Election 2025: Albanese’s two-part campaign strategy to go negative against Peter Dutton

Anthony Albanese will run a negative election campaign against Peter Dutton’s ‘arrogant, aggressive and reckless’ personality and won’t rely on Labor’s record alone to try and win a second term.

Australians will decide whether to re-elect Anthony Albanese after one term or switch to Peter Dutton.

Anthony Albanese will run a negative campaign against Peter Dutton’s “arrogant, aggressive and reckless” personality at the federal election, as he attempts to defy the polls and win majority government through a character assassination and not on Labor’s record alone.

The attention on the Opposition Leader’s persona will contrast with Mr Dutton’s attack against the “bad decisions” and “broken promises” of the Prime Minister and Labor, with senior Liberal sources saying the party will attempt to oust a first-term government by focusing more on policies than personality.

After defeating Scott Morrison in 2022 with an effective personal assault, Mr Albanese will tell Australians they’ll be worse off under Mr Dutton as they consider who will be the best leader following a parliamentary term dominated by cost-of-living pressures and the failed voice referendum.

“Our campaign will ask Australians – what will Peter Dutton’s arrogance cost you?” a senior Labor source said. “He’s arrogant, aggressive and reckless, which is why Australians can’t see him as prime minister. Peter Dutton doesn’t have a plan for the economy or the cost of living. He’s a policy-free zone – the Coalition are the laziest ­opposition in living memory.

“He was too arrogant to listen to medical professionals and was voted worst health minister in 40 years by Australian doctors after he cut $50bn from hospitals and froze the Medicare rebate – making it harder to see a doctor.

“He arrogantly ignores the CSIRO and other experts who say his nuclear power plan will take too long, cost too much and put up families’ energy bills by $1000 a year.”

Considered the underdog at this election inside Liberal circles, Mr Dutton’s campaign will be less about personality and more about Mr Albanese’s policies, with the key message being the Prime Minister and his Labor government have made life a lot harder for voters.

“The main point of our campaign is that Albanese and Labor, through their bad decisions, their wrong priorities, their broken promises, have made your life harder. And the cost-of-living pain that you’re feeling is a direct result of their bad management,” a senior Liberal Party source said.

“He’s a weak leader who’s not really in control of events. The last few weeks have shown he’s not particularly good under sustained pressure – whether it’s his Tourette’s remarks or snapping at journalists. And partly it’s because he doesn’t really have much of an agenda – the government’s drifting.”

With the prospect of a hung parliament making this election unique, both sides agree cost of living will be the top issue.

Labor’s campaign strategy will be in two parts. Firstly, on the government’s record and its second-term agenda and, secondly, on Mr Dutton. “We will confidently campaign on our record and our promises for a second term,” the Labor source said.

“The cost-of-living pressure facing households would have been worse under the Coalition who opposed all this relief and Australians know that. Now that we are through the worst of the worldwide inflation surge we can build for the future and that’s what our ambitious second-term agenda will be all about.”

RedBridge strategy and analytics director Kos Samaras, a former deputy campaign director for Labor in Victoria, said the government’s plan to go negative on Mr Dutton was “going to be very, very risky because the electorate is waiting to see significant nation-building solutions” to address the economic issues facing the country.

Noting Labor’s two-part strategy, Mr Samaras said: “Many will tell you that voters don’t like negative campaigns, but, at the end of the day, they do work. They work at times of economic prosperity. If you’re an incumbent government and you’ve been in power during an unprecedented economic event, going negative is full of risk for that reason. People want to see a solution.

“It’s a lot easier to make it a referendum on the government because … elections are referendums on governments. It’s a lot easier for Dutton to say ‘this is where he’s failed … you, the Australian voter’. If he doesn’t play the man but plays the policies, it’ll grip like Velcro.”

Labor is taking the same view of the electoral map as it did in 2022, which is that no state is more important than the other, though the party concedes it has more to gain in Queensland than anywhere else because of its poor record in the state over the last few electoral cycles.

“It’s a challenging map for both sides, who have risks and ­opportunities everywhere. No one should approach the next election thinking the contest will be decided in one state. We certainly aren’t,” the Labor source said. While inner-city voters are moving away from the Coalition, the Liberal Party considers them just as crucial as outer-suburban and regional Australians.

The Liberals believe NSW, Victoria and Western Australia will be particularly crucial to a Dutton win given the number of seats in the most populous states and the party’s under performance in WA last time.

“We’re certainly going to run very strong campaigns in those inner-city seats, particularly those seats we lost to the teals. In the medium term, outer-suburb seats, regional seats, provincial seats are where the political centre of gravity for the Coalition is moving towards but by no means are we giving up on those inner-city seats,” the Liberal source said.

The Coalition – whose campaign has turned from defensive in 2022 to offensive – must retain its 55 lower house electorates and pick up 21 seats to win majority government.

It has its sights on the Labor seats of Blair in Queensland, Bennelong, Robertson and Gilmore in NSW, Aston and McEwen in Victoria, Lyons in Tasmania, Boothby in South Australia, Tangney and Bullwinkel in WA and Solomon in the Northern Territory.

While election trends suggests it’ll be difficult for the Coalition to win power after one term of the Albanese government, the opposition believes it is highly competitive as it starts to inch ahead in a few polls.

There are extremely tough fights ahead for the Liberal Party – including in the five teal seats it lost at the last election (the sixth, North Sydney, has been abolished after a redistribution).

Also difficult will be retaining Menzies and Deakin in Victoria after they became more marginal following a redistribution and holding onto seats where sitting Liberal MPs are retiring – Braddon in Tasmania and Leichhardt in Queensland.

Labor, on the other hand, has to lose a net total of three of its 78 seats to be plunged into minority.

The party is confident of its chances in several Coalition-held seats: Leichhardt, Bonner and Longman in Queensland, Bass and Braddon in Tasmania, Deakin and Menzies in Victoria and Sturt in South Australia.

It’ll also target the one-time Labor stronghold of Fowler, which was won by independent Dai Le against star ALP candidate Kristina Keneally in 2022.

Party sources predicted the Greens’ vote would go backwards in Brisbane and Griffith because voters were disappointed in the minor party’s “grandstanding tactics”.