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The Guardian
29-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Amid Dutton's messy decline in the polls, is Albanese on the verge of becoming the John Howard of his era?
Anthony Albanese will hate this column, but if, as is becoming increasingly likely, he returns to government over the weekend, he will not just be our most successful prime minister since John Howard, but the one who most resembles him. Look, I'm not getting ahead of myself; I still have the scars of 2019 which I will carry to every election, although I do think the indicators of the national result are clearer this time around. On declared voting intention, the Guardian Essential Report has Labor ahead 52-48 notwithstanding the margin of error (around 3%), the undecideds (still 5%) and the vagary of national samples. But on the other key indicator – approval of leader – Albanese's position is significantly stronger than Bill Shorten's was and Peter Dutton's is so much weaker than ScoMo in has 'How good is it?' prime. The story of Dutton's decline under the glare of sustained scrutiny defines this election. It's not just that his hardline chickens have come home to roost; it's the lack of thought and discipline behind his offer to voters. Make no mistake, economic conditions suggest this should be a change-of-government election. A majority think we are heading down the wrong track, cost-of-living pressure is palpable, disappointment at the pace of change is real. Over the summer Dutton had the opportunity to mount a serious challenge with his three core propositions: you have gone backwards under Labor; Albo is a weak leader; the Coalition are always better economic managers. All he needed was a bit of passion from his troops, pepped with some Trump-inspired culture wars on public servants, marginalised communities and renewables, and it would be all over, Labor consigned to the first one-term government in a century. Instead, Trump dropped his 'liberation day' chaos bomb on the world and what seemed like 'the vibe' became a vice. Dutton continued to be drawn to easy hits but Jane Hume's war on work from home became his Achilles heel. The subsequent reversal was not just bad policy but also a proof point he was all over the shop. The backflips and mistakes have piled up though the campaign: measuring the Kirribilli curtains, reversing 40,000 jobs cuts, knee-jerk attacks on school curriculum and welcomes to country, verballing the Indonesian president, guaranteeing support for EVs which he was about to take away, sitting mum while his star culture warrior defiantly embraced the Maga creed. Against this messy counterpoint, Albanese has plodded on, not flash but battle-hardened by the difficult 2022 campaign. His has been a disciplined campaign, focused on Labor's strengths (Medicare) and its long-term plans for renewables and targeted cost-of-living support. Now with just a few days to go, the contrasts appear to have taken root. A second question in this week's report shows that over the campaign's journey, the vote for Labor has hardened at double the rate among younger voters. This is where the parallels between John Howard and his ability to retain power from unlikely positions on multiple occasions through ruthlessly disciplined campaigns take form. First there's the personal arc: both served long apprenticeships; both has substantial roles as ministers; both saw up close how governments fail when they lose sight of the fundamentals. (Fun fact: Albo entered parliament when Howard became PM.) As opposition leaders they both offered bipartisan support when they determined it to be in the national interest: Howard backed the Hawke-Keating economic reforms; Albanese chose not to play politics with the pandemic. Like Howard, who Keating belittled as 'Little Johnny', the ongoing attacks for 'weakness' by Dutton and his cheer squad have had a real bullying edge to them. Yet by shrugging them off both emerged stronger. And like Howard, Albanese didn't win power through flashy inspiration but via the national rejection of his opponent and a government that had run out of steam. Behind the blandishments of retail politics, both have used their mandate to pursue a bigger picture. Howard took on the unions and upended the tax system to create a nation of shareholders. Albanese too has introduced new work rights, locked in the energy transition to renewables after a decade of inertia and developed an ambitious manufacturing agenda. Most significantly, both recognised that to make change enduring, you need to hold power for multiple terms and that means winning elections. This campaign feels like an amalgam of Howard's 2001 and 2004 triumphs. In 2001, Howard harnessed anxiety about an external threat of terrorism following 9/11 into a patriotic call for security. In 2004 he honed on the obvious flaws of his opponent to seize a debate around trust that had been hitherto thrown overboard. Now Albanese is on the verge of becoming the John Howard of his era. While this is a terrible to thing to say to about someone who entered politics to 'fight Tories', here's the thing: a look at the attitudes of voters towards our leaders suggests it might not be the worst thing he's called this campaign. Of all the leaders in the last 50 years, Howard is most revered by his side but also respected by his opponents. In fact, Labor voters rate him as a better leader than any prime minister apart from their beloved Bob Hawke and Albo. A surprising number of Greens voters too rate Howard highly. Look at the league table and it is not the flashy or the expansive who are remembered as the best leaders; it's those who succeed in convincing the people on multiple occasions to trust them with power. Howard then Hawke then daylight. As election day approaches, the final voter choice is crystallising into one between a sober, tradesman-like government seeking to build on the foundations of a solid first term and a chaotic opposition not ready to govern. Stability versus chaos is also an argument that makes majority