Steve Price: Cyclone Alfred blows apart Anthony Albanese’s election plan
Cyclone Alfred disrupted Anthony Albanese’s plans for a short, sharp election campaign and showed the PM looks more comfortable being a DJ at a music festival than taking charge in a crisis.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Last week’s intervention of tropical Cyclone Alfred blew apart Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s plans for an election on the second Saturday in April.
It would have been a short sharp five-week campaign off the back of a Labor win in Western Australia and been held on the weekend before Easter and the following Anzac Day long weekend. The timing would have meant no need for a March budget and Labor could have gone to the people with one interest rate cut under their belt and a slight improvement in the polls.
As Cyclone Alfred turned into a destructive rain event and wind storm the rest of Australia was left wondering whether the poll postponement was necessary. Albanese though had no option to instead don a rain jacket and head to northern NSW and Brisbane to tell the long-suffering residents of places like Lismore in NSW that his government would look after them.
The PM made sure Australian Defence Force assets were quickly deployed and hardship payments were promised. For many Australians – in the Northern Rivers region of NSW in particular – they had heard it all before with many still waiting on insurance payouts and rebuilds after the last great flood of 2022.
Albanese held a media conference in Lismore at the start of the week using state ALP member Janelle Saffin – famously lucky to survive the 2022 flood – as MC and front and centre Deputy PM Richard Marles, while local Mayor Steve Krieg who did an amazing job in 2022 pushed off to the right out of camera.
Ah election campaigns.
Sadly, natural disasters like Alfred always seem to attract photo opportunities for politicians from both sides and are a real test of leadership at a state and federal level. Not all political leaders can pull off the role of concerned national or state leader. Former Liberal PM Scott Morrison was famously shunned on the south coast of NSW in the aftermath of tragic bushfires that tore through the region at the start of 2020.
He never really recovered from the “I don’t hold a hose mate” comment on radio when asked why he was in Hawaii on holiday when large parts of the east coast of Australia were on fire.
Labor grabbed hold of the community anger and milked it for all it was worth with Morrison losing that May election in 2022 largely because people – women especially – didn’t like him.
Three years on Anthony Albanese was never going to make that same mistake and was front and centre across last weekend as predictions on Thursday and Friday had Alfred tearing through the third biggest population centre in Australia.
A week on though did the hard left, lifetime Tory-hating PM from inner west Sydney convince the voting public around the nation that he was the leader they needed in tough times.
I don’t think so.
Albanese looks more comfortable being a DJ at a music festival or doting on his dog Toto than he does at a natural disaster like the one still unfolding in the northern states.
It’s not really surprising, or his fault necessarily, you only need visit Marrickville in Sydney with its cluster of home brewery joints, barefoot lawn bowling and groovy pubs to know he would have to get someone to point out on a map where the Lockyer Valley was.
And it didn’t help that his opponent come May, Peter Dutton, was isolated on his acreage in his seat of Dickson conducting live TV interviews as floodwaters rush past his front gate. He was an actual Cyclone Albert victim.
This May election is as much a referendum on who Australia wants to lead us out of Albanese and Dutton, as it is about the cost-of-living pressures and dangerous state of the world dominated by a tough talking Donald Trump and an aggressive China sending gunboats to circumnavigate Australia.
In my time, federally we have had a handful of tough talking, resilient, conviction Prime Ministers and a bunch of also runs. Pretty obviously Bob Hawke and John Howard stand out as real leaders with Hawke having that impossible to create natural charisma and toughness, a PM for his time who probably would struggle in these woke times when speaking your mind is frowned on.
Howard was different tough, and as hard as his opponents tried to portray him as “Little Johnny,” he excelled in his response to disasters like the Port Arthur massacre and Bali bombings and his defiant actions on border protection during the Tampa affair.
During the Tony Abbott time you never had any doubt where he stood on tough issues, he was a conviction politician on things like climate change and he introduced Operation Sovereign Borders – turning back people smuggler boats and stopping drownings at sea. We saw his community side working as a volunteer firefighter and lifesaver.
Paul Keating was another tough leader but too divisive as a PM and lost us with his recession we had to have and fringe benefits tax reforms ending the long lunch.
So, in 42 years for me – just four standouts among a long list of ordinary performers as PM who couldn’t lead you down the street let alone into conflict. We have in no particular order Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, Julia Gillard and Scott Morrison and now Anthony Albanese.
Come May, on whatever day we are asked to vote, we will at least this time have a contest of ideas and a clear difference between the two men who want to follow those other PM’s I mentioned.
We have Anthony Albanese the lifelong Labor foot soldier who worked for a couple of years in the Commonwealth Bank as a youngster before a four-year stint as a Labor Party research officer graduating to the role of Assistant Secretary of the NSW branch for six years and a year working for former NSW Premier Bob Carr.
For the last 30 years he has been the federal MP for Grayndler in Sydney representing the party he joined as a 15-year-old.
Peter Dutton is an ex-copper. He worked as an teenager, in a butcher shop part time before joining the Queensland police force out of school. He joined the young Liberals and spent 10 years as a police officer working his way up to the rank of detective senior constable including stints in the drug squad and sex offenders’ squad. Dutton then did a Bachelor of Business studies before starting a business with his father renovating buildings and turning them into childcare centres.
When he turned 30, he took on Labor’s recruit Cheryl Kernot in Dickson and won back in 2001 and has been in parliament the past 24 years.
Clearly Dutton has a lived background that allows him to understand small business and law and order issues and the pressures of employing people and importantly in a housing crisis how to build things.
The PM has the lived experience of the struggles of a single mother and the importance of social housing.
Both have had senior cabinet roles in government including border security for Dutton and infrastructure for Albanese.
The May election will be much more than a contest between these two and more about how voters feel the country post the Covid years is travelling.
If voters believe we need strong leadership that just doesn’t mean turning up in a hard hat and wet weather gear I think Dutton can win but it’s a hell of an ask.
Likes
F1 back in Melbourne in its rightful place starting the Grand Prix year as race number one.
The AFL season finally starting on Thursday night at the MCG with traditional rivals Richmond and Carlton – go Tiges.
Cyclone Alfred thankfully not turning out to as bad as was feared and great work by all the volunteers.
Dislikes
Reports the Allan government clashed with former top cop Shane Patton over tougher bail laws rejecting his seven-point plan.
A lack of security at the Fox owned Avalon airport with a Jetstar flight saved by a brave passenger shearer Barry Clark.
A foul-mouthed rap artist called Ice Cube dragging a small child up on staged to perform with him.
Panahi: The Aussie billionaire who makes Harry and Megan seem likeable
Gina Rinehart’s son is an overgrown brat with a chronic entitlement mentality who is not only suing his mother but using the media to demean her achievements.
Deery: No longer ‘the place to be’, Victoria now ‘the state to wait’
Not only does Victoria have a dithering, go-slow government under Jacinta Allan’s leadership, but 10 weeks into Brad Battin’s new opposition, few can identify how he’s changed anything.