It’s not even close to the longest campaign in recent history, but Scott Morrison is counting on using every day of the six weeks until polling day to wear down Anthony Albanese’s lead.
That ostensibly defies the lesson of long campaigns, which is that over the course of them governments lose votes.
Bob Hawke’s 53-day campaign in 1984 saw a massive Labor lead evaporate and Andrew Peacock revel in the spotlight. Labor ended up losing seats, though it had a substantial buffer. In 2016, while lacking Hawke’s massive polling lead, Malcolm Turnbull was expected to cruise to victory over Bill Shorten over an eight-week campaign. He ended up losing 14 seats.
But Scott Morrison isn’t in government. Or at least, he won’t campaign as the government. He’ll enjoy all the benefits of being in government — being called “prime minister”, controlling the country’s finances so he can pork-barrel key seats — but as in 2019 he’ll be campaigning as opposition leader against Labor.
In 2019 Morrison campaigned as though it was Labor that was in government and needed its policies scrutinised, while he gave up any pretence that he was actually governing. He offered no agenda or vision, merely a series of scare campaigns about Labor policies and a daggy dad persona designed to appeal to disengaged voters.
Now he’ll take the same approach, offering nothing but pork-barrelling and bribes, while looking for any opportunity to frighten voters about Albanese and the ALP. It was hugely successful in 2019 and could be so again. Today’s Newspoll already shows Labor’s once-massive lead narrowing.
The strategy accords with Morrison’s own style of “governing”, which is to do as little as possible and avoid blame when anything goes wrong, and use announcements and media releases as substitutes for actual policy. Morrison has used his leadership to craft a new kind of prime ministership — in which the incumbent is in power but mysteriously floats above all responsibility, a kind of powerful passivity; Morrison can never be held to account, but everyone else must be, particularly Labor.
He’s been helped in this by a press gallery that has been reluctant to do the hard work of holding him accountable — which overlooked his routine lying until Crikey began calling it out, which overlooked his climate inaction and even pretended he had a climate policy, which overlooked his refusal to accept even the most basic standards of anti-corruption safeguards, which ignored his dramatic increase in the size of government, fuelled by a generational debt.
Albanese’s Labor, of course, has declined to present the same rich target of policies as Bill Shorten and Chris Bowen did in 2019. It wants to keep the focus entirely on Morrison, rather than on Labor policies. Having happily been a vehicle for scare campaigns against Labor’s proposed agenda in that campaign, much of the press gallery is now expressing its frustration at Labor’s refusal to serve itself up on a plate again. As a consequence, it is declaring that Albanese is “unknown” and has failed to convey who he really is, that voters don’t know him.
Paint a target on your back, the press gallery opens fire. Refuse to do so, you’re hiding and can’t be trusted. That’s despite John Howard offering virtually nothing by way of policy while heading to a landslide victory in 1996, except a few promises that, in government, became “non-core”.
Then again John Howard was a known quantity in 1996 — he’d been in Parliament for 22 years. Anthony Albanese has only been in Parliament for… 26 years. He first arrived during that Howard landslide. Whether the lessons from 1996 still apply will be one of the themes of this election campaign.
This is Australia’s last chance to avoid a continuation of the catastrophic moral, political, economic and ecological decline which is all that the LNP offers.
Or maybe just slightly slow it down, ever so responsibly, incrementally and carefully whilst trying not to frighten the horses or Moloch’s reptiles.
Saw already that ABC had a headline about Albo stumbling because he didn’t know the unemployment rate, and with that I’m dreading the media of the next six weeks. The government over the next three years is gonna be determined by campaign gaffes, isn’t it? Not whether we think Labor or the LNP has a better vision for Australia, or looking at the track record of the government.
Amateur lazy journalism will run rife. Much easier than analysing policies.
Hard to analyse policies when Morrison’s never had any.
Not having any policies (while decrying at every opportunity that “we have a plan”) is the centrepiece of the LNP strategy – that and bogan cosplay.
Albo has rich pickings available to attack with, but as you say, the media simply doesn’t give him a go. And I am appalled that even the ABC has ceased to give a balanced view by holding Morrison in some sort of awe, and emphasising Albo as the unknown……
That is what happens when you control the purse strings of any media organization. Truly independent media is a myth.
Given that the Oz electorate tends not to trust most politicians regardless of party, Albo would garner votes if he made that point & promised a hard-nosed ICAC to weed out the rats.
He has already done that…an ICAC ‘with teeth’ is Labor Party policy.
He hasn’t mentioned it for a while, it’s becoming lost.
As was W/B law reform – promised by Krudd in the 2007 Manifesto – it took Drefus 6yrs of ineptitude to produce something not just worthless but which made it even more hazardous.
IF ‘Labor’ stumble into office and are finally shamed and badgered into producing a cardboard ICAC cut-out the chances of it having real power are less than zero.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they simply recycled CP’s rubbish proposal on the grounds that the other side would support it.
What is at stake here, is neither Morrison or Albo; Labor or Liberal – National Party.
The true reality everyone must focus upon: Is DEMOCRACY . . . not Autocracy. Accountability . . . not NO accountability. Transparency . . . not Sports Rorts and Lies.
And who are responsible to ensure our Nation secured: Everyone who votes. And that means being ‘informed’. Not enticed by promises never delivered.
You state it well, missing one critical point, namely the self-interest, utter stupidity, and utter lack of intellectual curiosity of the majority of the electorate.