Voter perceptions of Albanese and Dutton are set in cement. Let’s shake things up, fellas

With the next federal election due by May, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton are going to spend the coming months shamelessly seeking your vote. A big part of what will determine who wins – bubbling away just beneath the surface of their policy programs, plans for Australia and critiques of their opponent – are voters’ perceptions of each man.

Neither is particularly popular with Australians. Albanese’s net likeability rating has fallen to minus 17 percentage points with voters (down from plus 34 at the end of 2022) while Dutton’s has improved from minus 14 to a not-exactly-stellar net likeability rating of zero in the same period.

Illustration: Joe Benke Credit:

Being likeable is not a prerequisite for winning an election, but it doesn’t hurt. The problem both men have is that perceptions are like cement: once they are set, it can be difficult to shift them.

So, here are four ideas – ranging across policies, people and presentation, with a bipartisan surprise thrown in – that each leader could adopt in 2025 to shift voter perceptions and claim the keys to The Lodge.

The first idea for Anthony Albanese is to work on his presentation. The prime minister has never possessed the silky oratorical skills of predecessors such as Malcolm Turnbull or Paul Keating, but he has always been a straight talker. The longer Albanese has been in office, however, the more discursive and rambling his speaking style has become. It’s not a problem that is unique to Albanese – the same has happened to every prime minister in office since Kevin Rudd.

Albanese needs to get back to basics: short, sharp sentences that answer the question. Someone on his staff needs to print out a copy of his one-word press release (“Good”) on the retirement of Sydney Airport Corporation chairman Max Moore-Wilton and stick it to his desk as a reminder.

Second, Albanese needs to be bold on policy. Yes, the government plans to expand childcare, protect Medicare, continue rolling out renewables, and it has a very worthy suite of policies to expand Australia’s housing supply. But to reach voters underwhelmed by Labor’s first term, the prime minister needs something out of the box. And that policy would be implementing sensible changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax. When this masthead revealed in September that Treasury was working on policy options in this area, the government left those changes on the table for days before finally shutting down speculation.

That was a mistake.

The popular perception that these policies cost Labor the election in 2019 doesn’t stand up to scrutiny – after all, in 2016, Labor came within a whisker of victory with the same policies on the table. Australia’s housing affordability crisis has only become worse since then. Changes to wind back these tax breaks alone will not fix the housing problem. But they will send a clear signal to every voter struggling and hoping to buy a home – the government feels your pain, and it will pull out all the stops to fix it.

Labor’s best moment this term has been when it broke a promise and made the stage 3 tax cuts fairer. That’s a risk worth repeating.

Third, the government needs to distance itself (at least a little bit) from the previous Labor government. And the best and simplest way to do that is for Treasurer Jim Chalmers to break up with his mentor and former boss Wayne Swan. Swan is a Labor legend, a former international finance minister of the year, and helped steer Australia through the global financial crisis (with Chalmers in a senior role in that office). But Australians never warmed to Swan, and they certainly never thanked him for avoiding the financial pain they didn’t actually feel.

As much as true believers cling to all the achievements of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, and venerate Swan, voters’ perceptions of those Labor governments are not kind. Albanese and Penny Wong, for example, have distanced themselves from Paul Keating because of his views on China and foreign policy. The next time Swan, now Labor’s federal president, wades into a political debate, Chalmers should take a giant step back and differentiate himself. Only then will he be his own man.

And fourth, if Albanese wins the next election, he should be prepared to make a surprise appointment when Kevin Rudd’s term as ambassador to Washington ends (mid-2026, at the earliest). To be clear, Rudd should not be recalled early. He is a China expert, a polymath, a former prime minister, and an extraordinarily hard worker. But when his time is up, Albanese should wrong-foot the Coalition and send one of its own to Washington. That person should be former treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

Former Australian Liberal treasurer Josh Frydenberg … Labor’s man in Washington?Credit: Eddie Jim

Appointing Frydenberg would underscore to the Americans (again) how seriously Australia takes the job of ambassador and make much better use of Frydenberg’s talents (and his sense of civic duty) than his current Goldman Sachs job ever could. It would also remove a potential future political opponent from the arena, and confound voters’ perceptions of political partisanship.

