Political fights tend to provoke immediate sparks and media headlines. Quickly, triumphs and defeats are declared. Which can be a pity, because often the real victor isn’t clear until years down the track.

Last Wednesday, the government was able to celebrate new data showing wages continuing to rise – and faster than they were. With inflation trending down, this meant Labor could boast about a year and a half of wages rising faster than prices. Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the figures showed “just how spectacularly wrong some people have been when they’ve talked about fears of a wage-price spiral in our economy”.

These were strong words from Chalmers – but entirely fair. There have been quite a few warnings since Labor came to power about the dangers of wage hikes pushing prices up even further – from the Coalition, business groups, economists and the Reserve Bank.

It’s important to recognise this is not only an argument about Labor’s day-to-day economic management – itself a crucial political battleground. It also takes in Labor’s changes to industrial relations laws with their intended effect on wages and the government’s push for higher wages in care sectors. So this is a proxy battle over Labor’s broader agenda.

Of course, the economists can comfort themselves with the fact that just because the wage-price spiral didn’t happen doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened. Warnings can be reasonable even when the danger doesn’t materialise. Politicians, though, have to make and test their bets in real time. On this one, Chalmers and his colleagues have earned the right to crow.

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Which is the theme of the moment. There are, for example, arguments to be had about exactly why the government won the election in such spectacular fashion. And such arguments – including just how much influence Donald Trump had – are important, because of the lessons Labor takes into this term. In the end, though, unlike most of us, Anthony Albanese had to test whatever theories he had on polling day. Obviously, that test worked out pretty well for him.

It’s clear, too, from the way the other parties are operating that they think Albanese has tapped into something broader going on.

At the election, voters clung to the centre. Slow-and-steady Labor did well, the Greens and the increasingly right-wing Liberal Party were punished. In response, the Liberals, Nationals and Greens have all chosen leaders closer to the centre than some of the alternatives.