Watch your step: Campaign disasters Albanese and Dutton must not repeat

Here’s a tip for political leaders trying to impress voters on the campaign trail: never put yourself in the position where you are required to step backwards. You never know where you’ll end up.

Liberal leader Andrew Peacock made that mistake at an outdoor rally in Perth during the 1990 election campaign.

A 1990 election debate between Liberal leader Andrew Peacock and Labor leader Bob Hawke.Credit: Simon Alekna

Peacock, pleased with his pitch, stepped back ... and sank one of his stylish shoes into the centre of a steaming pile of fresh manure deposited by a police horse.

Like many politicians, Peacock, a veteran of reeking land mines at country shows, continued flashing his practised smile in the desperate hope no one noticed. No potential leader wants to be remembered for attracting flies.

On that same campaign, and in the same city, Bob Hawke had to urgently reverse himself after he hosted a cosy little dinner for senior political correspondents.

He invited only male correspondents.

When women in the press party got wind of this very matey event, there was hell to pay.

Hawke was forced to back-pedal. He hastily arranged a second dinner for those he unwisely called “the sheilas”. It was some time before a shaky equilibrium was achieved.

Labor’s Kim Beazley metaphorically stepped back during the 2001 campaign, and, most unwisely, allowed reporters to see him doing it.

Aboard the old RAAF VIP 707 used to ferry the opposition leader around the campaign trail (then-prime minister John Howard used the other), Beazley wandered to the rear cabin for a chat with those of us reporting his campaign.

He was initially buoyant, declaring he was sure he’d win the election. Within minutes, his momentum faded. He slumped into a seat, saying he might not win, but he felt he’d given everything he could.

In the years of traipsing around election campaigns, the first in 1983, I’ve witnessed few more bleak moments than a leader talking themselves into admitting defeat. It turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy for Beazley.

It seems equally unwise to believe victory is guaranteed.

John Hewson, in the 1993 campaign, assured by just about everyone that he would beat Paul Keating, got into an argument with journalists in outback South Australia, refusing to say whether local phone calls would be timed for charging purposes if he became prime minister.

He was infuriated that reporters had the temerity to keep asking for a straight answer. Travelling back to Adelaide on a small plane, he sat separated from the travelling media by nothing more than a curtain. We could all hear him roaring at his press secretary that “if they [reporters] had gelignite for brains, they wouldn’t have enough to blow their f---ing hats off”.

Dr John Hewson, looking confident, addresses a public rally in Adelaide during the 1993 election campaign. Credit: Bryan Charlton

Much amused, we all reported that Hewson wouldn’t rule out timed local calls. Shortly after, he backed away and issued a late-night press release, firmly ruling out any such thing. He subsequently lost his attempt to unseat Keating.

The choice to step away or not is a political art perfected by – who else? – John Howard.

In 2004, the wily Howard refused a backward step when Mark Latham tried to dominate him with a crushing handshake. Pictures of Latham looming over the much smaller Howard accentuated the impression that Latham was a bully, pleasing Howard and his minders no end.

Anthony Albanese’s first day on the campaign trail in 2022 – when he famously couldn’t remember either the Reserve Bank’s official cash rate or the nation’s unemployment figure – will surely remain the number one campaign blunder to avoid forever.

It was compounded by Albanese’s attempt to blame journalists for asking such questions – “we can do the old Q and A stuff over 50 different figures” – and by making up the unemployment rate – “I think it’s five point … ah four … sorry, I’m not sure what it is”.

Albanese was stupendously fortunate to be competing with Scott Morrison, whose bulldozing style was confirmed towards the end of the campaign when he ignored W.C. Field’s sensible advice never to work with children or animals, and tackled a small child to the ground on a soccer field.

Scott Morrison bulldozes a child in Tasmania during the 2022 election campaign.Credit: James Brickwood

Tony Abbott was known to colleagues as “danger man”, which he proved in many startling ways, including when, hoping vainly to remain prime minister in 2015, he blithely stood in front of a store with a large yellow sign blaring the word “reject”.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott walks past ‘The Reject Shop’ in 2015.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Leaders might remember that their primary job during an election campaign is to commune with voters.

Gough Whitlam’s booming mastery of it ended 23 unbroken years of conservative governments. Bob Hawke had the art in truckloads and remained prime minister from 1983 to 1991. John Howard knew how to communicate, too - sometimes, critics noted, by dog whispering – and remained PM for 11 years.

Neither Albanese nor Dutton appear especially blessed with great natural communication skills.

They might benefit from studying those who mastered the craft, all of whom had a few things in common.

At their best, they dispensed with deadening talking points prepared by staff and spoke with certainty and passion. At their most compelling, they tossed away written speeches and extemporised without varnish.

Audience members tended to believe Whitlam, Hawke and Howard were speaking directly to them, whatever they might have thought of them. No one who ever heard Paul Keating at his most intense will ever forget it. Nor will those who found themselves transfixed and cheering when Julia Gillard, not a notably acclaimed public speaker, ripped up the script and ripped into Tony Abbott with her misogyny speech (“I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man … Not now, Not ever”).

Truth is, most people sensibly don’t spend much time thinking about politics or politicians.

But when an election campaign is underway, many of us engage, knowing we have to make a decision at the ballot box soon. It is then that Australians need to believe that what they are hearing from political leaders is genuine.

Both Dutton and Albanese, of course, have reason for early jitters. Just about everyone agrees neither of them can hope for much better than minority government at the end of this campaign.

As the campaign gets properly underway they’ll surely begin to loosen up.

They’d do well to remember not to take a backward step. And if all else fails, keep smiling in the wild hope nobody notices flies gathering.

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