Campbell: Labor would be brave to build re-election campaign on Albanese record

Given the sorts of numbers in recent polls, it would be a brave Labor Party to build a re-election campaign around the theme of ‘Getting on with the job’, writes James Campbell.

In a bit over a week it will be two years since voters gave Scott Morrison the shove for Anthony Albanese, which means it’s only a year until we get to deliver a verdict on how he has been going.

No doubt Albo would like to be able to go to the next election talking about the great things he has done and the even greater things he plans to keep doing if we give him another go. His problem is that as poll after poll shows, on the issue that is their greatest concern – the cost-of-living crunch that has seen a rapid fall in Australians’ standards of living – voters think he’s failing.

Asked this month by pollsters GXO/J.L. Partners how the government is managing cost of living and inflation, 73 per cent of voters answered “badly”, including 55 per cent of Labor voters.

Given these sorts of numbers it would be a brave party indeed that builds a re-election campaign around the theme of “Getting on with the job”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s popularity is on the slide. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

What’s the alternative? Well, Labor could – in theory – run a campaign around the popularity of its leader, emphasising his down-to-earth everyman qualities.

The problem here is that even if it wasn’t the case that in the next term of parliament Australia will celebrate Albo’s 30th year on the public payroll, the evidence is the public are souring on him.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is not looking good either. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ Ben Clark

To see this you don’t need to see the word cloud in the GXO/J.L. Partners poll in which “weak”, “useless” and “liar” feature prominently, you only have to look at his net favourability ratings – the difference between the percentage of people who think a leader is doing a good job and those who think the opposite.

According to Newspoll, in the past year Albo’s numbers here have gone from +19 to -6 (which is actually a bit of a recovery from a month ago). Resolve has Albo on a -2, a dead heat with Peter Dutton. Freshwater has them two points apart on -7 and -9 respectively.

Given the aforementioned difficulties Labor is going to have on running on its record, if I were in charge of the party’s re-election campaign, I would be more than slightly concerned at how close these numbers are.

You can be absolutely certain, however, that Labor’s brains trust is thinking hard about what it can do to damage Dutton’s standing with the public. Indeed, I’d be surprised if they’re thinking about much else. And, to be frank, there is much material for them to work with as you would expect of any politician who has been around as long as Dutton has.

We were given a taste of what to expect in this space in the Aston and Dunkley by-elections – principally lots of reminders of his record as health minister.

On Saturday, however, we got a look at another line of attack on the opposition leader with a story briefed out that, as Home Affairs Minister, he’d approved the release of an immigration detainee who has since been charged over the bashing of a Perth grandma.

One of Dutton’s key brand equities is meant to be his toughness. If Labor can plant the seed in people’s mind that while he might come across as manly, there are big questions about his competence, that wouldn’t be good for the opposition leader.

It’s not exactly a new trick for governments to get re-elected on the back of scare campaigns of course. In 1993 Paul Keating got back into office by scaring people about a GST and the Coalition’s reluctance to endorse Medicare. In 2004 John Howard convinced Australians that Mark Latham was not to be trusted on the economy. And last but not least, Scott Morrison saw off Bill Shorten in 2019 by warning the sky would fall in under the weight of all his new taxes.

It should be noted in passing that these governments were all returned without much in the way of an agenda for the next three years – though in Howard’s case he managed to fill that void with his politically disastrous WorkChoices legislation.

It should also be observed that all of these were governments going for their third or, in Keating’s case fourth, term in office.

In other words, running a Hanrahan re-election campaign promising “We’ll all be rooned” if the other side gets in, has historically been the in-case-of-emergency-break-glass strategy of tired men whose time is almost up. It is certainly not the usual way governments in the first flush of youth usually try and get themselves a second go

Finally. it should also be noted this is a card you can only play once. At their next outings, the Keating, Howard and Morrison governments were all flogged.

Originally published as Campbell: Labor would be brave to build re-election campaign on Albanese record