Election Confidential: ScoMo channels Trump – but his name-calling needs work

In Campaign Confidential today: Labor has suffered a five-star hotel hiccup and ScoMo is trying out a Trump-esque election tactic.

Here’s the hot goss from the campaign trail today. Got a tip for Campaign Confidential? Email [e-mail]

Name game a bit same-same

Former US President Donald Trump was famous for the merciless epithets he used to define his opponents – from “Crooked Hillary” and “Sleepy Joe” to “Pocahontas” for Elizabeth Warren. Now it seems Scott Morrison is trying a similar tactic, repeatedly referring to Labor’s treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers as “Sneaky Jim”.

ScoMo debuted the phrase back on April 19, and was at it again on Thursday, telling Channel 9 that “Sneaky Jim” has “got his sneaky carbon tax”. A search on Google Trends shows the phrase hasn’t cut through yet.

Interestingly though, the phrase “Scotty from Marketing” is proving to be a stayer, with users regularly Googling it since 2019. A study from the US last month that looked at pejorative nicknames in politics concluded that while they provide some fun for the base, name-calling doesn’t really turn votes.

Jim Chalmers will be treasurer if Labor wins the election. Picture: Tim Hunter

Albo’s Covid comeback

Labor leader Anthony Albanese is due to return to the election trail, after seven days of enforced isolation thanks to Covid-19. But the question is: will he be well enough to cope with the grind of the campaign? Speaking on Sky News on Thursday, the apparently-not-at-all-benched-what-are-you-talking-about Tanya Plibersek said the Labor leader sounded good on a recent team phone hook-up, and everyone was “crossing fingers” he’d be well enough for Sunday’s campaign launch.

And Albo himself told 101.7FM his doctor had told him he couldn’t do 16-20 hour days just yet. A lingering illness is the nightmare scenario for Labor’s campaign – and it’s actually not that uncommon for people of Albo’s age (59).

We can only hope he doesn’t follow the recently reported case of a UK patient with Covid, who tested positive for a jawdropping 505 days straight.

Albo tomorrow: We’re not in Covid isolation anymore, Toto. Picture: Facebook

Happy Perth-day

All being well, Albo will launch Labor’s campaign in Perth this Sunday – a sign of the gains the party is hoping to make in the west at this election, with a swag of seats including Pearce, Swan and Hasluck in their sights. While Campaign Confidential applauds a decentralised approach to campaigning, the conventional wisdom that the choice of a launch city helps a party in that location is pretty bogus.

Look at the 2019 election: Labor launched in Brisbane, and Queensland ended up being a “smoking ruin” for them (to quote one commentator), while the Liberals launched in Melbourne, and ended up suffering a 3 per cent swing in Victoria, and losing two seats.

Indeed, given the 2019 results, perhaps there’s an argument that staging a launch in a particular city is a net drag for a party’s prospects there.

Labor’s 2019 campaign launch in Brisbane. Disaster ensued. Picture: AAP Image/Lukas Coch

Something’s missing

Fact: Campaign Confidential has the sharpest readers. One of our adoring followers wrote in to ask: what’s happened to the little “spoken by …” attribution, always delivered at supersonic speed, at the end of election ads on the telly? The commercials still feature the “authorised by …” disclaimer, but what’s happened to identifying the people who speak in the ads?

We put the question to the AEC, who confirmed that the rule had in fact changed. But why? Were there privacy concerns about actors who appeared in said commercials? The kindly chap at the AEC explained the change was made by parliament, so it was up to them to explain, but added: “Part of the conversation at the time appeared to be about the fact that the requirement did not add anything meaningful to the primary purpose of authorisations laws.”

Mystery solved.

No room at the inn

There was a hiccup for the Labor campaign and trailing press pack on Thursday, when Sydney’s Hilton revealed they had overbooked and couldn’t accommodate them.

The crew was forced out of the five-star hotel and into the cheaper TraveLodge in Wynyard instead. Life is rough!

But when we told our operatives the opportunity to cover the campaign would be all beer and skittles … we were lying.

The press pack on the campaign trail: it’s no picnic, folks. Picture: Toby Zerna

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Originally published as Election Confidential: ScoMo channels Trump – but his name-calling needs work