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Anthony Albanese rides the wave of a tsunami of sleaze

The Labor leader sneers at ‘Scotty from marketing’ but is himself a master of subliminal advertising and the nasty message.

Being able to exploit a cultural movement, exploit sympathetic media, get under Morrison’s skin and reap the benefit of better polling has been Albanese’s political success of the past month. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage
Being able to exploit a cultural movement, exploit sympathetic media, get under Morrison’s skin and reap the benefit of better polling has been Albanese’s political success of the past month. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Scott Morrison is characterised and condemned for being a “marketing man”, a master of messaging and a man without convictions beyond political ends.

The Prime Minister’s clear failure to master a message to market in the last month of weaponised sexual allegations belies the reputation and yet part of that failure is in fact that he is a man of many convictions.

Anthony Albanese’s sneers at “Scotty from marketing” are an attempt to claim his own authenticity and concern for people devoid of political ends.

Yet the Opposition Leader is actually displaying his own skill in advertising; he’s a master of subliminal advertising, appearing to say one thing but delivering a hidden, often nasty, message through sophistry and circular argument couched in terms designed to hide his own political priorities.

Ironically, Albanese’s attack has exposed Coalition tactical and strategic weaknesses that were there before the pandemic and threaten to still be there after the pandemic and have a bearing on the election which looks increasingly unlikely to be this year.

Perhaps Albanese has done what Napoleon is said to have advised against: “Never interrupt your enemy when they are making mistake.” Despite the clear confected political claims and refusal to admit his own failings, Albanese has lighted on the greatest threat to Morrison’s re-election — the Coalition is an eight-year-old government seeking a fourth term and lacks a proactive agenda.

Rather than being a “new Morrison government” guaranteed victory at the next election the Coalition is a long-term government in a similar situation to the Howard government going into the 2004, with its greatest reforms and biggest successes behind it.

Of course, for Albanese the 2004 election parallel is uncomfortable because one of the main reasons Howard won a fourth term was the superior economic management of the Coalition, and Mark Latham, as opposition leader, was seen as a risk.

Albanese has achieved a political breakthrough in the past month, forcing a Labor-friendly, progressively popular, media attractive narrative of culturally important issues upon a Coalition that was succeeding brilliantly in its strengths of economic management, job creation, tax cuts and business encouragement. Not to mention world-leading health measures.

Minister for Defence Senator Linda Reynolds and Attorney-General Christian Porter have both been out of action over separate scandals. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage
Minister for Defence Senator Linda Reynolds and Attorney-General Christian Porter have both been out of action over separate scandals. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Make no mistake, Morrison and Albanese are deeply political animals prepared to use whatever they can to promote themselves and their causes while deriding and undermining each other personally, with the ultimate aim of remaining or becoming prime minister.

But equally, do not make the mistake that the two men are devoid of convictions or political principles; they are not.

Indeed, it is the very convictions of the two leaders that have led to the unseemly dominance of sex scandals, allegations and lewd misbehaviour in Parliament House at a time of floods, global crisis, the worst health pandemic in 100 years, unprecedented government spending, record debt and deficit, high unemployment, threats to market stability and a generational burden.

When most of the rest of the world is still fighting over vaccine rollouts, coping with thousands of deaths and trying to revive economies, Australia’s premier parliament has been consumed by rape allegations, pornography, police investigations, sexual harassment claims, sackings and revenge.

The public is entitled to feel cheated and to express its own despair and disenchantment with all politicians as well as blaming the government.

Morrison’s personal morality, religious beliefs and life made him unprepared, ill-equipped and incapable of dealing effectively with the political threat inherent in the unfolding revelations and allegations of rape and sexual misbehaviour, particularly, in Parliament House. At the same time politics and progressive cultural forces created a storm that drew attention from the dominance of the health and economic responses to COVID-19 in the past year.

Morrison, who looked rattled politically and personally, also allowed the inference that as Prime Minister he was personally responsible for allowing reprehensible acts to occur and was unfeeling and uncaring, to get under his skin and kindle anger, resentment and defensiveness.

Albanese’s political instinct and left-wing political upbringing meant he could not only see the potential for a specific allegation of sexual assault to join a calculated campaign and wider societal demands to damage Morrison and engulf the government at time it was riding high on managing the coronavirus pandemic for more than a year.

The upshot of Morrison’s blindness and susceptibility on a cultural movement that was outside his ken has been a damaging distraction for the Coalition, essentially cost two ministers their jobs, forced him into an unwanted cabinet reshuffle, taken the edge off the government’s performance and revived Albanese’s political fortunes.

