Election outcome will hinge on a single question

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, second left, attend the 2025 Fairfield Tet Festival. Picture: Monique Harmer/NewsWire

Bill Hayden famously said of his own political knifing that a drover’s dog could have won the 1983 election.

If Peter Dutton wants to win the 2025 federal election, he may need to be that drover’s dog.

The one number that stands out in all the polling conducted this year is the question Newspoll asked last month about whether voters believed the Albanese government deserved to be re-elected. That number was only 34 per cent. If the significance of this number hasn’t dawned on the ­Liberal campaign machine yet, it should. It is the best thing it has going for it.

With the Coalition on a primary vote of under 40 and Dutton on negative approval, albeit not as bad as Anthony Albanese, to have any real prospect of majority victory it will need the campaign to pivot around this single question – do people believe the government deserves to be re-elected?

The election may well be decided by how Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – given a birthday card by a young fan during a visit to the Westmead Medicare Urgent Care Clinic in Sydney on Sunday – presents during the campaign. Picture: Nikki Short

Amid all the commentary about Donald Trump’s victory, it was this question about the Democrats that helped explain the outcome of the US election.

Less than a third of US voters believed Joe Biden deserved to be re-elected before he stepped aside for Kamala Harris. This sentiment clearly morphed into one of whether the Democrats were any more deserving without him.

Voters’ view of the Biden administration is remarkably close to the proportion of the Australian electorate who believe the same of the Albanese government.

Clearly there were different reasons and different political and voting systems. Mostly, US voters didn’t think Biden was up to it owing to his age. And the US doesn’t do hung parliaments.

But the reason is perhaps irrelevant. The point about the prevailing sentiment towards the first-term Labor government was that there were plenty of Labor voters – 12 per cent of them to be precise – who thought they didn’t deserve a second term. This is also around the same number of Democrat voters who believed the same of the Biden administration.

What was significant in this equation was this view among the left base, which was disproportionally high compared to other elections. And it was this question of whether voters believed the Democrats deserved a second term that was critical to the outcome but is often ignored in the overselling of Trump’s victory.

In a similar way it is a critical issue too for Labor and Albanese.

As one senior Coalition figure suggested this week: “This is a significant number, perhaps the most significant number so far. If it holds up, it becomes a landslide.”

But for this to occur, the Liberal Party will need this question to be the dominant theme of the campaign. It will need to be the one question voters are still asking when they walk into the polling booth.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton may need to effectively take himself off the menu – even as Labor will attept to turn the focus onto him.

And that means Dutton would need to effectively take himself off the menu.

For Labor to avoid this scenario, it needs to do the opposite. It will have to make it a contest between the individuals and the parties, to turn the focus onto Dutton.

This is precisely what is happening and why the campaign will likely be a boring, unedifying display of negativity and avoidance.

Dutton so far has tried to effectively do the drover’s dog impression – having supported every recent major policy announcement from Labor including ­women's’ health, Medicare and the beer tax.

The Liberal Party needs to avoid Dutton being the focus while ameliorating concerns the electorate might have about a ­Coalition agenda.

For Labor, it is the drawing of a contrast between the individuals and the parties that will diffuse the question of issue of re-election.

So far Labor is having some success on this front.

The risk inherent in the Coalition strategy is the perception of underperformance it naturally gives rise to. And there is a view within Liberal circles the opposition is underperforming considering the trouble the government is in.

In the end, the election may well be decided by how Albanese presents during the campaign.

When that campaign might begin has become an exercise in vaudeville. The mixed messages coming from the government are reaching farcical levels.

One could easily read from Jim Chalmers’ cues in a Sky News interview with Andrew Clennell on Sunday morning that the Treasurer thinks he is still handing down a budget in a few weeks’ time.

That rules out an April 12 election, and locks in a date in May.

Yet all the money in Canberra is on the earlier option.

One might be given pause to wonder whether the Prime Minister hasn’t yet let his Treasurer in on the secret.

If he has, then both are engaging in the sort of psychological ­tactics that may end up irritating people more than they already are.