James Morrow: Why voters want more than a fight over ‘Mr Nice Guy’ title

In an increasingly dangerous world Labor is trying to set up a battle that sees personality count more than policy, writes James Morrow.

Wouldn’t it be nice if just once Australia got an election that was a battle of ideas rather than personality?

Let us take a quick tour de horizon, as the French say.

As you read these words, Ukraine is being mauled by Russian troops, Taiwan is being eyed off by Xi Jinping, Joe Biden is staring aimlessly into space, inflation is on the march and whispered talk of food shortages are becoming louder.

And here in Australia?

Driven largely by Labor and sympathetic sections of the media including the ABC, we are about to have an electoral contest based on whether or not the current prime minister is a jerk.

Never mind the truth of the claims of bullying behaviour or whether or not plenty of those lining up to stick the boot into the prime minister might have some sort of ulterior motive.

Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) and Chinese President Xi Jinping pose for a photograph during their meeting in Beijing, on February 4, 2022. Picture: Alexei Druzhinin / Sputnik / AFP

The fact is that as clever as they think they are turning next month’s poll into a personality contest, there are actually huge risks for the opposition if they go down this road and try to sneak into government without exposing their policies to proper scrutiny.

Because by turning this into a referendum on personality, the ALP risks coming off second best if voters decide to stick with the proverbial devil they know.

To put it another way, Anthony Albanese has been kicking around Parliament House for more than two decades but, despite the big makeover, people don’t quite know who he is.

Is he the inner-city craft beer guy who DJs and fights Tories?

Anthony Albanese, aka ‘DJ Albo’, at The Corner Hotel in 2016. Picture: Supplied

Or is he the fighting-fit middle-aged bloke with nice specs who’s taken off weight, got some new clothes and is an economic centrist who wants to work with business rather than man the barricades?

In classic “who would you rather have a beer with” terms, Labor is setting up a contest between knocking back six or eight schooners of Carlton with the Steve Miller Band on the jukebox with the PM and choking down a pint of Sneaky Fish Brewery’s new “Purple Haze” Raspberry Sour while listening to The Killers on vinyl with Albo.

It is easy to see how Labor’s appeals to personality will play well with the Twitter classes and those plugged into politics.

But the same strategy also risks highlighting the normality of Mr Morrison that plays so well with voters, particularly when compared to the relatively blank canvas of Mr Albanese.

Yet it is easy to see why they want to keep it on this seemingly safe ground. Bill Shorten’s campaign really came unstuck when he was seen to be unable to answer straightforward questions about tax and climate policy.

Scott Morrison may be the devil voters know, but Albanese is a blank canvas. Picture: Damian Shaw

Mr Shorten’s ducking of questions from journalists on the campaign trail and ordinary voters, and the subsequent pursuit of those issues by this newspaper, are today considered factors that contributed to Labor’s unexpected defeat in the May 2019 election.

If it is simply a question of who is seen to be the more caring bloke, cost-benefit might go away.

Or if they don’t disappear entirely they might at least be muted, as they were during two years of the pandemic when compassion was weaponised to shut down those who questioned the heavy-handed response of every level of government to the virus.

This is what Labor will be hoping for because too much interrogation of policy brings up the question of what all these new goodies are going to cost and how to pay for them, which is never Labor’s strong suit.

Fast forward to 2022 and Labor’s plans to crack down on multinationals avoiding tax sounds great, but a recent report on the ABC suggested that this might raise only $1 billion a year.

By contrast, a figure of around $2.5 billion has been thrown around to cover Labor’s aged care policy and even if the government’s claims about the cost of the opposition’s child care policies are half-right, that could be billions more.

To be fair to Labor, the Coalition has not exactly set the world on fire when it comes to structural economic reform and time will tell if Treasury’s glass half full assumptions about local prices hold.

But even focusing on the 22 cent cut to fuel excise threatens to rebound on Labor.

Would they keep the cut when it sunsets in five and a half months?

Why are they backing this in when we’re all supposed to be driving EV’s?

And how does encouraging driving petrol and diesels around help with what was once the great moral issue of our time, climate change?

The more the contest becomes one of facts and less one of feeling, the better it becomes for the government.