It’s always instructive to see how a government behaves in the days before an election is called. At the end of a budget week we weren’t meant to have — and with 3 May finally named as polling day after Cyclone Alfred kyboshed plans for 12 April — we can already glean quite a bit about the contest now formally underway.
For starters, it’s become clear just how many seats Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party fears losing, and precisely where they are. The pressure-point evidence is usually hiding in plain sight. And so it was this week.
In the dying days of a pre-election parliament, governments very carefully select who gets the set-piece slots to bowl up full-tosses to ministers in Question Time. These PR opportunities are usually spread around to maximise the number of backbenchers able to get their mugs on the television. But on the eve of an election as tight as this one, they tend to go to MPs who need all the help they can get.
Across the final three episodes before the forty-seventh parliament was prorogued, ten Labor MPs were each given not one but two Dorothy Dixers. Three of the double-up questioners were from suburban Melbourne seats: Carina Garland in Chisholm, Jodie Belyea in Dunkley and Cassandra Fernando in Holt.
From Sydney, meanwhile, Jeremy Laxale in Bennelong and Sally Sitou in Reid had two apiece, along with their regional NSW colleagues Fiona Phillips, from the south-coast seat of Gilmore where high-profile former state Liberal minister Andrew Constance has strong support, and Meryl Swanson, from Paterson north of Newcastle. Analysts from both major parties suggest Swanson will struggle this time.
Another of the questioners, Tania Lawrence, hails from Hasluck in suburban Perth, Western Australia being the state that swung hard and secured victory for Albanese three years ago. Two questions went to Louise Miller-Frost from Boothby on Adelaide’s fringes, where former Liberal MP Nicolle Flint is recontesting, and two to Marion Scrymgour, whose Lingiari electorate takes in everything in the Northern Territory that’s not Darwin.
All these Labor incumbents are in varying shades of electoral strife. Also under pressure are at least four of the eight others allotted a question each: Gordon Reid in the NSW central coast seat of Robertson, Anne Stanley in what was once Gough Whitlam’s seat of Werriwa, Rob Mitchell in the regional Victorian seat of McEwen and Mary Doyle in outer-eastern Melbourne’s Aston.
In that hostile landscape, the maths of election 2025 make it very hard for Labor to retain majority government. It has just a two-seat buffer in a 151-seat parliament where the magic majority number is seventy-six, and it faces the opprobrium of an electorate fed up with the cost of everything. Labor is desperate for gains to offset the likely losses. It’s hopeful about South Australia’s Sturt, and the Greens-held Brisbane, and fancies itself a lesser chance in the Greens’ two other Brisbane-based seats, too.
That’s not to say it’s a straightforward equation for Peter Dutton’s Coalition either. Now holding just fifty-seven seats and needing a net gain of nineteen to govern outright, its years-long political momentum has suddenly stalled. While the Liberals are increasingly confident of regaining a couple of teal seats, particularly Monique Ryan’s Kooyong in Melbourne and Kate Chaney’s Curtin in beachside Perth, not everything is hunky dory in its ranks.
Some of Dutton’s Liberal seats are also at risk: Leichardt in far north Queensland, where long-time incumbent Warren Entsch is retiring, Bradfield on Sydney’s north shore, where frontbencher Paul Fletcher is also calling it a day and independent candidate Nicolette Boele is polling well, and Wannon in regional Victoria, where independent Alex Dyson is challenging shadow immigration minister Dan Tehan.
It’s all very messy. This election is looking like one of those in which an untidy swag of seats changes hands in both directions.
The final days of parliament have revealed a few other pressure points on the conservative side of politics. In the last weekly party-room meeting on Tuesday, Dutton upbraided his own colleagues for leaking and undermining the leadership. This kind of eleventh-hour breakout is diabolical, especially when he has so effectively pulled his team together, against expectations, over the past three years.
After the election was called, it was notable that the Liberal leader made a point of emphasising unity among the reasons voters should elect him. Tuesday’s extraordinary closed-doors blast suggests the Coalition’s much-vaunted unity has not exactly put down roots. Behind it lay a creeping internal unhappiness, and even a touch of panic, about how he and his leadership team are handling policy announcements. In particular, a number of MPs are horrified at the recent pledge to ban public servants from working from home.
It seems many voters heard that promise as applying to everyone, not just bureaucrats, and it has heralded a sharp downturn in Liberal support among women. Working mothers, whom pollsters from the Redbridge group had dubbed “Dutton curious,” are being turned off again at the prospect of losing the flexibility and cost savings that home working has delivered.
When worried MPs tried to feed this back to the leadership they were accused of disloyalty. This tin ear has some of them fearing what else the campaign might bring.
In his opening pitch, Dutton leant heavily on the strongman image he has cultivated against his opponent Albanese. It appears to have served him well, leaving the waffly Albanese labelled “weak.” But the strong-versus-weak theme has become a bit more complicated than it was just a few short weeks ago. The impact of Donald Trump’s scarifying activities on Australia’s electoral trajectory is now perhaps the greatest unknown of the next five weeks.
The Trump effect is turning the global post-Covid anti-incumbency trend on its head. Suddenly incumbents are back in favour — not least in Canada, where the progressive government seemed gone for all money until it stood up to Trump but now appears a real chance of being elected to a fourth term.
While domestic projections of strength are probably still a positive for Dutton, the evidence abroad suggests standing strong against the US president, not mimicking his ideas, may appeal most to voters. Whether Dutton is prepared to wield his strength against Trump’s damaging policies is a fascinating question.
Next week’s Trump-declared “liberation day” — the day when we hear about further US tariffs — appears likely to deliver Australia more pain. It may also create exactly the opportunity Albanese needs to try to build up a bit of tough-guy cred.
The prime minister is certainly not passing up any chance, including financially, to exploit potential electoral advantage. Having secured parliamentary support in February for contentious changes to electoral law, most of which don’t take effect until next year, his special minister of state, Don Farrell, quietly made a further change the same day using a legal instrument that is not disallowable and didn’t require a parliamentary vote.
The Parliamentary Business Resources (Parliamentary Business) Determination 2025 provides legal authority for MPs and senators to claim parliamentary allowances for undertaking election-related work. It replaces a 2017 version and appears to broaden the circumstances in which parliamentarians can claim taxpayer subsidies for doing election work. It benefits incumbents of all stripes, but especially those in political parties, and ensures a fair bit of electioneering travel is covered by the taxpayer.
The instrument was added to the federal register of legislation without fanfare late last month. It was finally tabled in parliament among a pile of other documents on the first subsequent sitting day, which happened to be budget day.
Government officials insist it’s just formalising an authority that existed already, that it’s about simplicity and “accountability.” Still, it’s curious. Laws aren’t usually made for no reason.
It’s just another reminder about those last parliamentary days before an election — they really can tell you a lot. •
