If Albanese repeats his performance over negative gearing, he can kiss the election goodbye

“Voters don’t deserve to be treated as fools by politicians. They deserve much, much better than that.” So said Anthony Albanese recently.

OK, so Albanese didn’t say that exactly. What he actually said, when he launched a draft of the mandatory food code to try to stop consumer ripoffs by supermarkets, was: “Customers don’t deserve to be treated as fools by the supermarkets. They deserve much, much better than that.”

Credit: Dionne Gain

Two days later, after this masthead revealed that Treasury was reviewing changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax, he completely forgot his own caution and proceeded to do exactly what he warned Coles and Woolies not to do. He treated his customers – the voters – like mugs.

The fact Peter Dutton has played this game on a much grander, more serious scale with his nuclear “plan”, along with his relentless quest for issues guaranteed to divide the community, does not excuse what Albanese did. Albanese has to do much, much better.

Showing his contempt for Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, Dutton says he will produce his costings at a time that suits him, not Bowen. That contempt filters through to voters who have a right to know, well before polling day, how much they will be up for and whether Dutton’s numbers and timelines stack up.

Nor does it help anybody that the Greens insist on revelling in whatever mayhem is going – conflict in the Middle East, union corruption, a rental crisis – without regard for consequences or cost.

The Greens, with Max Chandler-Mather (now dubbed Mad Max inside parliament) as de facto leader, treat housing like they treated climate change – that nothing is better than something or that the fight, whether on Gaza or the CFMEU or housing, is worth more than the solution.

They will be tested again on the stalled housing bills – as will the Coalition – when parliament resumes.

The teals have not only robbed the Liberals of voters, they have encroached on the Greens in the leafier suburbs where they were once a respectably radical alternative to the major parties. The Greens’ shift to the extremes will frighten off voters in seats such as Ryan and Brisbane, while thwarting potential gains elsewhere, like Macnamara or Sturt.

However, Albanese garnered most of the unflattering attention, after insisting on conducting a blizzard of interviews where he delivered confusing, evasive, unconvincing messages on tax instead of just concentrating on delivering one clear, credible response at one press conference.

Inside the senior echelons of the government there was anger over the Treasury leak, frustration over the handling of it by the prime minister and Treasurer Jim Chalmers, and despair that once again they had overshadowed their own achievements.

They reckon the motive for the leak – whether to kill off the prospect of such tax changes or to force the government to act to dispel accusations of timidity or weakness – was malicious, regardless of its intent. Not on any level was it seen as helpful.

That often happens. However, the way to handle events, dear boys, is truthfully and swiftly. Otherwise, the level of mistrust towards major parties because of the way they do business will continue to grow, further encouraging the mass desertion to independents.

Albanese chose to follow his government’s usual practice of allowing either avoidable or easily fixable issues to run for days (sometimes for weeks or months) so they keep distracting from their own good news stories, which this time included a drop in inflation and another whopping surplus to make it two in a row.

The government’s management of the economy, under the stewardship of Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, has helped bring inflation down, kept employment up and increased prospects of an interest rate cut early next year. No mean feat given what the government inherited.

Maybe the prime minister was completely unaware of what Chalmers had commissioned from Treasury (which Chalmers eventually, excruciatingly, clearly admitted), but it should have been sorted by one conversation on the morning the story broke.

For starters, Albanese should have adopted different language from that which he used in the lead-up to the broken promise on the stage 3 tax cuts. Everybody knows the “we have no plans” response only applies to this minute. Not surprisingly, it led to accusations the government can’t be trusted and that it has a secret plan on tax. Expect to hear a lot more of that.

Albanese also said he did not ask for the work to be done because he is not the treasurer. Then he said he didn’t ask the treasurer if he had commissioned it. And why would he, you ask? He is only the prime minister after all, as he is prone to reminding people. Perhaps he didn’t want to know the answer.

If they did not communicate, either by speaking or texting directly, that would suggest there is something seriously wrong with their relationship. That is not the case. If they did communicate (and my sources say they did), and the result was the debacle we all witnessed, largely thanks to the prime minister’s train wreck media strategy, that is a profound problem.

If such a performance is repeated during the campaign, Labor can kiss the election goodbye.

An honest answer – that it would be negligent not to get expert advice on options to resolve a housing crisis and that any decisions would be informed by the evidence – usually works best. Certainly much, much better than slipping and sliding around treating people like fools.

Releasing Treasury’s review, then saying clearly what, if anything, they will do about it might help with the political recovery. It would also help if the prime minister occasionally reacquainted himself with the concept that less is more.

Niki Savva is a regular columnist and author of The Road to Ruin, Plots and Prayers and Bulldozed, the trilogy chronicling nine years of Coalition rule.

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