Race to the finish: How Albo, Dutton will try to swing key voters
Coalition insiders are still clinging to hope the polls are wrong while Labor looks set to ramp up attack messages targeting Peter Dutton.
Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton will take their positive messages around the country one final time, vowing to make lives easier for Australians under their watch — leaving it to their respective headquarters to dial up the negative ads in the last week of the election.
The government will bunker down, reiterating messages that have already helped win votes like commitments on health and bulk billing but the Liberals are planning a pivot from a focus on their fuel discount announcement to spruiking their $1200 tax cuts.
Liberals say the tax cuts are popular with voters when they hear it but not many people know it exists.
The Prime Minister will spend much of the next eight days in must-hold Labor seats, while the Liberals are aiming to hit every state and territory this week with appearances from virtually every frontbencher expected.
Labor candidates and marginal MPs have been ordered out of national media and onto pre-poll booths meeting “everyday voters” with both sides in agreement the result will come down to hyper-local seat battles rather than a swing in the national mood.
Liberal MPs too said now was the time to focus on local campaigns, ramping up door knocking efforts as people exit the Easter holiday bubble.
Some Liberals are privately starting to manage expectations amid an inability to cut through with last-minute policies, several unfortunate backflips and a failure to negate Labor’s attacks on health and working from home.
Albanese’s camp are adamant they’re taking “nothing for granted”.
Others have hope — underpinned by internal polls that show close to one in three voters is undecided despite record pre-polling numbers — and said the mood on the ground was better than national polls suggested.
Labor will kick off their final week with a health announcement on Sunday in a bid to refocus the campaign on the area insiders say remains their biggest strength with voters.
Albanese will get to most states and territories over the week, with a focus on what one strategist said was about reaching the “biggest audiences possible with our major messages”.
“Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, the places you can really have an effect in multiple seats at once,” the Labor source said.
The party’s campaign HQ believes the Liberals have seriously “underestimated” how popular Labor’s pledge to slash all HECS debt by 20 per cent is and is planning to run hard on the issue in the final week.
Albanese will also do lots of school visits as well as the Labor move to put education on the agenda off the back of the government’s recent agreements with states to lift public school funding.
Images of the PM being mobbed by schoolchildren is always a “good look,” one Labor MP says.
Labor’s advertising efforts, which one strategist said had been about “50/50 positive to negative” so far will “shift more into the negative in the final week”.
The TV and radio advertising blackout starts from Wednesday, but online the major parties will continue to push their messages.
Multiple Labor sources believe things are “pulling back” in favour of Albanese in key battlegrounds in NSW and Victoria, but MPs and campaign staff alike insisted the apparent improvement is being treated with “caution”.
.jpg)
“We are not taking anything for granted,” says one Labor source familiar with the PM’s thinking.
Another Labor insider says the “main story” of the campaign is the party’s improvement in Victoria.
“We’re certainly not surging ahead, but it’s feeling like we are mitigating potential losses,” they say.
Albanese will appear alongside a series of senior Labor ministers, and “popular” premiers, and will likely have his close friend and Left factional ally, Health Minister Mark Butler, on the road with him for the most of the next week.
“We think showcasing our team is a real strength,” says a Labor source.
Both Labor and the Liberals think the Greens-held seat of Brisbane is going to change hands, though it will come down to preferences as to which party picks it up.
The party is moving to dramatically temper expectations, from talking of an outright win as late as February to many MPs now pushing the idea a seven or eight seat gain would be a good outcome, pointing to a two-term strategy.
“We were never going to win in one term,” one Liberal says, adding Mr Dutton will comfortably retain the support of his party if they picked up three seats in Victoria and four in NSW.
In Melbourne Labor-held seats like Aston, McEwen, Chisholm and Bruce are a focus, while in NSW the electorate of Gilmore on the south coast, Paterson in the Hunter Region, as well as Bennelong and Werriwa in Sydney are considered in play.
One Liberal source involved in campaigning in several marginal seats says despite Labor’s personal hit jobs on Dutton, the mood on the ground is different to 2022 when a strong anti-Morrison sentiment helped Albanese win.
“It’s very different to that sentiment in the 2022 sentiment,” they say.
“There is none of that, there are pockets of anti-Dutton (sentiment) from the Chinese-Australian voters, but nothing of any significance.”
Another source concurs, saying the mood on the ground is more positive than national polls suggest.
“It’s been better than I was expecting at early voting. I wasn’t expecting hostility but we did have that in 2022,” they say.
“There is more enthusiasm for us than the national polls would suggest. The shift in national mood reported in the polls is not there on the ground.”
Insiders say the Coalition still had more work to do on selling its credentials on economic policy and a failure to provide more detail on plans for nuclear power had stalled appetite for energy reform.
“People are concerned more so around policy stuff and the most prominent negative feedback we get is ‘Where is your economic policy?’,” one Liberal says.
MPs say the fuel subsidy discount has cut through, although there are concerns it will be discontinued in 12 months.
One MP downplayed the impact of Dutton’s missteps like the work from home and electric vehicle tax break backflips.
A hit to Australians’ superannuation accounts from Donald Trump’s tariff war was also referenced as turning point for the Coalition’s campaign that had previously compared itself to the US administration on things like cutting government waste.
“It was bad luck. If the election was before the cyclone, we would be in a very different position,” they said.
“Albo did well on the cyclone and then went into a budget. (Dutton) went from building momentum to losing momentum overnight.”
Originally published as Race to the finish: How Albo, Dutton will try to swing key voters
Question that brought Dutton undone
Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have just five days to convince Australians to vote for them in Saturday’s election, but one question may cost one leader.
Albo triggers frenzy over Trump phone claim
Anthony Albanese has triggered a frenzy after making a bold claim about Donald Trump’s phone during the final leaders’ debate.