNP’s Peter Dutton was making some headway on pricing pressures but wasted that effort with a politically hamfisted move to turn a hip pocket issue into a culture war clanger by going after Woolworths on its stand over Australia Day merchandise.

It was dumb, without strategic focus and of next to no political benefit.

The LNP should be uniting the broader centre right (including the small l Liberals lost in the disastrous Scott Morrison experience), Dutton is appealing to a tiny base of the divisive right wing which the party is not in danger of losing and Labor could not capture.

If Dutton keeps playing this game, he’ll ensure his unelectability.

While Dutton’s overweened self-confidence could provide one narrative for the year, it’s going to be the deft agility – or lack thereof – in Albanese’s political management that will provide the main game.

If the Peter Pan of the New South Wales Steering Committee (as the old socialist hard left faction was called in the Arthur Gietzelt/Bruce Child days) is to recover his apparently lost mojo, he’ll need to make this week successful and memorable.

The government’s first 20 months in office have been less than the sum of the parts at hand – achievements fitted best into ticking the boxes for keeping promises and meeting some inevitable challenges.

What’s been missing has been an over-arching narrative – the story that all successful political outfits have to connect with the voters, taking the electorate both into the government’s confidence and along for the road.

For examples of this listen to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama at their best or Tony Blair when he wasn’t on about nation building in the Middle East.

Anyone interested in dipping into the theory of the new year relaunch should begin by listening to The Sunday Times politics podcast on the topic (bit.ly/3vLacVN) which features Blairite brains-trust grandee Peter Mandelson, Times political journo Daniel Finkelstein and former Lib/Dems policy and politics guru Polly Mackenzie.

This week is likely to show some thinking without challenging any orthodoxy or breaking down walls of creativity.

It sounds like there will be further “cost of living” relief – probably a reprise of the 2023, $3 billion energy bill relief fund which provided targeted assistance to pensioners and others on income support for direct cuts to quarterly invoices.

The other area to be addressed is what to do about the controversial stage three tax cuts which become a reality for everyone earning more than $45,000 a year from July 1 this year.
As recently as last week Albanese repeated his pledge to go ahead with the tax cuts although some Lake Burley Griffin Kremlinologists note subtle changes in words being used – is there wriggle room? We’’ll see.

A possible way through is to have tax relief by another means: keeping the stage three cuts while reintroducing the low and middle-income tax offset, a rebate that gives an annual cash bonus of about $1000 a year. It’s not a fist full of dollars but it is a way through the hair-splitting, eye-watering, headache-inducing tax cuts debate.

Albanese needs to do something but his innate caution and learned conservatism is stopping him going big, going bold or going for broke.
This is something he may come to regret and it may leave him wondering what might have happened if was little braver and willing to aim higher.

The story about Gillard using her Australia Day Press Club speech to shock the nation is used as an example of the power of these occasions.
However, she needed to change the conversation because she was under attack from inside her party with Rudd running an insurgency that was never going to let up.

Albanese has no such internal threat. But a look at the Newspoll numbers from January 2013 and this month show one thing he does share with Gillard is the state public opinion.
Labor’s vote is soft, Albanese’s position is weak and the strength of the Greens/teals vote share means a minority government is a strong possibility.

That should be troubling whichever way you look at it. Thursday might not be his last shot but it is close to his most important since the election.