Disunity is death, but can the federal government rein in the blame game?

The problem with delivering a searing political take-down in the modern era is the ease with which it can come back to haunt you. That is the diabolical predicament dogging Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

As shadow treasurer, Chalmers accused then-prime minister Scott Morrison of having "an excuse for everything and a plan for nothing".

"When things are going well in the economy he takes all of the credit, and when times are tough in the economy he takes none of the responsibility," he said in 2022 after the Reserve Bank lifted interest rates for the first time in more than a decade.

Now, if rates go up again on Tuesday, as widely tipped, there will have been 17 interest rate rises by the RBA since Labor came to office. To be fair, there were also three cuts in 2025.

Chalmers attacked the Coalition government for the higher repayments Australians faced, with the following line: "If only you could pay your mortgage with Scott Morrison's excuses."

Now his critics are replaying those attack lines against him, as evidence of hypocrisy. Social media clips feature his attacks on Morrison and contrast them with Chalmers currently pointing to global pressures for spiking inflation.

But it is not just the economic numbers worrying the government.

Yesterday, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher appeared on Insiders and did her best to dismiss claims of internal party tensions.

Labor insiders were in despair over a media report last Friday suggesting Chalmers wanted to go harder on cutting spending, only to be blocked by the PM's allies on the government's Expenditure Review Committee (ERC).

Gallagher, who is a member of the ERC and also a key part of the PM's praetorian guard, has long been known by those in Canberra as crucial to bridging relations between Albanese and Chalmers.

She dismissed suggestions of tension between the two, describing their working relationship as professional, saying individuals come at things from "slightly different perspectives."

Those slightly different perspectives are now the source of feverish speculation.

While Chalmers last week told media outlets he owned his share of responsibility for decision-making, Gallagher emphasised she was part of the government's economic team and also had the job of saying no to her colleagues.

Her message was clear: it wasn't just Chalmers blocking spending requests from ministers hungry for more money — she too was a blocker of largesse.

Pushing back against a growing narrative that Labor is a high-spending government, Gallagher made the point that they are governing in a very different world from Howard and other past governments.

"There should be some acknowledgement of the world in which we are living. NDIS, AUKUS, defence, aged care and interest on government debt; all of these continue to be significant pressures," she said.

"We can't pretend these pressures on the budget aren't coming."

Gallagher's comments offer two insights into the government.

The first, her pivot to talking about circumstances now being more challenging and complex than past governments have endured, is sensible, reflects the reality and demonstrates that Labor knows voters are fed up with the government continuing to blame far-off conflicts for cost-of-living pressures.

More telling, though, were Gallagher's attempts to downplay division in Labor; she was out this weekend to hose down the raging fire of division talk.

While Chalmers rejected any link to last week's media story about him wanting to deliver a more austere set of cuts, his colleagues have told this column they are not convinced.

They see it as an attempt to distance him from the government's big spending that is under scrutiny for putting pressure on inflation.

The thing about stories like this is they become process stories — who is doing the leaking and who is trying to undermine whom?

The premium the prime minister had on unity is eroding, because even if they are sporadic, process stories about internal issues show the media and opposition there is trouble within.

Once this narrative starts to take hold, tensions around the cabinet table become more of a focus than the policy problems before them.

Who leaked what and when is relevant and irrelevant in equal measure. The main problem is that a government that had prided itself on unity — one of Albanese's strongest commodities — is suddenly not looking very unified.

As households continue to grapple with power prices and the cost of groceries and petrol, the government appearing to focus on who said what and where is the quickest way to alienate voters.

Disunity is death for any government, and those in power know this political reality.

Can the creeping disunity narrative be put back in the box now? If the government's senior ministers don't find a way to shut it down, the problems will only grow, and the government will lose any chance of taking control of the story about how it plans to fix the country's economic woes.

Victorians will go to the polls at the end of this month. With Labor on track for a defeat, federal MPs are keen to ensure this election is characterised as a referendum on the 12-year reign of Daniel Andrews and his successors.

They will not want any blame to be attached to the broader economic malaise facing households.

But with process stories starting to appear in the media, a catastrophic Labor result in Victoria will only further stoke tensions in its federal ranks.

A loss in Victoria might be easy to blame on the state government, its governance failures and other scandals. But with New South Wales going to the polls in March, it will be harder for federal Labor to park a second bad result squarely with the state.

The fancy Birdcage at Flemington is where politicians used to go on Melbourne Cup Day to wear fancy outfits and have a punt.

It will be a brave politician who goes near the races on Tuesday when the RBA delivers a decision expected to put another handbrake on Australian households.

Patricia Karvelas is host of ABC News Afternoon Briefing at 4pm weekdays on ABC News Channel, co-host of the weekly Party Room podcast with Fran Kelly and host of politics and news podcast Politics Now.