Anthony Albanese is moving rapidly to kill off the growing and fatal assumption that Labor will lose its narrow majority at the election next year and disastrously become a minority government, hostage to the Greens and independents.
The means to halt this corrosive and self-defeating attitude within Labor ranks is to impose the discipline of an election campaign, and the aim is to defy political history and increase the majority as a first-term government.
Significantly, not falling into minority government avoids triggering an ALP leadership spill after the election, in the event of a loss under the party rules.
With do-or-die determination the Prime Minister has committed to a phony electoral war of between five and seven months before declaring a formal campaign in February for March or, more likely, calling an election in April for May.
This scheduled and managed campaign, already planned into late January, will run in conjunction with a campaign of pressure and derision against Peter Dutton, designed to personally vilify the Opposition Leader, and a timetable of big-spending announcements aimed at women, families and the young.
Simultaneous with the push to make Dutton produce policy details and exploit the advantage of incumbency is an attack in inner-city electorates to take advantage of the political and demographic greying of the Greens.
Albanese began the phony war this week with a US-style campaign rally in Adelaide complete with Labor stars, a hand-picked audience, orchestrated media and a rollcall of achievements coupled with a $16bn taxpayer-funded promise to cut university debts for young voters if Labor is re-elected.
At the end of the parliamentary week Albanese stayed on the theme of staged events, using the final question of the week to accuse the Coalition of wanting students to pay more, then being supported by a chorus of Labor MPs chanting in a university-protest fashion that the opposition was against cost-of-living relief.
Albanese shouted: “Who’s telling young Australians you must pay more?” and the Labor side answered as one: “They are,” pointing to the Coalition.
After a term of policy and politics imbued with US Democratic principles, Albanese is unashamedly embracing US campaigns and stunts in the belief that politics has changed, he’s better off transmitting his message from staged events, using his own words without journalistic intervention, backed with social media targeted at the young, in particular.
This strategy runs an enormous risk. But at this stage of the electoral cycle, in the doldrums in the polls, with a stifling of Labor’s main policy agenda and the pervasive sense of just hanging on to government with an election only months away, Albanese has no choice.
From his viewpoint all he can see is a pervasive acceptance in Labor ranks that a minority government is the likeliest outcome of the next election, the best they can expect, and a nascent whisper that a most unlikely Coalition victory is possible.
No leader can willingly go into a campaign with MPs and senators, party faithful and the public believing they cannot win outright. Voters’ belief in who they think will win is a powerful indicator of the political mood, even if they do not want the leader they think will win.
It is interesting to note, nothing more, that polling before Tuesday’s US presidential election showed most Australians would have preferred Kamala Harris to win but thought Donald Trump would win.
Albanese cannot afford to go into the election campaign with voters – and his own team – thinking a minority government draw is the best result they can get. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy and deadly preconditioning that could encourage a real and effective swing to the Coalition.
Thus Albanese, always energised with his back to the wall, feeling besieged, underrated and put upon by the media, has rallied into campaign mode to attack Dutton and offer “aspirations” for a second-term government next year.
On Tuesday Albanese told his colleagues to sell Labor’s achievements in their first term and look to the future with aspirational promises – starting with the $16bn debt right off for about three million people with outstanding student debt – and that they would be returned with more MPs and senators than they had now. That is, an increased majority and a second term governing in their own right.
All week the Prime Minister and his ministers drove home the $16bn giveaway and accused Dutton and the Coalition of wanting more debt for students, as they prepared to release more big-spending promises for families and women as part of Jim Chalmers’ boost for the care economy – childcare, aged care, healthcare, Medicare and welfare.
In what will be the template for the next five months, Labor launched scares over every possible piece of government support from cradle to grave.
Albanese declared: “Those opposite speak about spending in their arrogant and reckless way. Have a look at what the criticism is for their $315bn that they say is wasteful spending. Would they cut the indexation of the Age Pension? That’s $14bn. Would they cut energy bill relief for households and businesses? Was that wasteful? We know they opposed it.
“That’s not the way forward. What we’ve managed to do is halve inflation while looking after people through cost-of-living relief,” he said, using Chalmers’ regular line that Labor was combining “responsible economic management with providing cost-of-living relief”.
The Treasurer told parliament the government “is all about ensuring that Australians, and particularly young Australians, earn more and keep more of what they earn, and that we get prices in our economy under control”.
“The progress that we’re making on student debt is at risk if those opposite are elected,” he said. “This is one of the many costs of the risky and reckless arrogance of this Opposition Leader – long on risky arrogance and short on economic credibility.”
After only a week of a campaign of at least five months, Labor’s intentions are clear: denigrate Dutton; promote Labor’s giveaways in the care space; claim to be economically responsible in fighting inflation; and offer a new suite of giveaways in the same space with childcare a prime target.
But there is a dangerous counter view.
Big spending promises undermine claims of responsible economic management, no matter how well Chalmers does on the floor of the parliament against the opposition; and his real test is cutting inflation further, helping bring down interest rates and relieving by spending less, not more.
On Thursday Chalmers conceded “the official data doesn’t capture how people are feeling”.
This is the nub of Labor’s problem: people don’t feel better off than they were three years ago because “halving inflation” hasn’t eased their mortgage rates or lowered the cost of groceries, energy or petrol. Voters also know government spending keeps inflation and interest rates higher for longer, and that getting a payment that you have to pay back through tax is a churning circle.
The second problem is whether the handouts are credible: Labor’s keynote, headline, grandstand promise of a cut in energy bills of $275 by 2025 is only six weeks from being officially broken.
As well, slicing and dicing the electorate into women, families, young people and older people doesn’t necessarily work – the US Democrats went for women, students, Arabs, Hispanics and blacks, but the early polling there shows it did not work for Harris because no matter what colour or creed people are, they all care about the economy.
It is here Albanese risks missing the big picture in the outer suburbs and regional areas, where relying on Arab antagonism in western Sydney towards Dutton over support for Israel misses the point that Muslims pay energy bills, have businesses and put petrol in their cars; and there are many more electorates outside Sydney.
In the inner-city areas, Albanese believes Labor can win seats from the Greens after their failure in the Queensland election and has strong hopes of winning Griffith, Brisbane and Ryan, in that order, with possible gains in Victoria.
Labor has detected a demographic shift within Greens voters – the generation that voted for and still idolise founder Bob Brown is older – and while they have the same environmental concerns they are being turned off by the radicalisation of the party under Adam Bandt, especially over extreme support for Hamas terrorist sympathisers.
When Albanese told his colleagues he would return with more MPs and senators, it wasn’t just Coalition gains he was talking about but taking back Labor heartland from the Greens over opposition to Labor’s housing plans and, more important, the divisions over the conflict in Gaza.
So, Albanese has a six-month plan aimed at instilling confidence in his colleagues, targeting Dutton and bringing home Greens seats with big-spending promises combined with fighting inflation.
The monthly subjects may change, as will the scare of the month, but the tactics and strategy will remain the same. Albanese’s committed and he has little choice.
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