Nicholas Stuart | Anthony Albanese's performance at King Charles coronation shows his biggest deficit

Childcare workers might sound ridiculously bureaucratic as they urge crying, squabbling children to "use their words", but they're teaching an important skill. They're trying to encourage clarity. By encouraging frustrated kids to turn their huge, complex bundles of fierce emotions into concrete desires they create new ways forward.

This is critical. You can't escape the old blockages by charging harder and harder at a locked door. It's always better to pause first, stand back, look for the handle, and then turn it rather than just shove your way down the old paths.

These are skills the PM could - should - have used when asked if he'd be offering an affirmation of allegiance to the new King at the coronation. Anthony Albanese said he would. He quite happily allowed other people to place words in his mouth.

The place he chose to do this was equally bizarre. Piers Morgan is a controversial host for good reason. As an editor he was embroiled in phone-hacking allegations and happily slags off at both celebrities and those who can't hit back. Appearing on his program was a decision almost as lacking in taste as attending the wedding of a repeatedly censured radio shock-jock in company with people who've been caught up on the wrong side of the law.

The question he'd be hit with was blindingly obvious and yet Albanese went in completely unprepared. Asked if he would recite a newly invented pledge, the PM said yes.

It would have been so easy to deflect; to demur; to point out that he didn't normally use the word "unto"; or even just say that Australians are having a long-term conversation about our future and leave it there. That's using your words. That's not what Albanese did.

Attempting to look genuine and desperately currying favour with a British audience, he instead grovelled. Not content with just affirming that Charles is now King, he endorsed disinherited Harry and Andrew and the entire shebang without a murmur of doubt or making any attempt to take control of the words being slammed into his mouth by others.

Later Albanese compounded the error, telling the ABC "it's not up to me as prime minister to impose my position on Australia". What utter rubbish. Every politician does this every day because this is an exact description of their job.

In the end Albanese was saved not by his words but by the British public. Unsurprisingly a huge public backlash had ignited contempt and ridicule and the original wording - which was nothing more than some intellectual dribbling from the Archbishop of Canterbury (he was the bloke wearing the dress during the ceremony, not the guy wearing armour or the one with the bejewelled crown that's too heavy to wear). The words were changed but, by then, who really cared what the PM was going to say because it's become obvious he'll say anything.

What's seemingly missing in his mind is the ability to pause, think, and create the space to consider if there might be other, better, alternatives than the structures that are imposed by others.

Just because an archbishop thinks something might be a good idea doesn't mean you have to accept it. Indeed, the very fact that a prelate endorses some particular interpretation of reality often works as a signal that it's the wrong way to go. Successful people don't simply accept other people's definitions.

You'll never find a solution to a problem by engaging in the old game of follow the leader or choosing paths that lead down dead ends. The only way to escape an impasse is by creating new ways forward. Doing this requires stepping back to look at the big picture.

It really doesn't matter if Albanese wants to plight his troth to a dysfunctional family that can't even bear to stay together for their big day. What is of real importance are the issues we face as a country in a world where the temperature is being turned up every day.

The Northern Territory Chief Minister Natasha Fyles seems to believe concerns about global warming needn't apply to her desire to frack the Beetaloo Basin for gas. She's too busy focusing on the money and jobs to worry about the warnings of hundreds of scientists.

A huge drilling rig had arrived in the territory even before the official announcement (someone must have been pretty confident the miners would get the go-ahead) and the share price of fracker Tamboran Resources soared 20 per cent on the day. The company stresses coal emits far higher concentrations of carbon.

What it doesn't acknowledge is excess (and incredibly damaging) methane emissions. What Albanese hasn't been prepared to address is the effect this development will have on the nation's overall effort to reduce our status as a major global producer of fossil fuels.

Issues like these are far bigger than worrying about who's swearing fealty to whom. Bob Hawke's federal Labor government used our cultural heritage obligations to overturn state government attempts to dam the Tasmanian wilderness.

If Albanese was genuinely concerned about the warming of the planet it's difficult not to believe he'd take similar action. Our international environmental obligations, not to mention a simple desire to continue living in a habitable planet, should have prompted the PM to act.

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Instead we've heard nothing.

Rather than actively creating and brokering new ways ahead, Albanese is allowing events to dictate his future. The PM has already allowed the disintegration of a project by Mike Cannon-Brooks and Andrew Forrest that would have exported clean, solar energy to our Asian neighbours, and now this.

The biggest deficit problem Labor faces isn't financial - it's lacking in imagination. Albanese needs to find the right words to inspire us and create a vision of what positive change might look like.