government feel like a more rational response to the times, notwithstanding the historically high number of voters sending their first preference to a minor party or an independent. There is every chance I'll wake up Sunday morning with egg on my face – a late surge behind the Dutton Coalition or a line ball free-for-all where both sides are desperately trying to cobble together a working majority. But if election predictions are a fool's game, the one thing I've learned is that the result always feels obvious with the gift of hindsight. On this measure I think the most credible story on Sunday is that Australians weighed up the instability in the world and decided to give Labor the chance of a second term in its own right under a leader who has been too easily underestimated. Peter Lewis is an executive director of Essential, a progressive strategic communications and research company. Essential is conducting qualitative research for the ALP
The Guardian
15-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Elections are no longer a binary contest – independents of all persuasions make for a noisier political discourse
Anyone tuning into the official election campaign launches over the weekend would be forgiven for thinking Australia was in the middle of an old school binary contest for supremacy played out through the legacy media. With lovingly curated showcases of personality, principle and policy breathlessly analysed by expert commentators and packaged to lead the nightly news bulletins. The only thing missing was Jana Wendt. But the reality is that this election is less a straight two-horse contest and more a scrappy three-legged race, a fragmented series of skirmishes playing out across the nation through disaggregated networks. As this week's Guardian Essential Report illustrates, if 'someone else' were a candidate for government it would currently have its nose narrowly in front. Of course, 'someone else' is not a single entity. There are stark differences between the candidates sitting outside the majors; but they all exist as rational responses to limited choice in a world of infinite options. The Greens, defending an historic high of four lower-house seats while eyeing off further gains, emerged in the 1980s as a reaction to the dominance of Labor's industrial base and its impact on the environment. It added salience around the climate crisis before broadening its social and economic justice chops in a bid to pitch itself as more than a party of protest. One Nation was the 1990s nativist reaction to globalisation that peeled working class votes away from both majors; and presaged Clive Palmer's 21st century indulgences as the real local expression of Temu Trump. While their combined numbers are lower, they contribute an outsized sense of fear and loathing from the right. The 'teal' independents are something altogether different, a modern-day revolt from the liberal wing of the Liberal party based on core values, particularly its refusal to address climate change. With its current policy focus and appeal to lower income workers in outer metropolitan areas, the Coalition appears to have given up on winning back these seats. The teals' most relevant antecedent might actually be the Catholic-aligned DLP, which split from the Labor through the 1950s and 1960s over home grown communism, keeping it out of power for nearly two decades. If the teals become anything like the political fixture the DLP was, they could be equally as disruptive, exercising real power through a disaggregated network, anchored with common infrastructure but tempered by a determination not to manifest into a formal institution. These dynamics make for an even noisier political discourse, amplified by a changing media ecosystem which sees young people finding new sources of authority through which to interpret the world. As much as the vote intention table marks a tidal change, these figures show the profound shift in the way voters are consuming information with 42% of under 35s getting most of their news from a non-traditional source. These are often filtered through the eyes of lone wolf influencers, freed of the constraints of journalism, for whom reach is its own virtue. Like the political parties, the rise of these alternate voices can be read as a rational response to structural weaknesses in old gatekeeper media models, particularly when filtered through commercial self-interest or, in the case of ABC, political interventions. It is here where the atomisation of both politics and media finds a common landing point, an algorithmically charged attention economy where bravura jumps to the head of the queue. Pointedly, the major parties have accepted the role of influencers in the media, with leaders making themselves available for long form interviews with those who have earned an audience. The prime minister has embraced influencer podcasters, inviting them to cover the budget and even inserting coded words into his final speech of the term to this parliament. And just to show they are not 'delulu to the solulu', the Coalition is all-in repurposing Drake. Whether the leaders of the major parties will be forced to embrace independent representatives with the same pragmatism remains to be seen, although a final table shows that the expectation is that one of the two majors will form power in their own right. What's most interesting here is that only a bare majority of those intending to vote away from the major parties expect to see minority government. While there is a clear difference between desire and expectation, the consensus settling around the likelihood of one side securing a working majority may be a natural response to the instability generated by the ultimate insurgent influencer. But even if it doesn't happen this cycle, the age profile of third-party voters means the time is fast approaching where more active power-sharing arrangements will become a reality. The truth is the complexity of our times does not lead itself to binary choices. Embracing diversity not as a performance but as a design principle will only make the future governments – whatever their flavour – more faithful custodians of the public will. For those of us who are still drawn into the theatre of the leaders' debates and the head-to-head battle for supremacy, it might be a case of enjoying it before the worm turns. Peter Lewis is an executive director of Essential, a progressive strategic communications and research company. Essential is conducting qualitative research for the ALP
