Election 2022: Morrison must cash in on Albanese’s absence

The strategic challenge for Morrison is to shift the debate away from distractions to the economy. Picture: Jason Edwards

Scott Morrison has a tactical mission going into the third week of the election campaign: to take advantage of Anthony Albanese’s Covid-19 isolation. A mission failure this week could blight his chance of re-election on May 21.

At the end of the second week the Opposition Leader had succeeded in his tactical objectives: recover from the woeful first week studded with failures of economic understanding and to keep the central debate off the Coalition’s strong point of economic recovery from the pandemic. A positive Covid test disrupted that desperate success and threatens to leave the ALP campaign not just behind where it started but in danger of falling further behind as the replacement voices for Labor fall into the same trap Albanese did in his first week – no grasp of detail and only harping criticism.

If the Prime Minister fails to grasp the tactical opportunity to highlight Labor’s confusion on key issues and project a positive future for the Coalition, he risks losing the political momentum gifted to him by the errors and disruption of the Labor campaign.

It is not an exaggeration to say the third week could determine the outcome because election campaigns are not just a linear set of events spiced with gaffes and errors or stuffed with promises.

Like a symphony, there is a cyclic rhythm of tides and currents with an overture, a central development, then a coda that returns to the essence of the production in the final passage and sends the audience out uplifted and convinced. It’s not good enough for the Coalition to rely on revisiting old themes from past achievements and picking up opposition errors; the campaign has to have a positive structure and development to enable it to end with that high positive note.

There’s no doubt Morrison’s decision to call a six-week campaign and force Albanese before a media pack that has to at least appear to be giving an equally tough time to the opposition worked spectacularly. There’s equally no doubt Albanese didn’t allow himself to be crushed in the first week.

Hence the need for Morrison to take absolute advantage of yet another godsend.

Already the weakness of the team behind Albanese is being exposed on the grounds of competence and grasp of essential policy detail. Richard Marles, the deputy leader, who would be deputy PM, acting PM and probably defence minister in a Labor government, fell at the first two hurdles: his record on China and Labor’s carbon price impost on coal mines.

While the leader’s away: Katy Gallagher, left, Richard Marles, second from right, and Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers, far right, along with Labor candidate for Forde Rowan Holzeberger, on the campaign trail in Brisbane. Picture: Tim Hunter.

Labor’s triumphant claims that the security agreement between China and Solomon Islands, which could see Chinese navy ships based to the east of Australia’s coast, was the greatest foreign relations failure since World War II were immediately undermined by revelations in The Australian that Marles believed Beijing and Honiaria had a perfect right to do what they did and had said so while on a visit to China.

Marles’s problem was not only with his confused position on China but his total confusion on Labor’s climate change policy of demanding that 215 industries be required to buy carbon credits if their emissions exceeded ALP targets. For four days former resources minister Matt Canavan had been campaigning in the coal region of the Hunter in NSW, unsettling Labor MPs by pointing to 15 coalmines in the region that would be hit by the carbon price.

Marles was incapable of answering which coal mines would face the impost, Jim Chalmers as shadow treasurer couldn’t save him, then Chris Bowen, the Labor climate change spokesman, confirmed the mines – including mines in Queensland – would not be exempt as the Labor MPs claimed.

For Albanese there is always the risk that frontbenchers filling the void on television, while he’s locked at home watching his beloved Rabbitohs being beaten by their old Tigers nemesis, will not be seen as worse performers, such as Marles, but better, such as Chalmers on the economy.

Anthony Albanese works on his campaign launch speech with iso companion, Toto. #isoday2. Picture: Facebook

The strategic challenge for Morrison is to shift the debate away from the distractions of transgender participation in women’s sport – whether he’s too insensitive or too religious – to the Coalition’s killing field, the economy. It is extraordinary that after being told for more than two years Morrison had “just two jobs” – pandemic quarantine and vaccination – and employment recovery would be the “test” for the Coalition, Labor has barely mentioned any of these issues.

Certainly, as Albanese had to appear virtually, as Morrison had to operate for so much of the parliamentary sittings because of quarantine and Covid, the Coalition’s advertising and announcements sought to shift to the economy. On Sunday, Morrison and Josh Frydenberg “committed to a Lower Tax Guarantee during the next term of parliament as well as providing an ironclad guarantee that the planned $100bn of tax relief will be delivered to Australian workers over the next four years”.

“This commitment provides certainty to millions of workers, retirees and to every small business in Australia. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the Labor Party could not give the same guarantee while they continue to refuse to put a speed limit on their tax plan for millions of Australians,” the announcement said.

So, the Coalition negatively pressures Labor on key policies over China and climate change while positively asserting its record on the economy, one of the best-performed in the world buffeted by the pandemic and the Ukraine invasion. There is a danger here for the Coalition. Politicians giving “ironclad” guarantees about future tax cuts while saying there will be no accompanying spending cuts, run into an inherent cynicism – especially the case after Paul Keating’s legislated L.A.W. tax cuts in 1993 that never eventuated.

Thus, the Coalition is left with a pledge to implement tax cuts it has already promised and legislated and which Labor says it, too, will deliver. Just signing a pledge on existing tax cuts is hardly bringing the electoral symphony to the point of the Ode to Joy.

The strategic challenge for Morrison is to take economic management beyond what has been achieved, beyond a scare campaign about Labor and beyond a comparison, no matter how favourable or valid, to a new level of optimism and hope.