Albanese is sinking, and Dutton is cutting through – but not all journos have noticed

Anthony Albanese’s political standing has been damaged by a succession of missteps. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

The Australian media could learn from the mistakes that have beset mainstream American political journalism in recent years.

Some local reporters have misread the contest between Labor and the Coalition as badly as many did in the US – by over-estimating the chances of the incumbent, for starters. The big American papers and TV networks covered up President Joe Biden’s mental decline for years until the world saw the obvious in the June 27 debate against Donald Trump.

The same US organisations played along with the Democrats’ Russiagate hoax after Trump’s 2016 win, ignored the Hunter Biden laptop story that was censored by big social media companies weeks before the 2020 election, and never questioned the post-2022 lawfare by Democrat state prosecutors, designed to destroy Trump.

In Australia, a lot of journalists in the lead-up to the 2022 election played along with the ABC’s agenda, which was clearly set out in the Four Corners program, ‘Inside the Canberra Bubble, in November 2020. It painted then prime minister Scott Morrison’s government as riddled with sexual scandal. All the program really exposed was a single consensual affair between a staffer and a minister.

Much of the Canberra press gallery has characterised Opposition Leader Peter Dutton as divisive and incapable of leadership.

True to form, some are now starting to take him seriously after recent polling showing the Coalition leading Labor 51-49 and Albanese with a net negative satisfaction rating of minus 15 to Dutton’s minus 11.

In this “race-call” version of political journalism, analysis is driven by polling success rather than policy success.

Most in the gallery put the beginning of Labor’s slide down to the defeat on October 14 last year of the voice referendum.

This column has argued Albanese’s problems were obvious before that. His government – claiming it would emulate Labor’s reform era under Bob Hawke and Paul Keating – was going the wrong way on labour market regulation, booming public sector spending, tax cuts and power relief payments that only increased pressure on inflation.

Labor was captured by rent-seeking investors on energy policy. Reflect on its foolish spruiking of green hydrogen that even West Australian billionaire Twiggy Forrest has started to abandon. Albanese continued to push it on ABC 7.30 on Thursday night.

Much of the Canberra press gallery has characterised Opposition Leader Peter Dutton as divisive and incapable of leadership. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Smart journalists – this paper’s Dennis Shanahan and The Australian Financial Review’s Phil Coorey – saw the policy contradictions as the RBA lifted interest rates 13 times.

In the face of near universal post-election commentary about the dire state of the Coalition, this column on December 4, 2022, pointed to the Labor win by Kevin Rudd in November 2007. With wall to wall Labor governments across the nation, many back then predicted a dire future for the Coalition.

Yet by 2013 federal Labor had been through Rudd twice, and Julia Gillard. Tony Abbott was prime minister. Labor had lost state elections to conservatives in WA (Colin Barnett, 2008), Victoria (Ted Baillieu, 2010), NSW (Barry O’Farrell, 2011) and Queensland (Campbell Newman, 2013).

Labor has already lost Queensland this year and is struggling in Victoria. It is likely to lose federal seats in WA.

The Coalition certainly was belted in 2022, winning only 58 of the 76 seats needed to form government. Yet Labor polled only 32.6 per cent of the primary vote for a slim majority of 77 seats. The Coalition received more votes, 35.7 per cent, but was smashed by the teals in traditional Liberal seats.

The Coalition was back to 40 per cent in the Newspoll of November 10 as Labor languished at 33 per cent. Now come signs of an analytical shift by the media left.

Laura Tingle on July 14, 2023, in the AFR wrote a scathing analysis of Dutton’s tactics, under the headline “Downward envy and the politics of robo-debt and the Voice”. Tingle was in trouble in October last year for calling out “false balance” in the ABC’s coverage of the voice.

Political editor at ABC 7.30 and the staff-elected member of the public broadcaster’s board, Tingle – answering an audience question at a book launch – said the No case in the referendum was built on disinformation, even though many of the complaints about that side of the debate actually came from material produced by Yes advocates.

Peter Hartcher, who writes for the Nine-owned mastheads The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, was similarly scathing about Dutton’s decision to campaign for No. On April 22 last year, he wrote: “The Liberal Party is dying and Dutton can’t even diagnose the disease.” Dutton’s decision to oppose the voice had hurt the party and his own ratings, Hartcher argued. Yet the voice went down 60-40.

Hartcher has also been savage about Dutton’s support for nuclear power even though international climate change meetings for two years have committed to ramp up zero-emissions nuclear.

On June 22, Hartcher said Dutton’s nuclear plan had a distinctly Russian and Soviet flavour. Never mind the US, Europe and China are increasing their reliance on nuclear power.

“The whole point of Dutton’s policy is to introduce uncertainty, to overthrow the government, to kill its policy and to win power,” Hartcher observed.

Tingle on the ABC website on June 15 wrote: “Peter Dutton talking about nuclear energy means he can’t be accused of being a climate denier. It just means he doesn’t have to do anything much any time soon.”

David Crowe on June 24 in The Age pointed to polling showing voters, especially the young, being more open to nuclear power. The piece opened: “Peter Dutton has invited Australians into a nuclear maze that has dozens of dead ends, and no clear pathway because his plan is so free of facts.”

Crowe on August 22 extended his criticism to the Opposition Leader’s handling of Gaza: “Dutton is placing all his bets on an issue not crucial to voters.”

Dutton’s criticism of the government’s decision to award visas to Palestinians fleeing Gaza was “new and ugly territory for Australian politics”, Crowe wrote.

This was old ground for Crowe’s readers. On October 12 last year, only five days after the October 7 massacre of 1200 Jews by Hamas in southern Israel, Crowe wrote Dutton was right to suggest anti-Israel protesters who break the law should be prosecuted.

On everything else, Dutton was “dead wrong in the way he is spreading alarm and provoking panic” about the Middle East.

Given the level of anti-Semitism in Australia, surely Dutton was correct.

Yet on two issues that have definitely damaged Albanese’s polling – the October 15 revelation he had bought a $4.3m beach house on the NSW Central Coast, and reports on October 27 about his relationship with former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce and private flight upgrades he received for family travel – senior journalists from the left have been quiet.

On November 23, Tingle said an election could be only three months away but the government “finds itself outgunned by a man with simple, angry messages”.

If Tingle is right and Albo does go early, as Sky News Australia’s Peta Credlin has been arguing he will, it will be to avoid delivering a budget that could show a $49.3bn reversal in the national bottom line.

Reflect then on the high-taxing Greens policies that Albanese is going to have to negotiate with Greens leader Adam Bandt if Labor falls short of the 76 seats needed for a majority.

Dutton will make sure people in teal seats understand these “independent” MPs have overwhelmingly voted with Labor and the Greens.