Comment

Paul Bongiorno
It’s all over bar the voting

A trifecta of unmissable interruptions has made Peter Dutton’s task of winning the election in just seven days’ time a seemingly impossible mission.

If the Easter holiday break followed by the Anzac Day holiday weren’t already obstacles to the late run home on which the Liberals were counting, the death on Monday of Pope Francis threw another giant spanner in the works.

The wisdom is that the Liberals needed to make every day a winner in the final two weeks to capture voters’ attention and to woo the waverers over to their side.

An overhyped law-and-order policy, launched on Sunday to make Australians feel safe to do the shopping again, stood no chance of dominating the headlines for very long once the news from the Vatican broke.

On Tuesday, The Australian splashed with the headline “The Divine Disruptor”, no doubt capturing what many more-conservative Catholics thought of this reforming, iconoclastic leader. There was no escaping the disruption caused to the election campaign by this unexpected world event.

Anthony Albanese was quick to react. Within an hour of the news, he called the cameras to the Commonwealth Parliament Offices in Melbourne to pay tribute to Pope Francis and to suspend his campaigning.

https://youtu.be/YvnnXWw4cd4

Besides acknowledging the late pope’s compassion and his embrace of “all humanity”, the prime minister noted Francis had asked the world to hear the “cry of the earth” and to “emerge from the dark night of wars and environmental devastation”. It was a neat nod to the imperative of climate change action.

Peter Dutton was in the air, flying to Orange in the New South Wales Central West, when the news broke. On landing, he released a video statement that hit the airwaves about an hour after the prime minister’s.

Dutton’s generous tribute noted the pope’s Christian values of “mercy and forgiveness” and quoted his message that God’s mercy “tear[s] down every wall of division”. From one of the most divisive politicians in the country, there was a jarring feel to it.

After meeting early-morning campaign commitments, Dutton followed Albanese’s lead and temporarily suspended his campaign to attend mass at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney.

William Shakespeare himself could not have devised a more intricate plot to the drama unfolding around the 2025 election. From United States President Donald Trump’s igniting of global trade hostilities, shaking the economic order and making uncertainty the new normal, to the papal passing, this campaign has largely been influenced by events beyond our shores.

Their impact, however, is far from remote. The biggest loser in political terms has been the erstwhile Trump-admiring Dutton Coalition. According to the latest assessment of the International Monetary Fund, the US president’s trade war chaos will shave $13 billion from Australia’s annual output. The IMF says Australia’s real gross domestic product growth will drop to 1.6 per cent from the previously forecast 2.1 per cent.

To appeal to voters wanting a steady hand in these troubled times, the Coalition is relying on the myth that it is the better economic manager. Labor’s claims to being up to the task were bolstered in the latest IMF Fiscal Monitor, which saw Australia make the top five internationally for budget management, an improvement on the 14th spot inherited from the Coalition.

Not to be missed, although it seems to have been by the Dutton camp, was the fact that pre-poll voting began on Tuesday. It is simply mind-boggling that they had not released their major policies before people began casting their ballots.

The Australian Electoral Commission reported that half a million people rushed to vote within the first 24 hours of the pre-polls opening. One political veteran says that in the past this was a sign that Australians wanted to change the government. The published opinion polls suggest the exact opposite is happening, and people are voting early to get it out of the way.

There has been a gradual strengthening of Labor’s position since the campaign began. The aggregate average of all seven polls now is 53.1 per cent to 46.9 per cent. It’s the biggest lead posted by Labor since November 2023.

According to Newspoll, Peter Dutton’s dissatisfaction rating rose to 57 per cent, the equal-highest level of disapproval for an opposition leader since Bill Shorten in 2018.

Dutton now has a net satisfaction rating of minus 22, his worst result in Newspoll since becoming leader. One disgruntled Liberal observed: “This is leader-changing territory.”

Albanese is not wildly popular, with a net satisfaction of minus 9, but he has increased his lead over Dutton as preferred prime minister.

