A week out, Albanese insists he’s not complacent. But he’s certainly something

Anthony Albanese wants it on the record: he is not feeling cocky about Labor’s election prospects. “There’s no complacency from my camp, I assure you of that,” the prime minister told reporters at a press conference this week. “And this election is certainly up for grabs.”

He went on to publicly remind his Labor colleagues about Bill Shorten’s devastating 2019 loss, when the bookmakers paid out a Labor victory that never eventuated.

But actions speak louder than words, as the cliche goes. And the Albanese I have witnessed in action over the past week on the campaign trail has exuded a calm confidence, a man who looks like he is surfing a wave to victory on May 3.

Far from frenetic, the penultimate week of campaigning has been positively languid by the normally gruelling standards. A week bookended by public holidays was always going to be a more low-key affair, but Albanese has leant into the sedate pace. It was not the behaviour of someone trying to upend the dynamics of the campaign or scrounge for every last vote. The contrast with Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has been stark.

On Good Friday, Albanese’s sole event was, literally, a walk in the park, accompanied by dog Toto. Dutton, meanwhile, attended a Maronite church service packed with 20,000 people.

A walk in the park: Albanese with fiancee Jodie Haydon and dog Toto on Good Friday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

On Saturday, Albanese dropped into the Royal Easter show to pat some goats and alpacas before spending an hour that night as a guest on The Rest Is Politics podcast.

Albanese holds a sleeping goat at the Royal Easter Show.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

It was engaging listening but something of an indulgence given the show’s audience is mostly overseas. Almost all Australian listeners would be highly engaged political junkies who have already made up their minds, not swinging voters in western Sydney or the outskirts of Melbourne.

On Easter Sunday, Albanese attended Mass before dropping into The Footy Show to chat rugby league. The calculus was clear: there’s no point expending too much energy over the Easter break because Australians have switched off politics and tuned out the news. This seemed to suit the Labor campaign just fine.

Monday was a packed day with a visit to the marginal Gilmore on the NSW South Coast and a yum cha lunch in Box Hill in Melbourne.

That night came the type of black swan event that can throw campaigns off course: the death of Pope Francis. Albanese, who was raised Catholic, immediately seized the significance of the event, quickly heading to a church before attending Mass the following morning. His statement the next day was pitch perfect, and his affection for the pontiff palpable. The planned events that day in Melbourne were cancelled, freezing the campaign on a day that should have represented a return to full-force electioneering following the Easter long weekend.

After an event in his seat of Grayndler, much of the next two days were chewed up flying to and from Western Australia, where he taunted Dutton by visiting the site of a potential nuclear power plant.

As in the first week of the campaign, mind games at times seemed more at play than electoral mathematics – like Albanese’s decision to hand out how-to-vote cards at an early voting station in opposition defence spokesman Andrew Hastie’s electorate of Canning. He also found time to mingle socially with journalists – something Dutton has resolutely avoided – and pour beers at a brewery in Fremantle, where he looked in his element.

Albanese gives a thumbs up to a patron after pouring them a beer.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The big policy announcement of the week – the creation of a critical minerals reservation – was made not at a rare earths mine but at a grain storage facility on the outskirts of Perth in the newly created marginal seat of Bullwinkel. On Anzac Day, Albanese attended the dawn service in Canberra but did not do any other campaigning. Dutton, meanwhile, began the day with two events in Brisbane and dropped into Townsville to play two-up at an RSL. Strangely, the key electoral battleground of the NSW Central Coast has not received a single visit during the campaign.

Movement, of course, does not necessarily equal momentum. The more frantic pace of Dutton’s campaign could well represent desperation rather than focus given the drift away from him in the polls. And it’s questionable, in the modern media age, how much leader visits to specific seats matter electorally, especially in the capital cities. Albanese’s advisers look satisfied that they are executing their game plan and hitting their marks.

To the growing annoyance of the travelling press pack, the prime minister has run his daily press conferences in a mostly masterful way, conducting them like a maestro in front of an orchestra. Albanese insists upon orderly conduct, moving in one direction and rarely accepting follow-up questions from reporters. The travelling media has struggled to find a clear line of attack on Labor’s policies; the disjointed array of topics each day has rarely put Albanese under pressure.

By contrast, Dutton’s press conferences have been far more lively and adversarial. In part, this reflects the largely error-free nature of Albanese’s campaign. Dutton has given the media plenty to work with by stumbling over the Coalition’s electric vehicle policy and announcing a massive increase in defence spending without specifics on how it would be spent.

This changed on Thursday when Albanese got into a tangle discussing, of all things, his on-stage trip in the first week of the campaign. In the morning, he named falling off the stage in Cessnock as his worst moment of the campaign, but then appeared to quickly backtrack on this by quibbling over what had occurred in an extended back-and-forth with reporters on the topic. The discipline that has dominated his campaign suddenly disappeared over a point of pride.

With just a week remaining until election day, the pace of campaigning will pick up dramatically. If Albanese performs strongly on May 3, the past week will be seen as of little consequence. If he falls short of growing expectations, it will be dissected as a missed opportunity.

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