It has also exposed the fundamental problem the Morrison government had before the pandemic began at the beginning of last year — there isn’t a strategic agenda for change. The limited reforms on industrial relations have drained into the sand as Labor, the unions and Senate fringe-dwellers took control. While highly successful, the economic measures taken to protect jobs are still a reaction to the pandemic and the promised tax cuts subsumed into the COVID stimulus.

As parliament rose for the autumn break before the budget in May, Morrison sought to regain the agenda after a month of fumbles. As Prime Minister he again bared his soul and throat to the public, personally expressing his sympathy and pledging to take action against staff misbehaviour.

Morrison confessed his own personal perplexity at the existence of behaviour such as disgusting sex acts being shared among male staffers and allegations of male prostitutes being used by MPs in parliament. It is genuinely incomprehensible to the daggy dad from “the Shire” in Sydney but no excuse for not being able to better deal with the seamy tsunami as it is no excuse to get angry at journalists or Labor MPs who lay blame at his feet or accuse him of being dishonest.

This is his reaction in question time on Thursday: “These acts that have been referred to in the media I just find completely incomprehensible — incomprehensible! This is conduct that is completely mysterious to me. It is not something that I can even conceive of, to be honest. And I think people around this place know me when it comes to those types of issues.”

In parliament on Thursday, Albanese drew all the government’s failings of the past month together and then broadened his critique to take in the upcoming budget and election.

“After eight long years, what we’ve seen over this last fortnight is a tired, stale government that’s unravelling before our eyes, disintegrating before our eyes. There are real challenges before this country. The challenge of overcoming the pandemic. The challenge of overcoming the deep recession, insecure work, increased frequency of natural disasters, but what we have from this government is no agenda, no idea. It’s just occupying the space,” he said.

“The whole obsession about political management — an accountability black hole. It’s a government that doesn’t believe that it should have to answer questions either here or in press conferences, a government that will never take responsibility. We have a Prime Minister who doesn’t hold a hose and doesn’t call an inquiry.”

But Albanese’s claims in parliament and in the media about how concerned Labor is with the challenge of the pandemic, the recession, jobs and natural disasters are pure sophistry and circular arguments.

When given the opportunity in recent parliamentary sittings to seek answers on the economy, floods, the end of JobKeeper, jobs, the NDIS, vaccine rollouts or weaponised sexual sensations, the last option has been Albanese’s overwhelming choice.

It was hard to believe the last sitting week in parliament before the May budget, which will unveil the first true cost of the pandemic, had scores of questions on rape and sexual misbehaviour, including more than 15 Labor questions on what Morrison’s staff knew about the allegations of rape in the office of the former defence industry minister, Linda Reynolds.

On Friday, Albanese claimed to have been raising all the fundamental issues and has previously said in media interviews that he was only talking about the sex scandals because he was “being asked”. What misleading tosh. Albanese and his Labor colleagues have sought to make the historical rape allegations against Christian Porter and the claims of rape from former Liberal staffer, Brittany Higgins, as well as the tawdry pornography, front and centre for a month. Of course Albanese is going to be asked by the media about the issue he and his colleagues and progressive forces around the country have turned into a national narrative.

In doing so, he’s been able to deflect from equally disturbing anonymous allegations from women within Labor and more importantly from the economic rebound that has ended Australia’s first recession in decades, restored jobs to pre-pandemic levels a year ago, cut the unemployment rate to 5.8 per cent, reduced the burden on the budget by $23bn, spurred a record building spree, supported record resources exports and delivered the promised V-shaped recovery.

Being able to exploit a cultural movement, exploit sympathetic media, get under Morrison’s skin and reap the benefit of better polling has been Albanese’s political success of the past month.

But Morrison has shown slow signs of an awareness of the danger, a late attempt to turn the issue of women’s disadvantage, a readiness to call out Labor’s hypocrisy and an attempt to shift the focus from him to a broader societal issue. He also has the advantage of a budget bringing public focus back to the Coalition’s economic record and his own strength as Liberal leader.

Yet, just as was the case before the pandemic, as Albanese has recognised, Morrison needs a strategic agenda to take to the next election to encourage those people who voted for him last time to vote again for the Coalition and not just against an unpopular Opposition Leader.

Read related topics:Anthony AlbaneseScott Morrison
Dennis Shanahan
Dennis ShanahanNational Editor

Dennis Shanahan has been The Australian’s Canberra Bureau Chief, then Political Editor and now National Editor based in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery since 1989 covering every Budget, election and prime minister since then. He has been in journalism since 1971 and has a master’s Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, New York.

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/albanese-rides-the-wave-of-a-tsunami-of-sleaze/news-story/795b8090de6e31c24beb12bd5e78eb9e