Andrew Bolt: Anthony Albanese’s honeymoon as PM is finally over

Anthony Albanese just had his worst week as Prime Minister. Losing the Fadden by-election shows he’s in danger and voters are switching off his crusades.

CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA, NewsWire Photos. JULY 14, 2023: The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese and Treasurer, Jim Chalmers hold a press conference announcing Michele Bullock AS the Next Reserve Bank of Australia Governor at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Anthony Albanese just had his worst week as Prime Minister. Losing the Fadden by-election this weekend confirms his honeymoon is finally over, and he’s in danger.

Voters are switching off his crusades. Defeat on his Voice to Parliament seems next, and then he’ll be fighting for his government’s life.

Sure, Labor is talking up its loss in Fadden as a win. Treasurer Jim Chalmers yesterday chirruped that this Gold Coast seat - formerly held by the Liberals’ Stuart Robert - was in Liberal National Party heartland, so the result was “unsurprising, untroubling”.

No, Opposition leader Peter Dutton was the loser: “If anything, the LNP underperformed against the historical average.”

Sure, the swing against the government so far in the count, 2.5 per cent after preferences, is below the average 4 per cent swing against governments in byelections.

But here’s a reality check.

First, the LNP margin will probably grow once postal votes are counted.

Second, the primary vote for LNP candidate Cameron Caldwell is so far tracking 4.30 per cent up on what Robert got last time.

Cameron Caldwell delivers a speech following his win for the LNP in the Fadden by-election. Picture: Sky News

Third, and before I get to the biggest warning sign for Labor, this Labor loss comes after the Albanese Government tried one of the nastiest stunts in our politics.

It called a $30 million royal commission into how its Liberal opponents - including Stuart Robert as the Minister - mishandled the Robodebt scandal, and had the pleasure of seeing that royal commission hand down its passionately brutal finds just a week before this byelection in Robert’s old seat.

Yeah, just a coincidence, but an ugly one.

Know also that the Liberals had already admitted years ago to a massive stuff up with Robodebt, where ministers used a dodgy computer model to demand welfare recipients pay back money they hadn’t in fact been overpaid .

What’s more, the victims had already won $112 million in compensation two years ago, and the Morrison Government was then thrown out.

Yet for all Labor’s constant yammering about Robodebt, even its own candidate in Fadden, Letitia Del Fabbro, last week admitted: “It’s really the cost of living issues that people are mostly interested in.”

And here we come to the biggest red light for Labor.

Fadden just confirms what two polls last week - that nasty week for Albanese - said: that voters were not just souring on the government’s handling of the economy and prices, but going off its yabber-yabber-yabber on climate and the Voice, the kind of Aboriginal-only advisory parliament it wants put into our constitution.

One was a CT Group poll of 3000 people, which found just 13 per cent thought Albanese was doing enough to fix cost-of-living pressures and only a quarter thought he was managing the economy well. They were down on the Voice.

More damning was the bi-monthly Mood of the Nation poll by SEC Newgate. It showed 61 per cent of voters now thought Australia was heading in the wrong direction, up from 51 per cent two months ago.

Worries about the cost of living rocketed from an already high 62 per cent to 69 today. Worries were highest about grocery prices - feeding the family - and electricity prices, forced up by global warming schemes.

That penny is dropping. Voters in this poll demanding action on climate change dropped to just one in three.

So how impressed would voters have been to hear Treasurer Chalmers on Sunday go from dismissing the Fadden result as no biggie to saying he’d now fly to India and chat about global warming and “the energy transformation”?

Chalmers just showed that Labor is stuck on a highway to a cliff.

It’s a nightmare. Labor is so committed to its disastrous global warming crusade that it cannot pull out even with energy company bosses now warning its targets are impossible.

Nor can Albanese now cancel this year’s referendum on his Voice, even though polls suggest it’s doomed.

That seems Labor’s next defeat and it would be huge.

Sunday’s loss already switches the focus off the Liberals’ alleged shambles and onto Labor’s struggles with the cost of living. That’s Dutton’s big win here.

If Albanese also loses the Voice referendum, voters will rightly ask: how could he have wasted two years and $364 million of taxpayers’ money on this foolishness, when many Australians struggle to pay for food and rent?

No, the Fadden result isn’t “untroubling” for Labor. It’s a switch in the nation’s mood, with Albanese now under real pressure as voters ask: Albo, where’s the money?