Campbell: The 29-word polling question that sums up Albo’s predicament

You don’t get many laughs reading political polls for a living, but this cruel stat was so cruel to poor old Albo and his mates that would make even the most stone-hearted chuckle.

The response was so cruel to Anthony Albanese that it was almost laughable. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

You don’t get many chuckles reading political polls for a living.

But last week there came a finding in the latest RedBridge poll of voting intentions which was so cruel to poor old Albo and his band that you would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh out loud.

RedBridge, I should explain, is regarded as a Labor-friendly pollster as its founder Kosmos Samaras used to be the Assistant State Secretary of the ALP in Victoria.

But as the old saying goes, ‘with friends like these ...’ because RedBridge has asked a question that in 29 words sums up perfectly the predicament of the Albanese government: “Can you name something the federal government led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has done since being elected in May 2022 that has made your life better in any way?”

(As they used say on TV: Labor fans who don’t want to know the result should look away now.)

To that question, 24 per cent people said ‘yes’, 57 per cent said ‘no’ and 19 per cent said ‘not sure’.

You almost have to feel for sorry for them, don’t you?

Fewer than one in four people can think of a single thing Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese have done to make their lives better. Picture: Martin Ollman

Albo and Jim’s revamped Stage 3 tax cut went to 13.6 million people – slightly more than half the population – at a cost to the budget of more than $100bn over the forward estimates.

Not only that, they’ve spent $5bn subsidising people’s energy bills including a $300 rebate to every household.

And their political return? Fewer than one in four people can think of a single thing they’ve done to make their lives better.

To be fair, of the minority who could identify anything, 54 per cent named either the Stage 3 tax cut or the bill rebate, which I suppose is a reasonable result in that cohort.

But that aside, it’s a truly appalling state of affairs for the government.

No wonder a minister complained to me last week: “We need to sell how what we are doing is changing people lives and then encouraging people to look at the alternative” rather than simply “tipping an enormous bucket of shit on Peter Dutton” and hoping that “might be enough” to get them re-elected.

In recent weeks, Treasurer Jim Chalmers seems to have been auditioning for the role of chief bucket tipper at the election with his attack on Dutton as “the most divisive leader of a major political party in Australia’s modern history”.

Instead of pressing the attack home – remembering it takes weeks these days for any idea to reach the public, let alone influence its collective thinking – instead last week he decided to go after the Reserve Bank and by implication its Governor Michele Bullock, for the Bank’s aggressive interest rate strategy designed to crush inflation.

That would be the Michele Bullock who is the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia because Jim Chalmers appointed her.

The same Michele Bullock who was known inside the bank as an inflation hawk.

Seriously, he’d have been better off saving his breath.

If he wanted a RBA Governor who’d listen, he should have reappointed Philip Lowe, who, unusually for a central banker, seemed late in his career to have developed a sensitivity to public opinion or at least some awareness that such a thing exists.

From what we know of Bullock, she’s unlikely to be much influenced by Jim’s whingeing.

I suspect like most central bankers, the only people whose good opinion she cares about are other central bankers.

She’s even less likely to be influenced by Jim’s old boss, Wayne Swan.

Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia Michele Bullock was appointed by Jim Chalmers. Picture: Martin Ollman

Personally I’d have thought reminders of the Rudd era are best kept to a minimum, but instead, a very tanned and very retired-looking Wayno was sent into the television studios last week on a mission to whack the RBA.

In reality of course the real audience for both Swan and Chalmers’ attacks was not Bullock, who at any rate had already made it clear in a speech on Thursday she is not for turning.

No, the hope was to try and find somewhere else for people to focus their anger rather than the government.

Blame shifting is an ancient political art form perfected in Australia by state premiers across more than a century.

But I’m not sure it cuts it for a federal treasurer, because Australians decided years ago the buck stops in Canberra.

Listening to Chalmers and his elderly proxy hoeing into the bank it was hard not to think of Scott Morrison’s attacks on state premiers, which did him so much damage during Covid.

And for the same reason: picking a fight with someone the public thinks is your junior doesn’t shift the blame, it just makes you look weak.

Chalmers must know this; every federal Labor MP at the time was stunned at the damage Morrison did to his authority with his impotent railing against the premiers.

He must also know research shows the government’s “weakness” is becoming a theme of the focus groups.

He should spend more time spruiking the government’s achievements and laying off the hard man act he’s been cultivating by getting into Dutton and Bullock.

Originally published as Campbell: The 29-word polling question that sums up Albo’s predicament