Wooley: Neither Albo nor Dutton are all that inspiring

The quality of political leadership both in Australia and overseas has resulted in deep and widespread discontent across the globe, writes Charles Wooley

YouGov’s latest poll of 40,000 Australians found the Coalition, led by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, would win a central estimate of 73 seats, putting them in position to form minority government. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire  

Hardly anyone I speak with expects Anthony Albanese to survive the next election.

Hardly anyone I speak with is enthusiastic about Peter Dutton becoming our next Prime Minister.

“How can these two blokes be the best choice available out of a population of 27 million people?” is the common reaction whenever I delicately broach the unpopular subject of politics.

Usually, I defend our nation’s predicament. “The USA with 335 million people went to an election with Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Let’s not be too hard on ourselves,” I tell them.

It’s a global problem for the world’s democracies.

The uninspiring quality of leadership has resulted in deep and widespread discontent from Peru to Canada, in the UK and indeed across much of Europe.

Just as we look back with nostalgia on the assumed trustworthy and steady leadership of Hawke and Howard, voters around the world look back on their own golden ages of democracy. Suddenly Reagan and Thatcher are a la mode.

Charles Wooley says hardly anyone he speaks with expects Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to survive the next election. Picture: Tim Joy/NewsWire.

As in Australia, internationally it is also a case of “come back, all is forgiven”.

But, back at the time, I can remember plenty of discontent with Hawke and Howard who, each in their own way, were in due course unceremoniously dumped from office.

I won’t remind you of the political sins and misdemeanours of those rulers except to observe that an interesting thing about a ‘Golden Age’ is that so often you don’t know you are having it, until it’s gone.

Still, it is very hard to imagine a political future where we will look back with nostalgia on “The Golden Age of Albo”.

Admit it, you snigger at the very idea.

Which is precisely why the polls are telling us that our present Prime Minister is a goner.

In YouGov’s latest poll, 40,000 Australians registered their political snigger last week. They were unexcited by the political options but were slightly less unexcited by Dutton than they were by Albanese.

YouGov’s latest poll of 40,000 Australians found the Coalition, led by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, would win a central estimate of 73 seats, putting them in position to form minority government. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire  

Unless something dramatically changes in the next two months (a small rate cut won’t do it) the Coalition will win about 73 seats and Labor about 66 seats.

A party needs 76 seats to govern in majority but, as Peter Dutton observed, “it would be most unusual” for a party with a clear majority not to get the necessary support from the cross benches to form government.

Peter must have been much chuffed, but he managed to remain totally expressionless while sharing the good news. Good acting or just doing what comes naturally?

Some men shouldn’t smile.

I remember being at a photo shoot with the legendary political journalist Laurie Oakes.

“Smile Laurie,” pleaded the photographer.

Grim faced the great man replied: “I am smiling.”

Laurie Oakes knew that when some men smile it will only scare the children.

I watched Peter Dutton on 60 Minutes this week and despite the jocularity of Karl Stefanovic the Liberal leader never really smiled. Well, almost once when telling us how he first approached his future wife Kirrily, in a bar with a Vodka Red Bull in hand.

Peter Dutton with his wife Kirilly in a screen grab from a 60 Minutes’ promotion featuring Peter Dutton and his family. Picture: Courtesy of Channel Nine.

He almost cracked a smile.

From my experience that would have been what 60 Minutes’ producers called “a 60 Minutes moment”; the line to end the show. As in …

“Peter Dutton you just smiled.”

“Well, I can smile, sometimes.”

Tick, tick, tick.

From experience, I know Karl would’ve been fishing for that moment but perhaps he will have to wait until election night.

“He is not a monster,” Kirrily once told the media at a time when politics got particularly rough.

This week, Peter Dutton told 60 Minutes: “The worst thing about this job is when your kids, your family and your friends get sucked into the vortex.”

“It’s good and bad,” the Dutton kids told the camera. “We get used to it. There’s definitely more good than bad. We just block out the bad noise.”

Years back in an interview on the same program the then former prime minister Bob Hawke told me: “The reason good people won’t go into politics anymore is because of the terrible intrusion into their personal lives.”

According to Charles Wooley, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton are equally uninspiring when it comes to leadership.

I think Hawke is right. Few human beings with the level of ambition and ego required to aspire to national leadership will have lived lives beyond the reach of prurient scrutiny.

I don’t know what we really want from our politicians.

If we want those who presume to rule over us to be quintessentially ‘ordinary people’ then how can any democracy ever again have a Churchill, a Menzies, a Whitlam or a Hawke.

If un-remarkability is the prime qualification to lead the nation we are doomed to dullness. Our leaders will be defined by the bleak outlook attributed to the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau:

“The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.

“They die with the song still in them.”

Notably this week the three Dutton children declared they were all determined never to go into politics.

Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist