Albo’s challenge: Avoid becoming Kamala 2.0

By demonising Peter Dutton in the same way Kamala Harris demonised Donald Trump, the prime minister risks a similar result in next year’s poll, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Few people – other than the mentally unhinged such as myself – actually like politics or politicians.

For them, most elections are simply a choice between the lesser of two evils, and in all such choices it’s better the devil you know.

This is the challenge the PM faces as the election looms. Do people have a strong sense of who he is and what he stands for? And even if Labor were to successfully cast Peter Dutton as the devil incarnate, would it actually stop him from winning?

Witness the US election result one month and a lifetime ago. Kamala Harris presented herself as the saviour of democracy who would literally bring joy to the world, while Donald Trump was presented as Hitler.

I’ll have to check my notes to see how that turned out.

The irony is that perhaps the biggest factor in Trump’s thumping victory wasn’t Trump himself, but Harris’s almost transcendent vacuousness and vagueness.

“No one knows what she stands for,” a former Australian politician now living in a Democratic state told me weeks before the poll.

US Vice President Kamala Harris and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese could share similar fates. Picture: SAUL LOEB / AFP

He said he expected the Republicans to win everything. He was right.

Even if voters believed a fraction of the Harris hysteria about Trump being the devil, he was at least the devil they knew.

It is therefore no surprise that attempts to demonise Peter Dutton as Australia’s Donald Trump appear on track to produce a similar result.

The further you go to the left and the more obsessed people are with politics – albeit with less and less actual understanding of it – the less it becomes about delivering for ordinary people and the more about simply expressing their hatred for the clichéd old roll call of bogeymen.

Be it Donald Trump or John Howard or Margaret Thatcher, you could simply swap out the names and everything else would be the same: unthinkable, inhuman, banshee harbingers of the apocalypse.

Yet these have been the most successful political leaders of their generation because at least people knew where they stood and what they stood for, even if they didn’t always agree with them.

Take Howard’s bold and unequivocal positions on gun control, GST and asylum seekers. Precious few voters would have supported all three but it nonetheless projected a leader of strong values and resolve.

By contrast, the great Kim Beazley was fatally cast as indecisive and weak on border protection, even though he was widely liked by the Australian public.

Anthony Albanese is also widely liked, including by some of his biggest critics. Several have privately told me they would much rather have a beer with Albo than with the Opposition Leader.

But even more people would rather just have a beer with their mates and leave the politicians to run the country.

And so it’s not necessarily about who you like so much as who you know. Whose decision-making on the myriad issues they will be faced with is something you feel you can gauge, whether they crack a smile while doing it or not.

Thus you can see – especially since the US election – a deliberate shift away from Labor attempting to paint Dutton as divisive and negative, or his nuclear plan as being extreme or dangerous.

Instead, the policy is being studiously undermined as being logistically unrealistic, economically unviable and inadequate to Australia’s energy needs, making the Coalition appear like the immature parties in the debate rather than the Labor MPs posting memes of three-eyed fish.

Likewise, sensible Labor types haven’t fallen for Dutton’s cheeky attempt to lure them into a culture war over how many flags should be in the background at press conferences, instead casting it as his preoccupation while they are focused on addressing the cost of living.

But while the inner-city left might sneer at both of these headline-grabbing policy positions, they cleverly stake out clearly what Dutton stands for: bold policy action and strong traditional values.

Albanese and Harris are from the same side of politics. Picture: PMO

It communicates straight to the electorate’s amygdala that he is a good old-fashioned can-do guy.

It’s basic but effective. It is not difficult to imagine what Peter Dutton’s response would be to most situations.

Albanese has a tougher challenge. Having come from the left he needs to convince people day in day out that he is now truly a man of the centre and shares traditional, instinctive, mainstream Australian values.

I believe it, but it is clear that the rest of the electorate needs some convincing, especially amid the economic and social upheaval we are going through.

And that is why the PM needs to stake his ground and champion those values if his government is to survive.

Listen to The Real Story with Joe Hildebrand wherever you obtain your favourite podcasts.