Federal politics: Anthony Albanese about to face political blowtorch

Anthony Albanese during Question Time on Tuesday. Picture: NCA Newswire/Gary Ramage

The parliamentary gloves are off.

With only nine full sitting days left before an election, Scott Morrison has recognised that the Coalition is in dire straits and is running out of time.

Anthony Albanese is about to face the same political blowtorch he has been applying to the Prime Minister for years.

Until now, Morrison has avoided “going negative” on the Opposition Leader, choosing to appear positive and optimistic while managing the pandemic, staying above politics, and patiently absorbing the relentlessly effective attacks from Albanese accusing him of failing and doing “too little, too late”.

But the brutal reality of how Labor has succeeded in framing Morrison in the most damaging light – as well as the recognition that the election campaign will be the most gruelling and disrupted since 1975 – means Albanese is now the target.

A conscious decision has been taken at the highest levels to overturn that previous conscious commitment not to go negative.

While Albanese in this parliamentary sitting warns his confident and cocky MPs against complacency, Morrison, Josh Frydenberg and Peter Dutton are trying to lift their divided and despondent Coalition MPs with a full-frontal attack on the Labor leader over his inexperience, higher taxes, politicising the pandemic, having a glass jaw, and exploiting deaths in aged care for “political gain”.

Morrison – who is trailing in the polls, under public pressure and facing internal revolts, legislative defeats and a rampant opposition, with an election looming – does not have the luxury of Paul Keating’s famous intent in 1993 to “do” the then-opposition leader, John Hewson, “slowly” in parliament.

Not only was Morrison facing the prospect of an embarrassing question time over leaked texts critical of him, he was also facing rebellious backbenchers threatening to block his pledged religious freedom laws and leaving him with a broken promise and divided partyroom.

On Tuesday morning, Morrison said he “absolutely” knew how to win the election, and hours later demonstrated part of that plan was to move from the defensive to the offensive.

Morrison accused Albanese of “misrepresenting the facts” on the government’s Covid response and demanded the Labor leader “stop trying to politicise the pandemic” with his “snarling and growling”.

The Treasurer went hard on economic management, saying Albanese never held a Treasury portfolio and had supported “higher taxes” including proposals for a carbon tax, the mining tax and an inheritance tax when he was part of a group known as the “Bolsheviks”.

Albanese could see what was coming and responded with claims Frydenberg was lying, Morrison was ranting and Dutton, as Leader of the House, was “attempting personal character assassination”.

After question time, as Morrison tried to pacify his partyroom over religious freedom laws, Albanese was able to reinforce the dark picture he has painted of Morrison not caring about summer bushfires, failing with vaccine rollouts, suppressing wages, and leaving people in aged care without food or water.

But even as he rolled out his negative list, Morrison was able to secure Coalition support for the religious freedom bill and avert another parliamentary defeat at the hands of his own MPs.

What’s more, Morrison now has the chance to fulfil his pledge of introducing the bill while simultaneously putting the pressure back on Labor to pass it in the Senate where the Coalition doesn’t have the numbers.

Labor’s attacks on Morrison’s handling of Covid-19 have ignored the world-beating global comparisons putting Australia at the top of health and economic responses to the pandemic and defy rational assessment. But that doesn’t mean they have not been effective, especially after two years of social disruption.

Albanese has created such a negative impression of Morrison that he now only has touch upon his adverse images to raise them in the public mind. But it also means that in these dying days of the 46th parliament, Albanese is going to be subjected to the same brutal character assessments that he has visited upon Morrison for the past three years.