Matt Johnston: Libs’ attempt at rebutting attack ads are simply bizarre

It is hard to shake the feeling that the Coalition has made it much harder to win this election by feeding fires Labor has lit.

AS politicians bickered about cost of living last week, petrol stations hiked prices to about $2.15 a litre.

That was despite a fuel excise cut the federal government introduced, and which both major parties intend to keep for just six months.

The petrol price predicament is one of the most visual and visceral reminders for voters that cost-of-living pressures are not currently a political construct.

High fuel costs are disproportionately felt by outer suburban families who face longer commutes and are more likely to have multiple cars.

But wherever they live, motorists with vaguely tight finances would feel pangs of anxiety at the bowser.

Both sides of politics have tried to work the inflation problem into their political prism during this campaign.

Petrol stations are hiking prices above $2 a litre again. Picture: Tony Gough

The Coalition says it’s a dangerous time to change, because Labor is a risk and could increase hip-pocket pain.

Labor says hip-pocket pain came under this government’s watch, and so it’s time for a change of approach.

Last week the argument focused on wages. This has been a central theme of Labor’s campaign, arguing that people are falling behind because wages are not keeping pace with cost increases.

In other words, even if you feel like you should be getting ahead, you’re actually falling behind.

Tapping into this angst plays to people struggling to make ends meet and aspirational middle-class types who are keen to move up in the world.

When Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said last week that he “absolutely” wanted to see minimum wages hiked by 5.1 per cent to match the rate of inflation, it wasn’t an accident.

For some reason, and to Albanese’s benefit, some commentators called it “another gaffe”.

Anthony Albanese says he wants to see minimum wages hiked by 5.1 per cent to match the rate of inflation.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison seized on that, blustering that Albanese was “incredibly reckless”.

“It is like throwing fuel on the fire of rising interest rates and rising cost of living,” he said.

Attacks lasted for days.

The problem was, this had the potential to sound like the Prime Minister was against higher wages.

Disinterested voters heard one leader pushing for higher pay packets, the other calling it reckless.

Morrison, of course, had a point, and was backed up by some economists who worried about the inflationary impact of a relatively big hike in the minimum wage.

Small businesses, for example, could be flustered by the proposition that wages were about to spike.

Morrison, we assume, believes those small businesses will be the ones to turn the tide, not workers on the hamster wheel.

Perhaps this is why, during a national debate with Albanese, he started to answer a question about whether everyone deserves the minimum wage with “it depends”.

This had the potential to be more damaging than forgetting what the unemployment rate was.

Albanese ate it up, holding up a $1 coin to show what his minimum wages “hike” meant per hour to people on low incomes.

Nuance is often lost in political debates.

Would a voter in suburban NSW or Victoria hear the reasoned debate of economists, or hear one leader saying wages should go up and the other effectively saying “whoa, steady on”.

Do they care if there’s an absence of detail showing how Labor thinks wages could go up?

I’m sure I’ll be a laughing stock next week if Morrison gets another term and his campaign is lauded.

This happened in 2019, didn’t it?

But there have been some strange decisions made during the Coalition campaign, whatever the result on Saturday.

Take the way the party responded to advertisements put out by the Labor Party, about Morrison.

The Liberal Party has accused Labor of lying in a new advertisement.

Labor’s attack ads cut chunks of audio from Morrison’s time in office when he used the phrase “that’s not my job”.

It feeds into the killer line Morrison delivered when he tried to excuse a holiday to Hawaii while bushfires raged because “I don’t hold a hose, mate”.

The Liberals crafted a lengthy rebuttal to Labor’s attack ad, showing the full clips of what Morrison said.

It began showing a back-and-forth with TV host Karl Stefanovic, when Morrison is asked why he hasn’t “personally lost patience with Dan Andrews”, the Premier of Victoria.

“Because that’s not my job,” Morrison begins.

But wait, there’s more!

“My job is to keep focused on the challenge that I have to protect Australians every single, day,” he continues.

Once again, it’s the nuance.

Labor is lying, the Liberals shouted.

The reason this rebuttal ad was bizarre, in my opinion, was that Morrison as an astute marketing man surely knows that most buyers don’t care for details.

Much like fuelling a debate about wages, repeating the killer line “that’s not my job” just seems like a gift to the ALP.

The only thing I initially recalled from the Liberal rebuttal, for example, was the line “that’s not my job”, which I searched on Google to find the full Liberal video.

I don’t know politics, or marketing, nearly as well as Morrison. Even so, I can’t shake the feeling that the Coalition has made it much harder to win this election by feeding fires Labor has lit.

Matt Johnston is Herald Sun major projects reporter

Originally published as Matt Johnston: Libs’ attempt at rebutting attack ads are simply bizarre