James Campbell: Why Anthony Albanese could still be PM one day

To mark Anthony Albanese’s second anniversary as Opposition Leader, let us turn our minds to reasons why Labor folk should dare to dream, James Campbell writes.

This Sunday marks the second year that Anthony Albanese has been the leader of the Labor Party in Canberra, and, as is usual with the holders of that office, also Leader of the Opposition.

If you listen to conventional wisdom at the moment, the chances of him ever getting to The Lodge in any capacity other than as the guest of Scott and Jenny Morrison would appear to be low.

Listing the reasons why this is so isn’t hard, starting with the fact the Labor Party is controlled by trade unions, which hardly anyone outside the public sector bothers to join these days.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese’s chance of inhabiting The Lodge look slim. Picture: NCA NewsWire

We’ve all heard the arguments: Labor is too worried about servicing the woke, inner-city voters who are likely to stray to the Greens than the working-class constituency it needs to win office; Labor is too worried about the rights of asylum seekers even after the debacle of the Rudd-Gillard years; Labor is still obsessed with climate change even as it loses election after election by being more bolshie than the Coalition on the subject.

On top of these problems, there are problems lying ahead for Albanese which are all his own.

No Labor leader before has had the misfortune to face a Liberal prime minister with as cavalier an attitude to spending money as this one has. Nor has anyone in the job gone to an election in the aftermath of a global pandemic which, with the standout exception of Donald Trump, seems to be causing voters to rally to incumbents.

So yeah, it isn’t hard to come up with reasons why Albo’s Wikipedia entry is never going to be updated to include a spell as prime minister.

But politics is all about hope. So on the second birthday of his leadership, let us turn our minds to reasons why Labor folk should dare to dream.

For a Coalition PM, Scott Morrison has deep pockets. Picture: NCA NewsWire

The first reason for Labor optimism is that the result of most elections in Australia these days are close.

True, they are mostly close victories for the Coalition, but the fact is that blowouts like 2013 are increasingly rare, which means that most of the time each side enters the contest only needing things to go right in a smallish number of seats to win government.

The second reason Labor shouldn’t be too down in the dumps is that on the evidence of last time, Scott Morrison isn’t that popular with the voters.

In the euphoria of 2019’s miracle Coalition win and Labor’s disappointment, it was easy to miss that the government’s primary vote — as a percentage — went backwards.

In 2016 under Malcolm Turnbull the government got 42.04 per cent of first preferences. Two years ago under Morrison it got 41.44 per cent.

The reason the government was re-elected was because Labor’s primary vote dropped by more than the Coalition’s, and more of those votes ended up coming to it through preferences.

The big influencer here was Clive Palmer, who spent $60 million driving voters away from the major parties. The question is what these voters will do next time.

If enough of them go home to Labor, then Scott Morrison could have a fight on his hands. If they keep on walking and actually vote for the government then things could get even worse for the ALP.

Clive Palmer spent $60 million during the last election campaign to drive voters away from the major parties.

Another reason to be cheerful if you are Albo is that demography is turning around for Labor. The most reliable group of voters for the Coalition are those who came of age in the 1950s — more and more of whom, sadly, are leaving the roll at each election.

The Baby Boomers, who are now well into retirement, are far more likely to vote Labor than their older brothers and sisters.

Behind them is Gen X and Millennials, but they don’t really count for this purpose because there aren’t enough of them. Coming up behind them is a giant wave of young people born after Peter Costello introduced the baby bonus in 2002. The impact on the birthrate of that policy was immediate and sustained.

This means that for most of the next decade, as the Coalition’s most dependable voters start pushing up daisies, the number of young people on the electoral roll is going to keep increasing.

And if we know anything about the young, it’s that they are far more likely to be influenced by left-wing idealism than those of us who have seen a bit of the world.

The final reason Albo and his allies shouldn’t feel too disheartened is that by the time we go to the polls next year — still far more likely than this year — they will be facing a government that has been in office for almost 10 years.

If I had to bet on it at the moment, I reckon Morrison will be returned. But we should remember that the longer any mob is in power the more there is for us to be disappointed about its performance.

Originally published as James Campbell: Why Anthony Albanese could still be PM one day