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The trouble with claiming the high moral ground is it leaves you with further to fall when you fail to reach those heights.
In opposition, Labor would decry tactics that sought to stifle debate and ram legislation through the parliament.
It accused the Coalition of corruption, called for greater transparency in politics and vowed to be better.
The public voted, the Coalition was ousted and Labor moved onto the government benches.
The party's virtuousness only grew in the early days when it emerged that the former prime minister Scott Morrison had secretly sworn himself into five ministries.
"There have been revelations of an extraordinary and unprecedented trashing of our democracy by the former Morrison government," the freshly elected Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.
"This has been government by deception. Government in secret."
Albanese vowed his government would be different. He pledged his government would be transparent, it would respect the parliament and its checks and balances, it would allow debate and be accountable for the decisions it makes.
Yet if this week is anything to go by, Labor has shown time and time again just how far it has fallen from these promises.
Rushing extraordinary powers
Walking up to a press conference on Wednesday, Home Affairs Minster Clare O'Neil and Immigration Minister Andrew Giles looked unrecognisable.
O'Neil arrived in Canberra on the rise. A woman in Labor's right faction, she was going places and unashamedly doing politics differently.
Fellow Victorian Giles, a left-wing factional power broker, made his legal career representing refugees and asylum seekers before entering parliament.
And here they were, fronting cameras, having had their efforts to rush extraordinary immigration powers through the parliament within 36 hours blocked in the Senate.
They were seeking powers that would not only give the government greater scope to punt people from the country but to also be able to outright ban people from certain countries from coming to Australia in the first place.
It was just last year that cabinet minister Tony Burke, the Leader of the House, proudly told the National Press Club club how reticent the government was to use guillotine motions that shutdown debate. And yet this week, within two hours, the House of Representatives rammed through legislation, apparently without any thorough scrutiny of what the government was seeking.
The government still can't explain why there was such urgency.
It is likely the Coalition will ultimately support the government's push. But it managed to create more pain for Labor in the process.
The Senate committee now investigating the proposed laws will report back just days out from the May budget, when Labor hoped to be solely talking about cost-of-living relief and an economy recovering from recession.
Amid the chaotic scenes, O'Neil also faced accusations the head of her department had left the minister's office in tears in February.
While the Coalition has focused on the tears, which the minister and secretary have denied, less has been ventilated about the heart of the alleged dispute — Labor's outrage that the department had released a document they wanted kept private.
'Do your f***ing jobs'
It's not just O'Neil and Giles who have been feeling the pinch of criticism this week.
Albanese has copped it from faith groups and equality campaigners after what's proving to be an ill-fated foray into religious discrimination legislation.
The Coalition accused him of using it as an excuse for breaking an election commitment, while senior members of his own government cast doubt on how truthful his comments at a press conference were.
Labor's push to change the Sex Discrimination Act and introduce a religious discrimination act has been shrouded in secrecy.
Albanese insists that's because it's a sensitive issue and now isn't the time for toxic debates about faith and sexuality.
But on Monday, equality campaigner James Elliot-Watson let rip, speaking inside Parliament House, demanding the government act to protect LGBT+ students and staff from discrimination within religious schools.
"I think the base rate salary for an MP is an excess of $200,000 and they should do their f***ing job," he said.
"I think it's ridiculous that the prime minister wants bipartisan support when he's in the chair — do your job."
By Tuesday, Albanese was telling Labor's caucus he was now willing to work with the Greens to pass the laws if the Coalition was unwilling, prompting a rebuke from faith groups who have accused him of a "betrayal of trust".
No shortage of confidentiality agreements
No shortage of secrecy surrounds what the government is up to at the moment.
Be it changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) or Labor's push to introduce fuel efficiency standards, stakeholders wanting to have a say on shaping government legislation face the prospect of having to sign confidentiality agreements.
It's not new, Labor did the same when it was seeking to change workplace laws last year.
But it's raising eyebrows in the process.
The word unprecedented gets thrown around a lot these days.
Scott Morrison's secret ministries sit in rare political territory. Few, if any, of its prime ministerial predecessors ever accumulated the power he quietly acquired.
His actions were the definition of unprecedented and widely condemned by his own side of politics.
Confidentiality agreements certainly aren't secret ministries. But they silence debate, they limit scrutiny and have the ability to keep hidden what the public has a right to know.
NDAs work and you need only look to their use in keeping quiet horrific abuses that were brought to bear in the MeToo movement to see the impact they can have in the extreme.
To just accept anything less than secret ministries as a return to normality seems to misunderstand what voters have increasingly been saying.
They want their governments — be it federal, state or local — to be honest and open and voters are moving to third parties to find it, something that was again on show in Tasmania's state election.
LoadingAn election looms
Labor started 2024 keen to put 2023 behind it. From the Voice failure to the NZYQ ruling in the High Court, Labor copped a pounding in its first full calendar year in power.
Albanese was eager to put the cost of living firmly back on the radar, finding himself in the rare political landscape of breaking an election commitment (stage 3 tax cuts) and being rewarded for it.
That wind is fast going out of his sail and his government has found itself where it ended last year, fighting fires on many fronts and struggling to take control of the political agenda.
The last week has reignited internal questions about the prospect of a frontbench reshuffle as the election approaches, fuelled even further by ministerial offices briefing against one another.
The PM has done well to keep would be aspirants for his job contained, offering poison-pill portfolios to the likes of former leader Bill Shorten (NDIS), former deputy leader Tanya Plibersek (environment and water), Chris Bowen (climate change and energy), O'Neil (home affairs) and left-wing warrior Giles (immigration).
Reshuffle or not, he's tasked with containing the fractures that could otherwise create even more headaches for his government.
The US President Joe Biden likes to say "don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative".
Labor didn't pledge to just be better than the alternative, it vowed to set new standards.
On that measure, when you consider the secrecy, the attempts to push extraordinary powers through parliament and aversion to public scrutiny, Labor is falling short of its promises.