The Guardian
31-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
From babysitting to keeping a secret, the PM is preferred. But it is the literal pub test where Albo stands out
While Australia may not be holding a presidential election, the leaders of the major parties carry the disproportionate burden of personifying the contest: they are the human pub test. The 'pub test' may appear a somewhat redundant measure given how few of us actually convene over a cold one to ruminate about the world at the end of the day any more. We are either at the gym or scrolling through our streams or doing both at the same time. But much as common law has its man on the Clapham omnibus, the pub test remains our default jury of political commonsense, invoked to determine whether a perk is reasonable, whether a policy makes sense and whether the bloke in charge is fair dinkum. Elections have been won and lost on these crude assessments that work to shortcut the ideological and policy contests into a user-friendly binary: think Beazley's ticker, Latham's inexperience, Morrison's artifice. This election cycle Peter Dutton has been at pains to define the pub test through the prism of his strength and Albanese's weakness. The election had barely been called and there he was, downing a XXXX and accusing Albo of being 'weak as water' while his opponent supped on a non-alcoholic ginger beer just a few suburbs away. Will it work? Leadership attributes in this week's Guardian Essential Report highlights the logic behind his approach. While the findings reinforce our low regard for politicians as a species, there are differences that Dutton wants to draw out. He is rated less likely to change his opinion, more decisive and more likely to stand up to vested interests. Squint and you can see the outline of a strong leader who will just get things done. At the same time, Dutton is seen as much more aggressive than Albanese, a quality that is constantly reinforced by his rightwing media cheerleaders. In contrast Albanese is perceived as the more reliable and calm of the two. Dutton is a little harder for Labor to pin down. Is he the former Queensland cop who still walks the thin blue line, or the multi-property investor who has made himself a very wealthy man? When it comes to his policy agenda to wind back climate action and cut a swathe through the public sector, is he a menace or is he a flake? Or is he menacing because he is a flake? To answer these questions, we may need to delve deeper into our leaders' souls, with our irregular Essential pub test, a series of more homespun character attributes we have been exploring since 2017. To be clear, on all these measures more than a third of respondents see no difference between the two (we have removed these from the table to capture the points of contrast). On everything except investment advice, where Dutton's property portfolio clearly trumps Albo's holiday house, the PM is preferred: from offering a loan, to breaking bread, to giving advice to the kids and in keeping a secret. But it is the literal pub test where Albo stands out. Maybe that's no surprise as he has a beer named after him while craft brewers are still trying to come up with a bitter that would do Dutton justice. Is this just polling froth? Looking back over our series, there is a credible story behind each Essential pub test. Bill Shorten almost upset Malcolm Turnbull by portraying him as the last person anyone could relate to over a quiet drink, although, to be fair, his own side landed the issue when Abbott's former chieftain Peta Credlin dubbed him 'Mr Harbourside Mansions'. Scott Morrison's daggy dad construct 'ScoMo' then wrong-footed Labor, convincing a majority that he would be better company at Cronulla Leagues. By 2022 Morrison had pulled out of his shout one time too many, but he still had a narrow advantage over Albo. So where does this leave Albo and Dutton? Being a preferred drinking companion does not win you an election, but it does speak to who the electorate is more willing to spend their time engaging with. The problem for Peter Dutton is that he is defined by what he opposes: clean energy, workers, migrants, public servants, the woke. He's like the bloke who is always having a gripe about the world with nothing much to contribute. They get tiring. Donald Trump is unwittingly offering a handbrake on Dutton's more boorish tendencies. After a few false moves, the decision to stand with the PM on tariffs by criticising but not retaliating was the smart move. It does, however, take a bit of the gloss off the strongman persona. Dutton's other drinking buddies are a less positive influence. The Advance Australia zealots and Clive Palmer's Trumpet of Patriots' determination to ramp up the anger may have the same repellent effect as GetUp! and Bob Brown's bus had on the 2019 election. It remains to be seen whether Dutton will try to harness these vibes. As we showed with the Essential 'lad report', there are new friends out there to be made, but the ensuing chaos makes for a ratty night on the tiles. In contrast, with his low-fi, low-alcohol, heaps normal schtick, the prime minister might prove to be the more reliable drinking partner who convinces us that while he is not the life of the party, at least he won't spill the drinks. Peter Lewis is an executive director of Essential, a progressive strategic communications and research company. Essential is conducting qualitative research for the ALP
The Guardian
18-02-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Voters are sceptical about Dutton's war on the public service. And America's disembowelment is a cautionary tale
