Madonna King: Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton don’t deserve to be PM

With less than two weeks until polling day voters have a bleak outcome to look forward to either way, writes Madonna King.

Anthony Albanese and his Labor team, after a lacklustre three years, do not deserve a second term. And Peter Dutton and his merry clan of Liberals and Nationals, without an alternative plan that we can believe and support, don’t deserve a first. That’s the quandary voters face, with less than two weeks until polling day. And it’s the reason one or other of these career politicians is likely to fall – rather than race – across the finish line.

Anthony Albanese promised we’d be able to tell our children that “no matter where you live or where you come from, in Australia the doors of opportunity are open to us all’’. That no-one would be held back, and “no-one left behind’”. Remember that, as the ALP snatched government for the first time in almost nine years, and Albanese became Australia’s 31st prime minister? And then the early promised legacy of his leadership – the 2023 Voice referendum – failed, and the ‘working class hero’, as he was tagged, lost his shine.

His leadership whittled away, as fast as his approval rating with voters, as he tried to don the proverbial firefighter’s uniform and put out bushfires across the nation. Housing. Cost of living pressures. The economy. Immigration scandals. Behind the scenes, Peter Dutton – that hardened right-winger who John Howard always saw headed for the Lodge – worked away on both his image and his plans to topple Labor on May 3. Are you better off today than you were three years ago, he asked in a loaded question almost sure to deliver him victory.

Voters, from the tip of Cape York, to the underbelly of Tasmania, had to be honest and say ‘no’. We’re not. We are rationing petrol, wondering how our children will ever own a home, and scared about what a reckless and intemperate leader in another country will do next.

But here’s the pinch. It’s no use asking the question, if you don’t provide an answer.

And Peter Dutton – whether it’s in an election debate, putting his son up to comment on the housing crisis, or backflipping over policies he presumably believes in – has not been able to deliver an answer to the next question

How will you, Sir, ensure we are better off, over the next three years?

If Dutton could produce that answer and we believed him, frustrated and tired and swinging voters would be latching onto his party and the hope of a new beginning.

But at the end of the day, it just seems – like the campaigns – a clever line, drawn up in the back office, in the hope it delivers the big office.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton. Picture: NewsWIre

Of course good policies have popped up in both their manifestos, but they are weighed down by voters’ distrust, a two-party blame game, and an inability of either party to address problems of housing, energy and social equity that have been building for decades.

In the past 25 years, Labor and Liberal governments have had a fairly even stint on the treasury benches, both spending years in setting the national priorities and agenda.

So it is a bit rich – and treats us voters as fools – to blame each other for the challenges we face in 2025. Both have had sufficient opportunity to foresee and limit them.

Nor can calamities be an excuse either. John Howard navigated the 9/11 response, Kevin Rudd the GFC, and Scott Morrison, the Covid-19 epidemic. Our next prime minister will need to navigate polycrisis, created by Donald Trump. And we need to be able to trust them to do that. Perhaps some of this is our own fault. When one of them admits a mistake (eg Dutton in his claims involving the Indonesian president), we line up to attack him.

Likewise, when Albanese says he doesn’t have a plan to implement negative gearing changes if re-elected, many of us nod, but wonder if we really believe him. When Dutton backflips on his own policies, we query whether he’s listening to our feedback, or simply courting our vote.

Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton as he visited the 2025 Royal Easter Show in the electorate of Reid in Sydney NSW. Picture: Richard Dobson / NewsWire

And when Albanese appears to block a friendly greeting from his Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek, none of us wonder if it was accidental, do we? Meanwhile in our own lives, crime continues to dominate our conversations. Another woman is murdered at the hands of someone who claimed to love her, and vulnerable groups – from carers to food banks – plead for financial help, like children. Parents can’t access psychologists for their children, or ADHD drugs that could help thousands.

That massive gap, between promises and practice, is why Anthony Albanese does not deserve to keep his office. And Peter Dutton doesn’t deserve to claim it.

Originally published as Madonna King: Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton don’t deserve to be PM