2 days Ago By Paul Sakkal
The Anthony Albanese who stood in the Prime Minister’s Courtyard last Friday ready to call the election has come a long way from the opposition leader who flubbed his first day on the 2022 campaign when he couldn’t remember the cash rate. Back then, an embarrassing photo of him poking his tongue out as he failed to recall key economic data was whacked on newspaper front pages. Now Albanese has been projecting confidence – and potential hubris – by having made his first campaign stop in Peter Dutton’s Queensland seat of Dickson on Saturday.
In an interview with this masthead, the man seeking to be the first prime minister since John Howard to serve two full terms said he was more battle-hardened than last time and more comfortable in his ability to lead. “I’ve had three years’ more experience, and I’ve been prime minister for three years. The period of opposition was difficult because we had COVID for a long time.
I had a car accident, and it took a while to recover from that as well,” he said. “It means I’m just more confident.” As a series of polls showed Labor clawing back momentum after some sloppy months for the Coalition, Albanese is pitching himself as the better manager of inflation before Tuesday’s interest rate decision, even though his government is one of the highest-spending in decades.
He labelled the Coalition’s fuel excise cut “a temporary cash injection which will put upward pressure on inflation”, in one of his sharpest criticisms of the opposition measure. Albanese cannot afford to be complacent. The campaign is a five-week slog.
A hint of grumpiness and energy policy discomfort emerged on Sunday. On Monday, the Liberals started blasting social media ads of Albanese mistakenly using a double-negative that meant he left open the prospect of doing a politically toxic coalition deal with the Greens. The prime minister has been training for the campaign for months.
He hit the road over summer for a tour of key states when most Australians were still lamenting Sam Konstas’ omission from the Sydney Test. It acted as a campaign test run with a travelling media pack and lots of local media appearances around set-piece announcements all in one day, meaning he has had far more practice than Dutton. In January, Albanese rolled out the “Building Australia’s Future” slogan; buttressed by spending on Medicare, childcare, TAFE and schools.
The plan was to contrast this with Dutton, whose talk of waste and efficiency drives Labor to portray it as a rhetorical match-up between building and cutting. “Scott Morrison had the advantage of incumbency [in the 2022 campaign]. He was someone who’d campaigned before and been successful.
He was prepared for the campaign. Peter Dutton hasn’t done the hard work,” Albanese said. On Friday, soon after the election was called, Dutton called in to radio station 2SM to insist he was ready to run the country.
“I’ve led a united team, I’ve had the experience as the defence minister, as the home affairs minister, immigration minister, the health minister, the assistant treasurer. I’ve worked with John Howard and every prime minister since then. I have the experience and the ability to lead our country and to take the tough decisions that are needed.
” Getting Albanese ready for game day has not been easy. The making of Albanese, public speaker, has had three phases. In the lead up to the 2022 campaign, his media chief Liz Fitch worked hard to whittle down Albanese’s rambling answers.
These old habits crept back after he was elected, displayed most clearly by his lengthy, overdetailed sales pitch during the failed Voice to Parliament referendum. As Dutton started to dominate the agenda with his laser focus on the Gaza war, the Voice referendum and the fallout from the High Court detainee decision, Albanese reshuffled his office, brought in more experienced hands and centralised the messaging. His senior media advisers Fiona Sugden and Katharine Murphy are with the prime minister on the trail along with speechwriter James Newton and decades-long Albanese staffer and friend Jeff Singleton.
Health Minister Mark Butler is Albanese’s surprise secret weapon. He is travelling with the prime minister on his campaign jet, demonstrating both the importance of Butler’s advocacy of the $8.5 billion Medicare centrepiece and Butler’s underrated rank as a trusted confidante of Albanese, rivalling Penny Wong and Katy Gallagher.
In a press conference on Friday, Albanese pulled himself up when he was about to acknowledge his limitations as a leader. He knows he is no orator like Paul Keating, and says as much in private, but he firmly believes his government has been a good one that “deserves” another term. “I see myself as the captain of the team, I’m not playing halfback, hooker and fullback and front row.
I’ve run a proper cabinet government,” he said. “It is an incredibly competent, experienced and effective team. They have taken what was a mess in so many areas.
Aged care was in crisis. Childcare was on the verge of collapse. The NDIS was at risk of being unsustainable.
Migration was completely unregulated in some ways. Defence was all about media releases.” Albanese says Dutton is unfit to govern, and his shadow ministers are not up to it.
“I’ve never seen such an under-prepared opposition leader,” Albanese said of Dutton. “I think Peter Dutton hasn’t done the hard work. The budget replies, the four of them – none of them have had centrepieces that have been anything other than lazy.
” Running counter to the views of a host of Labor elders who say Labor’s weak 2022 election mandate hampered it this term, Albanese insists: “We have been a reforming government.” He claimed Labor’s had a “really sound economic record” even though its two surpluses emanated largely from what economist Chris Richardson called lucky revenue boosts averaging $80 billion a year. Not everyone agrees.
Hawke-Keating-era legend Bill Kelty argues in a this month that “the Albanese government may be the first since James Scullin that has not left working people better off at the end of its term”. Kelty said if Albanese failed to win more seats than Dutton, he would go down as Labor’s equivalent of the much-dismissed Billy McMahon. Albanese believes he will avoid Scullin’s fate as the leader of the last one-term government in 1932.
“Last time around I spoke about the fourth quarter and kicking with the wind in the fourth quarter. I’ve had the same approach this time,” Albanese said..
