Two weeks until the 3 May election day, and Anthony Albanese is cracking jokes about Star Wars.
Every profile and sketch of the prime minister during this campaign – which is now past its halfway – speaks of the confidence and even swagger Albanese projects as he travels the country. It is one of the starkest differences to his 2022 campaign, which was dominated by missteps: forgetting key economic figures, then his untimely Covid diagnosis and images of being chased out of a press conference by journalists.
This time, he’s on top and he knows it. This week’s Guardian Essential poll puts him in an election-winning position. Peter Dutton is running out of time to stage a comeback.
Still, there is a quiet carefulness to Albanese’s campaigning – he knows first-hand how quickly a campaign can come off the tracks, and how a written-off underdog can win from behind.
I’m fresh back from a week on Albanese’s campaign bus. Earlier, I tailed the Liberal leader on his first week in the campaign pressure cooker. From up close and afar, the two campaigns are different beasts.
Albanese bounds into the public eye, often accompanied by a number of his higher-profile ministers; Dutton is on constant high alert, still adjusting to the barrage of questioning he faces each day. While the prime minister cracks jokes or waxes lyrical over his footy team, his rival seems to end most press conferences with a negative story, a backtrack or leaving more questions than answers.
One of Albanese’s few missteps – literally and figuratively – was to claim he didn’t fall off a stage in week one. It was a weird moment, given the media pack was there to see (and film) it, even if the instinctual reaction was to downplay misfortune. The Coalition campaign machine pounced on it, desperate for any crack in the Labor facade; the “Albo lied about falling off the stage” attack hasn’t really taken hold anywhere beyond Liberal party memes, but that hasn’t stopped them.
This week’s debate saw another, more consequential flub, when Albanese claimed Labor had never commissioned modelling on negative gearing changes. It was the opening for Dutton’s best punch of the night, Albanese looking uncomfortable as Dutton claimed his opponent “has a problem with the truth”. The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, had earlier said it was “not unusual” for governments to get such advice, even as he stressed it wasn’t on their radar – and was rolled out to help clean up the situation the next day, splitting hairs that the government had received “advice” not “modelling”.
The Coalition this week launched an “Albanese Live Lie Tracker”. Both sides are doing this; Labor’s campaign machine sends out a tally of Dutton’s “daily lies” to journalists.
Some Liberals quietly grumble that the respective press packs are grilling Dutton harder than they are Albanese. Having been on both campaign buses now, with a revolving cast of press gallery colleagues and competitors, I can say it’s not for the reason Dutton sympathisers might like to think.
Albanese has fronted up often to tough TV and radio interviews or all-in press conferences over his three years; Dutton has not. Whereas Labor has consistently released policy over their time in government, the Coalition has left much of their heavy lifting and reform ideas to the last minute.
This means many Labor policies have already been thoroughly raked over in the lead-up to the poll, as has Albanese on his mistakes. Dutton, on the other hand, is facing his inquisition now, in the more intense period right before voters make up their minds.
To be sure, Albanese is still – rightly – getting fresh questions over Labor’s promise last election to cut $275 from power bills, their energy systems plan and new promises on housing, tax and cost of living. He has gotten cranky at times, snipping a little too vehemently at a question he didn’t like and downplaying the journalist as a “state correspondent”; he rubbishes questions about minority government and potential cooperation with the Greens, not bothering to disguise expressions of annoyance or dismissiveness.
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But there’s only so many times you can write the same story – which leaves Albanese breathing room for lighthearted podcasts, or a ferry ride with journalists.
Dutton, as well as having to defend his policy announcements in the heat of the campaign, also has to respond to breaking events. His serious error (slip of the tongue or pure mistake) in claiming the Indonesian president had announced that Russian planes would be stationed on Biak island , gave Labor fresh ammo for their “reckless and risky” attack. And confusion and a deliberate lack of clarity over public service cuts leaves Dutton looking evasive and tricky whenever he’s asked.
The opposition leader couldn’t even catch a break when he finally let down the shutters to kick a footy around with a few local kids in Darwin. During his only really easygoing press appearance this campaign, a wayward kick sent the ball crashing into a TV camera, leaving the operator with a bleeding gash on his head.
Dutton’s campaign is workmanlike. Numerous visits to factories in his first week have given way to endless petrol station photo ops; a campaign event here, a building site there.
Albanese looks meanwhile to be genuinely enjoying his time hopping around the nation – if a little tired at points. Joining Guardian Australia’s Full Story podcast on Thursday, he downed a piccolo at 3pm, a caffeine boost ahead of a few engagements he said lay ahead into the afternoon and evening.
On two separate occasions this week he brought up, unprompted, his plan to watch Star Wars on 4 May (“May the Fourth”) after election day. Journalists and even his own staff barely manage to suppress quiet groans when he goes off on a tangent at each media appearance about a local infrastructure project he’s backed nearby, or about his dog.
Others have commented at how few genuine public interactions both men have had on this campaign. Security threats detailed recently partly explain the reticence, even as Albanese spoke this week of how he enjoys getting out to meet punters.
With two weeks until election day, Albanese looks in control. But there’s still a long way to go before he knows whether he’ll be watching Star Wars from his couch in The Lodge as a winner, or in his own home in Sydney after election defeat.
