Some election results are widely anticipated. Some arrive as a big surprise. Others lie somewhere in between.
Scott Morrison’s 2019 “miracle” is the most recent example clearly falling in the second category. Before that, federally, you have to go back to when Paul Keating defeated John Hewson in the first “GST election.”
In the final week of that 1993 campaign, Hewson opted out of the traditional National Press Club appearance. The next opposition leader to do this was none other than Bill Shorten in 2019. Am I asserting cause and effect? Yes, but not in the way you might think. It’s likely that a similar perception inside the opposition camp drove both decisions: internal polling suggested the government’s negative campaign was biting — that the opposition was still ahead but its lead was increasingly fragile. Better not to risk a bad performance.
Other election results are merely somewhat unexpected. Malcolm Turnbull’s narrow victory in 2016 was one of them. Very few observers thought Bill Shorten’s Labor had a chance of winning, so they weren’t inclined to spend much time contemplating its policies, which included an ambitious carbon target, an emissions trading scheme and changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax.
Labor’s “Mediscare” campaign — a dishonest assertion that the government was going to “privatise Medicare” (which, like much disinformation, rested on a kernel of truth: many Liberals have never embraced socialised medicine) — probably had an impact too.
Disastrously for Labor, the message it took from that near miss was that a winning formula would include even more big-ticket items in a fully financed package. This they took to the next election, in 2019, with franking credits added but emissions trading subtracted. Liberal strategists, having received flack for not going negative enough in 2016, didn’t make the same mistake this time. They must have been delighted when their characterisation of the franking credits policy as a “retiree tax” was picked up wholesale by much of the media, including parts of the ABC.
With Bill Shorten seemingly in pole position and Labor’s policy suite likely to be enacted, swinging voters’ minds were concentrated. A fictitious “death tax” (again, not totally without foundation: the idea of once again levying death duties had been brought up from time to time) was icing on the cake. The prospect of change can be stress-inducing, and a stressed voter is a dangerous thing.
So: expectations can matter, and scare campaigns, if done properly, can make a difference.
As we approach the 2025 campaign, the Albanese government is looking pretty shopsoiled. The cost-of-living crisis is the chief driver of dissatisfaction, but aspects of Anthony Albanese’s political personality have turned from strengths to failings. Slow and steady is now low energy, pragmatic risk-aversion now looks weak.
Like Kevin Rudd before him, Albanese has found that diligently keeping pre-election promises earns few brownie points while the flipside, forsaking the “does what’s right, not what’s popular” persona, loses many more. And is there anyone who can understand his decision to buy that multi-million-dollar coastal home last year?
Still, one thing the government has going for it is the general belief it will probably lose office. Most in the political bubble believe expectations of election victory are good for a party going into a campaign, for reasons involving momentum, oxygen and media “cut-through.” My humble template, while conceding it’s a mixed bag, sees the opposite: a net benefit in being viewed as the underdog.
Labor’s two-party-preferred support of around 49 per cent, estimated from measured primary votes, is on the face of it hardly irretrievable. But this government has no heroic returns from the dead (or re-elections of any kind) under its belt and in fact a recent record of underperforming at the ballot box vis-à-vis the polls. Recent surveys and betting markets show most voters expect a Peter Dutton prime ministership. Donald Trump’s re-election in November seemed to nudge this attitude along.
Dutton, meanwhile, has avoided much scrutiny over the past two and a half years, largely by staying away from less-than-friendly journalists and, when faced with one at a press conference, trying to shut them down. But that’s not as easy in the heat of an election campaign, when media swarms are competing for scoops and jumping onto every misstatement. The Liberal leader will be in the hot seat precisely because he is expected to win.
It’s true that the opposition’s manifesto, unlike Shorten’s six years ago, is not laden with big economic plans. Well, there is that nuclear one, but it’s so far on the horizon it offers little to immediately fret about and might not even come to fruition. That usually scareable cohort, elderly voters, can sleep soundly knowing they probably won’t even be around if and when a reactor pops up nearby.
If the nuclear policy is in shreds by election day, which is likely, that might damage perceptions of Dutton’s competence, and his team’s. It was always an internal political fix with the electoral bonus, Dutton hoped, of allowing the country to continue burning coal, unworried about climate change, in the medium term. The deep cynicism of this is likely to become widely appreciated as election day approaches, but by then it will have done its job of avoiding squabbles in the joint party room.
But Dutton still presents reasonable ammunition for opponents. Yes, he’s seen as strong and decisive, more so than the prime minister. But while these are fine attributes for an incumbent, they are potentially dangerous for an opposition leader. If Australia were on the brink of war, the Dutton package, with fresh memories of his jobs in government, could be very enticing. But in the domestic realm its impact is mixed.
Yes, voters appreciate a tough prime minister, someone who, after setting themselves on a course of action, is “not,” as Margaret Thatcher put it, “for turning.” (They appreciate such action in hindsight, that is, when they’ve decided it was on balance correct.) But Mark Latham (2004) can attest that “conviction” in an opposition leader can be troubling, especially when accompanied with even vaguely contentious policies.
Some of that ammo arrived for Labor this week when shadow finance minister Jane Hume told the Financial Review she’s up for big spending cuts if the Coalition wins office. Apparently divining in recent overseas election results a “global trend towards deregulation,” she pointed to, in the journo’s words, “New Zealand’s conservative prime minister and former businessman Christopher Luxon and his efforts to cut red tape to stimulate investment as an approach to emulate.”
Hume is playing with fire here. While I didn’t follow our neighbour’s 2023 election and so am not aware how of much bitter medicine Luxon flagged during the campaign, the Kiwis are now in recession and opinion polls suggest a level of buyer’s remorse. The quotes from Hume’s interview will likely prove useful fodder for the government.
More generally, the Coalition has long said it will cut spending both to lower inflation and for general reasons of fiscal responsibility. For a government, though, “where will the cuts be?” is an age-old and effective line of defence; the opposition’s answer is either evasive or opens up a juicy battleground.
Dutton would love the election to be about values and anti-wokeness, but as nearly always it will be about the economy. And the hip-pocket nerve.
The spotlight will be on the opposition leader like never before. •