As the federal election looms, a flurry of new polls are offering their predictions of who will form the next government. But while all eyes are on the horse race, there is less focus about the actual form the next government will take. The Guardian Essential Report joins the plethora of polls and models tapping the national mood (spoiler alert: it's close). But as I've argued previously, focusing too intently on future voter intent risks missing the drivers that will actually determine the election. Beyond the cliches that the election is a referendum on the cost of living and that the major parties are alike on many key issues, there are genuine differences emerging around the scale, ambition and role of government, how it should be funded and by whom. The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, is drawing inspiration from Elon Musk's crypto-meme inspired department of government efficiency (or 'Doge') as he scythes the US government with his calculated disruption to the workforce, including encouraging workers to resign and purging any program that sits outside the president's ideological filter. Dutton has taken a similar approach with the appointment of referendum-buster Jacinta Nampijinpa Price to a 'government efficiency' shadow ministry that is desperately seeking programs to defund and workers to cut. While the Coalition refuses to give a clear number of positions to go, it has consistently catcalled Labor for creating 36,000 new public-sector jobs in office. This week's report shows that the Coalition has some work to do to land that proposition. Australians appear sceptical about wholesale public-sector job cuts, although we found big variations across age and gender. Dutton will try to bluster his way through the campaign with vague promises to preserve 'frontline' services but any meaningful intervention to reduce the public-sector headcount will require substantial pain. Underpinning these policies are three articles of neoliberal faith: that the public sector is inherently inefficient; that cutting jobs won't have a material impact on citizens' lives; and that people will vote for a tax cut over anything else. Add to this Trump's populist strain that provides extra ballast: the government is not to be trusted because it acts in the interests of elites not you. Dig beyond the ideology and the idea of painless job cuts begins to unravel: Labor's alleged jobs spree included thousands of new workers in Centrelink, the NDIA and the Department of Veterans' Affairs, which had been run down to the point of incapacity by the previous government's hiring freeze. Of course, these public-sector jobs and government services do not exist in a vacuum: unless we want to move to an entirely user-pays system of essential services, like the US health system (notoriously one of the world's most expensive and ineffective), they need to be funded by taxes paid by citizens. At this point the cost of government becomes personal. While most people think the amount of tax being charged for services is about right, they think the distribution is all wrong, with those who have the resources to legally minimise their contributions through complex arrangements such as the use of trusts and other concessions. This is where the rubber hits the road for progressive representatives: how to make the case to voters that paying tax leads to better collective outcomes in services and infrastructure? After decades of highly effective neoliberal messaging that tax is some sort of theft from the individual, this is no easy task but one thing is certain: you don't get there by adopting conservative framing like 'relieving the tax burden'. Rather it starts with articulating the purpose of government and being honest about the resources required to provide people with support and opportunity and be upfront about the choices we need to make to deliver these. Per Capita's Community Tax Summit, to be held this week in Melbourne, is an attempt to recast these contradictions, starting with the grown-up proposition that we get the society we are prepared to pay for. The key question posed by the summit is what kind of country do we want and expect Australia to be? Is it one in which we collectively contribute to ensure that our fellow citizens today, and our children and grandchildren in the future, can live secure, peaceful, safe and productive lives, fulfilling their potential and raising healthy, happy families? Or is it one in which we abandon the great social gains of the postwar liberal-democratic state and fall back to a basic 'survival of the fittest', individualist mentality that essentially declares that it's every man for himself? Per Capita's Annual Tax Survey finds 60% of people would personally be willing to pay higher taxes for stronger health and aged care systems. This is reinforced by our poll, which finds a majority calling for increased funding on key social policies. As the American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr famously observed: taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society. While there are legitimate debates about the distribution of who pays, particularly when the tax treatment of wages is so much higher than is that of income from assets, lowering the tax base is actually an argument to dilute the effectiveness and reduce the role of the state. While the frontrunners in the horse race may appear the same, the good news is the election does provide a stark choice: an economic approach committed to investing in people and delivering long-overdue reforms in energy, housing, education and the care economy; or a winding back of government that leaves citizens subject to the whims of the market. Taking the axe to government should be an informed choice. With Trump's America currently disembowelling itself, at least we are getting a glimpse of the costs before we potentially embark on our own cycle of self-flagellation. Peter Lewis is an executive director of Essential, a progressive strategic communications and research company. He is a Per Capita board member
