Economy on the up, Albanese declares in pitch for another term

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has fired the starter’s gun on the de facto election campaign, launching a scathing attack on Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s “small vision” and imploring voters for another term.

Albanese returned from his week-long tour of Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia to declare every measure of the economy was improving, and to ask voters not to risk a “divisive” Coalition under Dutton.

After nearly 10,000 kilometres of travel, during which he announced $8 billion in government funding across 21 media appearances, Albanese said in an interview with this masthead that the trip had helped to make him and his team match fit for an election due by May.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, in Perth, has pitched his government as workmanlike and focused on policy.Credit: Getty Images

Asked about his decision to ditch the prime ministerial tradition of attending Test cricket over the new year, Albanese said his work ethic, which has included 27 visits to Western Australia and 40 to Queensland as prime minister, had helped him to reach Australians with his message.

“I work hard, I get out and about,” Albanese said. “Many people are on well-earned breaks, but there’s still [people] watching a bit on TV or reading the paper or listening to radio.”

Albanese’s attempt to steal a march on the often agenda-setting opposition leader is designed to help the 61-year-old become the first re-elected prime minister since John Howard and the first Labor leader to win two elections since Bob Hawke. If he is defeated – and this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor suggests he may lose his majority – his government would be the first to last only one term since the 1930s.

“I didn’t go into parliament with an expectation of being prime minister,” Albanese said. “I didn’t have a sense of destiny. And, you know, my cousins tell me that … my mum talked about ‘one day you’ll be the prime minister’. But she’s probably the only person who thought that.

“I’m very conscious of the responsibility that I feel to see these foundations that we’ve laid in our first term built upon. That’s what concerns me. Not any individual [achievement].”

After the government and Albanese’s personal polling numbers dipped in 2024, he said Labor needed another term to expand on policy areas he claimed the Coalition had neglected, including aged care, the energy transition, skills and education, and housing. Dutton, Albanese said, had built a career on division.

“People in [Dutton’s] own party were concerned about what sort of leader he would be,” Albanese said. “There is no issue that is too big for him to show how small his vision for Australia is.”

“He has a negative view of the country. There’s no optimism. He constantly talks the country down and … he’s in divisive mode at each and every opportunity.”

He pitched his government as workmanlike and focused on policy, pushing back on criticism from Labor luminaries such as unionist Bill Kelty that the Albanese regime had been unambitious.

In a defence of the party’s economic strategy, Albanese said Labor had struck the right balance between keeping a lid on inflation and risking more job losses with severe spending cuts.

Markets are pricing in a three-in-four chance of a rate cut in February after headline inflation came in at 2.3 per cent in the year to November and underlying inflation softened. Westpac’s December consumer sentiment survey showed Australians’ feelings about their family finances were still pessimistic, but had risen by a third since the start of 2024, representing the best measure on record since early 2022.

“Consumer confidence figures are welcome, but there’s more to do,” Albanese said. “All of the indicators are heading in the direction … whether that be inflation or employment, we have inflation with a two in front, unemployment with a three in front, more than a million jobs, real wages increasing.”

“There are some who argue that we should have not worried at all about employment or the economy, or that we should have not had any cost-of-living relief.”

Labor strategists hope an election campaign will change the political dynamic from a referendum on Labor’s performance amid an inflation crisis to a Labor-versus-Liberal contest with more voter scrutiny of Coalition policies.

The government is preparing big negative campaigns on Dutton’s record as health minister, the economic cost of nuclear energy, and plans to repeal Labor’s industrial relations changes, such as a right to disconnect from work after business hours.

Ahead of Dutton’s campaign rally in Melbourne on Sunday, Labor released its own analysis suggesting the Coalition’s nuclear energy plan would lead to a $1.23 trillion economic cost to Victorians by 2050.

The Coalition’s modelling assumes much less energy will be needed by 2050 than Labor’s modelling does, because it believes green hydrogen and electric cars will not be as popular as the government expects. This forecast drop-off in energy usage is being weaponised by Labor to claim it will diminish economic activity, which the opposition rejects.

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