First, Peter Dutton needs to make some tough decisions about his frontbench and clear out the dead wood. It’s an open secret within opposition ranks that some shadow ministers are working a lot harder than others and are a lot further progressed in policy development. Retiring MPs Simon Birmingham (foreign affairs) and Paul Fletcher (government services) have given Dutton the opening he needs to shake up his frontbench. It’s an opportunity he should seize when he reshuffles his frontbench in January.

Back in 2013, newly elected prime minister Tony Abbott hardly touched his frontbench after his election victory, when several ministers were simply not up to the job. Dutton should promote new talent now to entrench with voters the perception that he leads a new and united team, rather than leftovers from the Scott Morrison era. And, if Dutton wins the election, he will have a team in place that is ready to hit the ground running.

Second, on policy, Dutton needs to start releasing his program: now. When he was in opposition, Albanese held back many policies until late in the term and argued his plan was for Labor to kick with the wind in the fourth quarter. The strategy worked. Typically, governments lose elections rather than oppositions winning them, and having just a few carefully crafted points of policy difference made sense. But Dutton has left it so late that it’s time on in the fourth quarter, and we have little idea what the opposition would do on tax, industrial relations, health, education and other areas.

Neither is especially popular, but both aspire to lead the nation after the coming election: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The opposition leader should release a couple of key policies to confound voter perceptions of him as a one-dimensional, muscular national security conservative. One option would be a generous HECS-style loans scheme to enable more homes to buy household batteries. This would counter perceptions that the Nationals are dictating climate policy to the Liberals (they are). It would be popular in some of the teal seats the Coalition needs to win back. And it would help answer questions about how Australia can stabilise its energy grid and continue the shift to zero emissions before any nuclear power stations start to come online in the late 2030s (at the earliest).

Third, Dutton needs to be more transparent and accountable to voters. It’s not good enough for a would-be prime minister to hold two press conferences in six months in Canberra while having his tummy tickled each week by friendly, conservative radio hosts.

The Coalition has complained at length about the Commonwealth hiring an extra 36,000 public servants. So which ones would Dutton sack? Will it be the hundreds of staff hired at the Department of Veterans Affairs to clear the $13 billion backlog in claims from our veterans? Or Home Affairs staff hired to clear the visa and passports backlog? Or Centrelink staff hired to answer phones in a timely fashion? Will they be replaced again by expensive labour-hire staff? Dutton needs to answer these questions.

John Howard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison all regularly fronted up for press conferences and “unfriendly” interviews on the ABC. Dutton needs to do the same. Doing so would help him reach a huge cohort of voters he barely talks to, and ensure he was match-fit for the election campaign.

Fourth, and finally, Dutton needs to pull a bipartisan surprise to counter perceptions that he is too negative and always says no to government policies. The opposition leader, egged on by his cheerleaders on Sky After Dark, has complained long and loud about the appointment of Kevin Rudd as Washington ambassador. If he really means it – and if the Trump administration really can’t cope with Rudd – then Dutton should recall him. But rather than just appointing a Coalition friend to the post, Dutton should explore making a bipartisan appointment such as Julia Gillard or Bill Shorten. Abbott’s decision to keep Kim Beazley in Washington is a good precedent. Though some on his backbench would no doubt complain, and it would strain against Dutton’s instincts, such a move would confound expectations and demonstrate the opposition leader can rise above the partisan fray.

If the polls are correct, underwhelmed Australian voters are likely to vote in a hung parliament in 2025. These ideas are designed to challenge voter perceptions and, perhaps, allow either Albanese or Dutton to plot a path to majority government. But don’t hold your breath.

James Massola is national affairs editor.

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