Election 2022: Albanese’s got this – now the Liberals need a good think

Three years ago Scott Morrison took great delight rubbing my nose in getting it wrong. But I’m happy to have another go, and predict Labor will form government after Saturday’s results are tallied.

Labor Leader Anthony Albanese and partner Jodie Haydon visit a pre-polling booth in the electorate of Bass.

Predictions in politics are always fraught with danger. Three years ago Scott Morrison took great delight rubbing my nose in getting it wrong. But I’m happy to have another go, and predict that Labor will form government after Saturday’s results are tallied.

It should be able to form majority government, but at the very least looks set to govern in minority. The Coalition has had wars on too many fronts to pull off another victory coming from behind.

Teal independents are likely to win a few seats off Liberal MPs but, irrespective of whether they exceed those expectations or underwhelm, they have sapped much-needed resources from the Coalition’s contest with Labor.

The aftermath will require the Liberal Party and the Coalition to have a long, hard think about who they represent and their ideological lines in the sand.

The Liberals and Nationals are holding up reasonably well in Queensland but bleeding seats in other parts of the country. You would think the government’s best-case scenario would see it losing around four to six seats to Labor, not counting any losses to the teals. The worst-case scenario could go anywhere.

While there are Labor seats being targeted, and one or two may fall, for the most part Labor pick-ups are going to be a bridge too far for a prime minister on the nose – one whose own colleagues have labelled him everything from a “horrible, horrible person” to a “complete psycho”, “hypocrite” and “fraud”.

Albanese has modelled his small-target strategy, pushing towards the centre as Morrison thrashed around on the right.

The personal assessments were a dagger in the heart of a leader who needed everything to go his way to orchestrate a comeback. But no one can take away his remarkable 2019 victory.

Of course my prediction that Labor wins includes the potential for a close victory to become a blowout on the night and result in a resounding win, remembering Labor never wins with majorities to match the Coalition’s.

Gough Whitlam’s majority was just five and Kevin Rudd won with only an eight-seat majority. For context, Tony Abbott won the 2013 election with a 15-seat majority and John Howard won in 1996 with a majority of 20.

What won’t happen at this election is a Morrison comeback like in 2019. A second miracle is off the table. I make that prediction in full knowledge that it will be thrown in my face by conservative commentators and government insiders alike if I’m wrong. But I won’t be. Anthony Albanese will be the next prime minister of Australia.

Which will leave the conservative side of politics to ponder: what went so wrong? A prime minister who was popular during the pandemic saw his personal numbers collapse. An opposition leader who struggled at the beginning of the campaign and was viewed as a seat warmer when he took over a shattered party after the 2019 loss will become only the fourth Labor leader to lead the party into government since World War II.

Many saw the 2019 defeat for Labor as the start of what might be a period of clean out. But after Saturday’s results are tallied, that election will come to be seen as more analogous with the Liberals’ 1993 defeat, which was followed by a win just three years later.

Paul Keating became too confident after his 1993 win coming from behind, just as Morrison did after the 2019 victory. Australians didn’t endorse either leader with their victory; they rejected the other mob. Three years later, Howard cut a safe figure on whom voters could gamble. Albanese has modelled his small-target strategy similarly, pushing towards the centre as Morrison thrashed around on the right.

The problems Labor will inherit are immense: a lost decade in which economic reform was put in the too-hard basket; rising debt, inflation and interest rates; the likelihood that the AAA credit rating will come under scrutiny during the coming 12 months; sagging productivity; and divisions on social issues.

It’s not hard to imagine the sort of campaign Liberals will run in three years attacking Labor. It could be effective if the threadbare elements of the Coalition can hang together between now and then. Governing is going to be tough.

This outgoing Coalition government has lost so much standing from the Howard and Peter Costello years. The notion that its economic credibility is in the same ballpark as the Coalition government before it is just laughable.

It will be interesting to see if the Liberals in opposition can reclaim their reforming zeal. To do so they have to be willing to emulate the depth of thinking the wets and dries of the 1970s and ’80s displayed. I question whether the personnel in parliament today have what it takes to do that on the conservative side – even more so if some of the MPs under threat from the teals are defeated.

For many of the senior Labor MPs soon to be sworn into cabinet, this is their second chance. They were seen as collectively talented 15 years ago when Labor butchered its return to government, overtaken by infighting and a cultural malaise that saw them remove prime ministers on the whim of bad polls.

If the group I’m talking about lives up to its potential it will need to match up to the first cabinet of Bob Hawke, which undertook important micro-economic reforms to set up the prosperity Australia continues to enjoy. Such are the challenges the country faces.

But that prosperity is waning after a lack of reforms in recent times. I just don’t know if the incoming Labor government has what it takes to modernise our economy. After the small-target campaign it certainly doesn’t have a mandate to do so, which means that if Liberals oppose reforms in a search for popularity they might dissuade Labor from doing what the country needs.

In defeat Morrison presumably will retire from politics, still in his early 50s. Malcolm Turnbull aside, Morrison will be the first former PM not to hit the road with a lifetime prime ministerial pension, which perhaps will keep him in the political game a little longer. More likely he’ll do something else for a crust. I don’t agree with the removal of PM pensions.

This campaign has been memorable for its vacuousness, the lack of serious policy contestation, the growth in sound bites and gotcha questions, the extent to which voters tuned out. Politics is broken and there is collective blame for that: on MPs, the media and the public. Perhaps a fresh start can help restore the civil society we need for democratic governance to thrive. We aren’t the only country battling a democratic decay.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.