Just months out from an election, a government floundering in the polls, rocked by bitter infighting and lacking a clear policy agenda looks set for defeat.
That was the script in early 2019, when Scott Morrison looked like a caretaker prime minister.
But the Coalition clung on, in no small part thanks to Morrison’s ability to make a Bill Shorten Labor government look very, very scary. Now, with the government once again struggling with a long list of self-inflicted wounds, its attack dogs are trying to do the same to Anthony Albanese’s far more cautious opposition.
Here’s a list of the latest scare campaigns being tried on for size in question time.
Weak on national security
This has long been a theme for the government, trying to drum up fear of China while painting Labor as weak on foreign policy and national security — despite it being largely in lockstep with the government on many of these issues.
But the rhetoric really escalated during question time last week, when Defence Minister Peter Dutton claimed the Chinese Communist Party was backing Labor to win the election. As support for the incendiary claim, Dutton referred to ASIO chief Mike Burgess’ threat assessment, where the top spook spoke of a thwarted pre-election foreign interference plot.
At Senate estimates last night, Burgess issued a subtle rejoinder to Dutton, saying the agency “was not here to be politicised”.
When asked by Labor’s home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally whether the agency had any concerns about Labor candidates, Burgess said Albanese’s reference to a conversation between the two, where he never raised specific concerns about Labor, was accurate.
Death taxes!
In 2019 a viral misinformation campaign about Labor introducing death taxes hurt it. More recently, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has repeatedly raised the spectre of death duties and inheritance taxes during question time.
The treasurer’s smoking gun appears to be a 30-year-old speech Albanese made while a NSW Labor figure, breathlessly reported in The Australian last week. It led Albanese to try to table his first year economics essay in Parliament yesterday.
Labor has repeatedly ruled out introducing any kind of death or inheritance tax, with opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers labelling it an “unhinged scare campaign”.
tHe gReEns
The government has also tried hard to blur the lines between Labor and the Greens, repeatedly trying to convince voters with memories of the chaotic (but productive) Gillard-Rudd government that a new left-wing coalition is coming to raise your taxes.
In question time yesterday, Dutton claimed Labor can only be in power with the assistance of the Greens. Unless he’s talking preference flows, polling suggests Labor would win an electoral majority in its own right if a vote were held today. Dutton claimed the Greens would then make Labor cut the military budget.
Frydenberg too has hammered the “Labor-Greens coalition” line as ammunition for his claims about death duties. Labor has repeatedly ruled out forming a minority government with the Greens, despite its leader, Adam Bandt, talking up the prospect over the last year.
‘Never had the makings of a treasurer’
Another Frydenberg special has been to lay into Albanese for never having held a Treasury portfolio or delivered a budget. By that standard, Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Fraser would all be ineligible for the prime ministership.
The Coalition, it’s now clear,
just offers nothing more than fear,
a concentrated scare campaign
that bellows out the same refrain,
for shouting “Boo!” is all they’ve got
to cover up the fact there’s not
much talent in their thinning ranks
while all their “guns” are firing blanks.
There’s little in their policies
but rhetoric designed to please
the simple Murdoch tabloid mind
that scans the headlines, disinclined
to think beyond its selfish needs,
and then, in ignorance, proceeds
to buckle to the scare campaign
and send our future down the drain.
Love it, Gazza. Accurate, and got the metre right.
The lad’s good…
Take me to the April Sun in Canberra! Where the Coalition will be choking on their yum-cha! Woo-oh-oh!
Frydenberg too has hammered the “Labor-Greens coalition” line…
As if the Libs have never been in coalition with the Nats. And that those same Nats are not led, heaven save us, by Barnaby Joyce, many of whose utterances are totally incoherent. I read that he’s now in agreement with Jenny, the PM’s secret weapon. !!!
MJM, you’re quite right with “as if have never been in coalition with the Nats”.
Fraudberg’s chutzpah – “never held a Treasury portfolio or delivered a budget”?
“Pass that man an exploding cigar…..”
Who was dipping into that ‘bag of swag’ for the Sports Rorts/FFWSS/UCF/SCF/JobKeeper-for-Millionaires shake-downs?
It’s more onerous than usual watching the latest sitting of Question Time in the House of Reps. With no right of reply Albanese is copping it on the chin when confected scare tactics are thrown by the Coalition.
Speaker, Andrew Wallace, is – at best – a drip. He’s often left looking adrift, unable to follow the action, hoping for a lifebuoy to materialise. At least he’s not in Bronwyn Bishop’s league but that’s not saying much. Tony Smith, where are you….
Look what “Leader of the House” Reith and the Howard government did to Bob Halverson – their own Speaker.
This latest incarnation of that Coalition government don’t want a Speaker with ethics (especially now) they want a made-to-order drip —- that’s why they turned the spigot to “Braveheart” Wallace.
Yes, it is painful to watch.
The comparison with Tony Smith is just an embarrassment to the sclerotic clique which installed him.
Bring back Anna Burke – “Lock the doors!”
I think that Menzies and Gorton would also have failed the “treasury portfolio/budget” test. Albo in good company? Mind you, Billy McMahon passed that test.
Yes, Biddy McMahon, what a job he did as PM; the only real rival to Abbott and Morrison in the Worst-ever Stakes. Friedhamburger obviously thinks the quality of one’s work as Treasurer is irrelevant, but he’s shown he’s no great shakes, not by LNP criteria anyway, running up that vast level of debt even before the pandemic appeared, following the ‘debt and deficit disaster’ days. A treasurer who’s not displayed any capacity for self-reflection. Of course that quality isn’t required for being either Treasurer or PM in the LNP universe.