Opinion: Albo surviving due to Coalition’s problems of its own making

The Coalition has so far failed to land a decent blow on Anthony Albanese despite his nosediving popularity, writes Paul Williams.

Peter Dutton’s (right) fringe mentality has prevented him properly exploiting Anthony Albanese’s weakness.

• Shock poll: Dutton on track

The question I’ve been asked most over the past few weeks is if – or how – the Queensland and US elections will shape Australia’s looming federal election.

Many assume a return of the populist right wing across the globe – from the American MAGA cult to the Thuringia state election in Germany where a Nazi-lite party won 33 per cent support – means the loony Right will eventually subsume liberalism as the world’s “democratic” model.

But that ignores recent gains by social and liberal democrats elsewhere, including Labour’s victory in the UK and the Liberals’ win in New Brunswick in Canada. No, the democratic world is never truly in lock-step.

Yet that doesn’t mean the US and Queensland don’t presage a big swing to the LNP next year. In fact, of the 14 federal opinion polls since October, Labor has won just three, tied in two, and lost nine to the Coalition.

So why is Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in trouble? Have Australians become deeply conservative since 2022? Or is there lingering resentment over the 2022 Voice to Parliament referendum? Or maybe we feel Albo has achieved too little?

No, few Australians are ideologically motivated, and fewer still are obsessed with the referendum. And the 45 Bills the parliament passed last week – from tough deportation rules to housing affordability, and from the $22 billion Future Made in Australia program to social media bans for under 16-year-olds – surely points to a very active Labor government.

No, Australians (like Queenslanders and Americans) are cranky with Albo because of what US Democrat adviser James Carville reminded the world in 1992: “It’s the economy, stupid!”

Even in the US, millions of Americans – including women and people of colour who are hardly MAGA allies – responded emotionally to Trump’s very clever campaign question: “Do you feel better off than four years ago?”

Of course they don’t. And voters everywhere naively blame a global inflation problem (fuelled by pent-up post-pandemic spending power and Russia’s war with Ukraine) on their respective leaders, from Joe Biden to Rishi Sunak, and from Dominic Perrottet to Steven Miles. And now Australians are blaming Albo personally.

US Democrat leaders were among the incumbents blamed by voters for a global inflation problem

If Opposition Leader Peter Dutton frames his own campaign around the same question, Labor could be in real trouble. A recent ABC poll found, for example, that only 38 per cent of Australians felt their personal finances had improved, with another 38 per cent “barely getting by” and 24 per cent “going backwards”.

Another poll, by SEC Newgate, found Labor (usually the party voters trust on the cost of living) had the faith of just 29 per cent, compared with 30 per cent for the Coalition. The poll also found grocery prices, and hikes in power costs and insurance premiums, were voters’ biggest gripes, ahead of petrol prices and mortgage repayments. Just because Australia’s headline inflation has fallen to 2.8 per cent (down from six per cent during Scott Morrison’s last days) means nothing to folk still carrying $300 worth of groceries home in just four bags.

So does all that spell defeat for Labor? No – the Coalition (today sitting on 55 seats) needs to win 21 more in a 6 per cent swing to form majority government. That’s a huge ask. And Dutton’s problem is compounded by geography: his strongest state, Queensland, has only five Labor seats to pick off, and former Liberal seats in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne – now held by the Greens and Teals – will be difficult to seize back (but not impossible).

The point is that difficulty is largely of the Liberals’ own making. Had former prime minister Scott Morrison been more liberal, the Liberals would have been competitive in 2022 among Australia’s inner city middle class. And if Dutton, on becoming leader, recast himself as a moderate appealing to all Australians and not just the cranky urban fringes, he too might have been able to retrieve those seats.

But Dutton’s culture wars and nuclear energy policy – supported by just one in three voters – is hardly going to win over Greens and Teal voters.

And that leads us to what sort of Liberal Party Middle Australia wants. Last week, Senate Opposition Leader Simon Birmingham announced his retirement. A key figure of the dwindling moderate faction, this very decent man’s departure leaves a Liberal Party vacuum the Teals and Labor will happily fill.

Ultimately, Dutton will force Albanese into minority government, but the Liberals will still fail next year. Sadly, only when the Liberal Party – the home of Menzies, Holt, Gorton and Fraser – returns to its liberal roots will it appeal to Middle Australia.

Originally published as Opinion: Albo surviving due to Coalition’s problems of its own making