This election is between a battler and a cop – at least that’s what they’ll tell you

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Anthony Albanese once declared, famously, that “I like fighting Tories. It’s what I do.”

It was February 2012, and Albanese, then leader of the House, was declaring he would back Kevin Rudd over prime minister Julia Gillard in the destructive leadership battle between the two.

Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton will seek to paint a narrative of who they are – and where they have come from.

They were fighting words, but Albanese spoke them with a catch in his voice and tears in his eyes.

He was desperately saddened to see Labor tear itself apart with leadership wars.

His point was that Labor should have been focused on one thing only – its war against the Coalition.

Albanese’s title has changed since then, but his guiding principle hasn’t.

As he stood in the prime ministerial courtyard on Friday morning, having just announced an election, Albanese – now prime minister and seeking a second term – went back to that safe space.

The fight.

With more energy and enthusiasm than he has exhibited in months, he laid into those Tories, represented, in the present election, by his formidable opponent Peter Dutton.

Brandishing his own Medicare card as a prop, the prime minister evoked Australia’s free universal healthcare as the great symbol of Australian fairness.

Billionaire Kerry Packer, Albanese’s disabled pensioner mother Maryanne, and the prime minister himself all received equal and excellent care at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney’s Camperdown when they needed it, he said.

“This is what I’ll fight for,” he said, waving the Medicare card.

Apart from the tragedy of Labor disunity, the only other thing that makes Albanese wobble is mention of his mum.

His voice broke and he paused to regain composure.

But then it was back to the fight.

Taking aim at the Coalition, Albanese said now was not the time “for cutting and wrecking, for aiming low, for punching down or looking back”.

His meaning was clear when he said that “we do not need to copy from any other nation to make Australia even better and stronger”.

Asked if he was implying Dutton was copying the policies of US Donald Trump, Albanese pointedly attacked Dutton’s proposal to slash the public service and save $10 billion over four years (according to the Coalition’s own estimates).

Dutton is ready for a fight too.

He started shaping up to the prime minister the night before the election was called, during his budget reply speech.

Realising that any detail of the Coalition’s budgetary plans was likely to be lost in the news cycle anyway, Dutton offered little.

Instead, he focused on a pessimistic version of Australia under Labor, in which aspiration had turned to anxiety and national confidence had lapsed into national uncertainty.

He made it clear to voters that they had better think hard about their choice at this election because the consequences could be dire, and lasting.

Another Labor government, Dutton said, “won’t just be another three bleak years. Setbacks will be set in stone. Our prosperity will be damaged for decades to come”.

He, too, returned to his safe space – the comfort zone of his background as a Queensland cop.

Dutton’s world view, and his awareness of threats, seems to be deeply informed by his time in the Queensland police force, during which he saw horrendous violence and suffering.

The opposition leader said that Australians have told him they’ve “never been more worried about crime and division in our community”.

He linked this directly to the Voice referendum, which “sought to divide our country by ancestry and race”.

Safety, he seemed to say, could only come through strength.

Dutton said he would be a “strong leader and a steady hand”, and that he would “lead with conviction, not walk both sides of the street”.

He was a protector and had “dedicated nine years to protecting Australians, especially women and children” during his time as a policeman.

He was also a small business owner who understood aspiration and hard work, and a dad and a husband.

He even ended with a joke about his wife Kirilly possibly skipping his speech to watch Channel Nine’s Married at First Sight instead.

Which fittingly, may be the only program on television with more fighting in it than the election show we’ve just switched on.

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