The campaign blitz by Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton in the last 48 hours of the Dunkley by-election campaign is clear evidence of how close the contest is and how much is at stake.
A big swing against Labor in the safe Melbourne seat held on a margin of 6.3 per cent, or an unlikely loss, will have huge ramifications for the Prime Minister, government policies and Labor’s massive $105bn tax cut shift.
Apart from the obvious personal potential damage to Albanese’s personal standing there is a risk to the political effectiveness of the tax cuts and a powerful undercurrent moving against Chris Bowen’s climate change policies that threaten to coalesce against Labor in Dunkley on Saturday.
While the headline contest in Dunkley over cost-of-living pressure is concentrating on tax cuts from July 1 there is powerful anti-Labor sentiment over “boats and utes” after a Coalition parliamentary attack on Labor’s new fuel efficiency rules on utes used to pull trailers and boats. A latter-day Toorak-tractor campaign using Frankston four-wheel drives.
There is a high-profile macro campaign from Labor over tax cuts and an almost invisible micro campaign from the Liberals over utes.
Both sides know the tax cuts have lifted Labor’s support and both sides know the practical issue of boats and utes is lifting the Liberal vote.
As Albanese conceded on Friday that the contest is “tight” he continued to promote Labor’s cost-of-living relief with the recast stage three tax cuts to those on less than $45,000 centre stage.
At the same time Albanese attacked the Opposition Leader for running a campaign of “negativity and scaremongering” about the tax cuts, record immigration and the handling of the release of 149 criminals from immigration detention.
Albanese declared that Labor “has run a positive campaign about strengthening Medicare, about fee-free TAFE, about cost of living – not the least of which is what occurred this week, with the parliament passing our tax cuts. Our tax cuts that will deliver a tax cut for everyone, even those under $45,000 a year.”
That change to giving a cut to those earning under $45,000 a year will directly assist almost half of Dunkley’s workers.
But there is growing concern within Labor ranks that the perception the tax cuts – prepared in secret knowing there would be a Dunkley by-election and announced before the by-election and well before they come in – are purely for political ends. This undermines their policy integrity and further damages the tax cuts if there’s a big swing against Labor.
On Friday Albanese reflected the growing concern about long-term damage to the tax cuts plan and said the legislation was not about Dunkley but was “about good economic policy and taking pressure off people on the cost of living”.
Of course, the timing of the announcement, six months before the implementation of the tax cuts, ensured Labor could fight the by-election using the tax cuts and had naively hoped Dutton would oppose the tax cuts and go into a campaign opposing tax cuts for almost half the electorate.
Whatever the result, it’s coming down to the cost of cuts and utes.
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