Playing the politician, not the policies: How the ALP is destroying Peter Dutton
As the Prime Minister warns Australians about ‘pretty hateful stuff’ on social media, the Labor Party is waging a vicious personal war on the Liberal leader online.
Anthony Albanese has been labelled a hypocrite for lecturing Australians on the dangers of social media.
In the final week of the campaign, the Prime Minister, while pledging more funding for extra domestic violence services should he be successful at Saturday’s poll, said young people are exposed to “some pretty hateful stuff out there” on social media.
He backed in his decision to ban certain platforms, like X and TikTok, for children younger than 16 and urged all students to watch the Netflix series Adolescence as a way to educate young boys about gendered violence.
The acclaimed TV show follows the story of a family after their teenage son stabs a girl to death, and focuses on the role social media played in the crime.
“I encourage anyone to have a look at it. It’s scary,” Mr Albanese said. “These parents depicted not knowing what their young son, who they love, has engaged in. There’s a scene towards the end where the father … says ‘We thought he was safe.’ He was in his bedroom … It had tragic (sic) impact for him, but a worse impact for his victim, and so this is something we need to have conversations about.”
While Mr Albanese fronts the media daily, demanding respect at press conferences and chiding journalists for “screaming and yelling”, the ALP is continuing its vicious, long-running campaign attacking Peter Dutton online.
“It’s hypocritical of Mr Albanese when his own party is opening the gates to abuse and hate online. Labor has been running a negative campaign targeting Peter Dutton – and even his family now – for a long time which has really ramped up on social media,” Australian National University’s political marketing and advertising specialist Andrew Hughes told The Australian.
“I have never seen such a nasty campaign. This is such a dirty campaign. Corflutes all over the country are being vandalised and it’s so widespread now that it’s happening in most electorates.”
The negativity on social media coming from official accounts is alarming. The fact it’s being stoked by party officials is concerning considering the heightened security concerns for both of the leaders these days too.
“This astroturfing we’re experiencing is now well and truly a tool of the progressive left. Remember the outrage when Senator Lidia Thorpe yelled at King Charles? That type of stuff is happening daily online, except the culprits can do it anonymously,” he said.
Dr Hughes said the ALP’s “dual campaign” playing out on social media targeting the Opposition Leader has “been going on a lot longer than the official election campaign. Last year, the Victorian branch published a meme mocking Mr Dutton and his wife Kirrily. It’s been extremely personal and negative.” It was only after the photo, published on Facebook, was criticised by Liberal senator James Patterson that Mr Albanese intervened and ordered the post be deleted.
This social media strategy sees Labor “destroying a brand” by being consistently negative about Mr Dutton, while “building Albanese’s brand as the happy guy, the nice guy”, Dr Hughes said.
It’s a ploy to engage with the large block of young Australians, but it could backfire when it comes to their Gen X parents.
“There is nothing aspirational about this campaign. We even had a moderator of one of the debates pleading for the leaders to ‘give us hope’,” Dr Hughes said.
“It seems to be just trying to swing support to Albanese in the polls by 3 or 4 per cent, but all the negativity could backfire as it leaves people wondering what are you actually doing for me? What are your policies?”.
Yet this personal and vitriolic strategy can help lock in fatigued voters. If you’re ahead in the opinion polls, repeating the same type of negative messages can force people to tune out sooner and just default to voting for the candidate or party they recall off the cuff while in the booth. It’s a tactic which is used successfully in US elections, according to Dr Hughes, but has gained momentum here during the past few years.
It was especially successful in the recent WA state election where the Labor government – gunning for a third term – ran a predominantly negative campaign based off rolling research attacking the decimated Liberal opposition and high-profile candidate Basil Zempilas.
Mr Zempilas, who is now the WA Opposition Leader, only just won a seat in parliament and Premier Roger Cook secured another historic landslide victory for WA Labor.
A glimpse at Mr Albanese’s and the ALP’s TikTok accounts from around the country proves this and Dr Hughes’ theory.
There are vignettes of the Prime Minister cuddling goats, cradling babies, sidling up to seniors and high-fiving kids, while over on the party’s pages there are niche memes and abuse masked as jokes about Mr Dutton. “Drop your wildest Peter Dutton lore in the comments” a recent Australian Labor post asked, essentially goading its 140,000 fans to post defamatory statements about the Liberal leader.
While Mr Albanese is telling press conferences “we have run a positive campaign”, like he did outside a school in suburban Perth on Thursday, videos produced by the local WA Labor team for TikTok continue to lampoon Mr Dutton’s appearance, with a video asking followers to “rank your favourite baldie” and comparing him to being a zombie who rides a chicken.
Meanwhile, Liberal candidates are also facing criticism for their offensive conduct online – most recently, the hopeful for the Western Sydney seat of Fowler. It was discovered Vivek Singha had made disparaging comments online about Indigenous Australians and attacked Tanya Plibersek’s daughter. He has since run away from the media, while Mr Dutton won’t comment on the issue.
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