In this week’s leaders’ debate, Dutton was asked to rate his performance in light of going backwards in the polls. He blamed the Labor Party for spending “$20 million throwing mud and negative ads”. Maybe this thought consoles him, but it ignores what is one of the most shambolic campaigns run by an opposition in quite some time.

The self-confessed mistakes have played a significant part in corroding Dutton’s credibility, according to Labor research. Even the inelegant dumping of the ban on working from home in the public service has resurfaced, with The Sydney Morning Herald reporting shadow finance minister Jane Hume describing it as “good policy that hasn’t found its appropriate time”.

Dutton is looking for a repeat of the Coalition’s late winning feat in 2019. He told the Nine Network’s Charles Croucher: “There was a very different outcome on election day compared to where the polling indicated going through the course of the election.” Given the rise in support for independents and minor parties, Labor is far from discounting the possibility.

The Liberals are counting on second preferences from Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party to save them. In a sign of election panic, they have ended their decades-old war with the woman they considered a political pariah for her racist views. Following a late deal, Hanson pulped how-to-vote cards preferencing other minor parties ahead of the Liberals.

In return for One Nation putting the Liberals second, especially in Dutton’s marginal seat of Dickson, the Liberals will now preference Hanson’s candidates in the 139 seats they are contesting.

Hanson told ABC Radio the last-minute reversal in her preference policy was to counter what she considers the maverick behaviour of Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots party. Her chief of staff, James Ashby, sees it in terms of “saving Peter Dutton”.

The Nine Network’s debate panel voted 2-1 to declare Peter Dutton the winner. This view was not shared by the Labor camp. One senior minister says he left the studio very satisfied with proceedings.

In terms of which leader gave their opponent political ammunition for the remaining critical days of the campaign, Peter Dutton was definitely the winner.

He confirmed there would be significant budget cuts, but he would not say where they would fall. This has been standard opposition practice in this election. The Coalition has not taken voters into its confidence on how it will fund any of its major promises, from nuclear power to the $21 billion signature defence policy it unveiled on Wednesday.

In the debate Dutton said it wasn’t possible to “outline the budget from opposition”. “You work through with the central agencies, with Treasury and Finance, to identify where there are problems in the budget,” he said.

Dutton says his models are John Howard and former treasurer Peter Costello. He is obviously counting on few, if anyone, remembering that their first budget was a shocker, with sweeping cuts to education, social services and health. They even wanted to withhold unemployment benefits from people under 30.

Tony Abbott and his treasurer, Joe Hockey, tried to repeat similar swingeing cuts in their first budget, despite promises not to do so. The spectre of that 2014 budget is haunting the Liberals in this election. It explains why Dutton is giving no unequivocal promises on what he won’t cut – a lesson after Abbott gave false promises on the eve of the election.

The prime minister said Dutton’s refusal to say where his cuts would be made meant he was “not being fair dinkum”.

Some News Corp commentators believed Dutton’s attack on Albanese’s integrity during the debate was a knockout blow. He interjected that the prime minister “couldn’t lie straight in bed” and that Albanese’s claim that Dutton as health minister had “ripped” $50 billion out of health was unbelievable.

It is certainly arguable, given the budget documents at the time claimed these projected cuts as savings.

Albanese’s counterpunch highlighted Dutton’s reputation for aggression. He said, “You can go to personal abuse – that’s a sign of desperation, Peter, frankly.”

Labor strategists believe Dutton’s machismo plays badly with viewers and his attempt at assertiveness backfired.

The final leaders’ debate will be on Sunday night. Albanese is the only prime minister to agree to four. His thinking seems vindicated if the polls are a guide; the more voters see of the Liberal leader, the less impressed with him they are.

Vox pops of early voters indicate they have had enough, don’t want to hear more and have made up their minds.

We will find out in seven days what their verdict is.

For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australia’s leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.

All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers. By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential, issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to account politicians and the political class.

There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this. In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world, it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.

Send this article to a friend for free.