Paul Murray: Why Scott Morrison and the ALP both have big problems heading into the 2022 Federal election

Prime Minister Scott Morrison clearly thinks miracles can happen twice in the same places – unlike what is said about lightning. After his one-seat 2019 election victory, Morrison famously said that he had always believed in miracles. And he got several. Back then he shifted the Budget date forward by more than a month to April 2, allowing for a snap election shortly after on May 18, in a strategy integral to his success. This week Morrison has again moved the Federal Budget – this time to March 29 – from its traditional listing on the second Tuesday in May, which next year is on the 10th. But the 10th falls in a week when the PM intends to be celebrating another supernatural electoral victory. For that he will need several brand new miracles in WA and Victoria and miraculous lightning strikes again in Tasmania, Queensland and NSW, where he picked up the five seats that saved him last time. This year’s March 29 date suggests a highly political Budget followed by another quick rush to an election on May 7 – with May 21 being the last possible constitutional date. Pre-election Budgets can be ugly affairs for fiscal conservatives. Good governments often lose their restraint to try to woo voters. Even the usually economically-rational John Howard was a notable offender. This was my assessment of Josh Frydenberg’s first effort as Treasurer in 2019 when an election-winning Budget was required: “Frydenberg has not held back, using all the levers at his disposal: tax cuts, blatant cash bribes and truck loads of infrastructure spending.” But that was before the pandemic. If all that 2019 Budget spending did have some effect on voter behaviour six weeks later, the government cannot afford the same glad-handing this time around with the national debt at historic levels. So, without the resources to throw mountains of cash at voters, the coalition will likely try to use the early Budget to frame economic arguments that curry favour a different way. Despite a slow start on the vaccine rollout, for which Morrison took a hammering, Australia now has a good story to tell about its pandemic response with a death toll among the lowest internationally and a double-jab rate allowing a return to open borders everywhere but WA. However, the economic future and pandemic recovery will still be one of the major battlegrounds of this looming election. Voters will want to see a plan. If Morrison does try to stuff cash that he doesn’t have into the wallets of Middle Australia to buy votes, he will lose any remaining credibility and deserve electoral rejection. Labor leader Anthony Albanese is an untested quantity on economic management with few credentials. In a Canberra career since 1996, he has never held an economic or finance portfolio. Conversely, Morrison had three Budgets from 2016-18 as Treasurer and knows the ropes. The public also remembers he “stopped the boats”. Frydenberg is still a work in progress, having navigated through one of the nation’s great financial crises, with a fourth Budget looming as his biggest challenge. His opposite number, Albanese’s Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers, while clever, too often relies on smartarsery, rather than sound arguments. He will have to bear a lot of the electoral workload if Morrison goes hard on economic management. The West’s editorial on Tuesday noted that Albanese had been criticised for not presenting a plan to voters. “But surely his small-target strategy has been well thought out,” the paper opined. “Labor believes its best chance is for ScoMo to lose the election, not for the ALP to win it.” Don’t Australians deserve to know before voting how the major parties intend to take us out of the financial mess that the pandemic has made of the nation’s books? A small-target strategy would be unacceptable from either party. There can be no hiding from the problems ahead. And then there’s the issue of the devil you know. Scott Morrison. The Labor Party review of the 2019 loss seems to have been completely forgotten by many pundits who have gone back to default settings as if no one noticed their previous predictions – and the assumptions on which they were formed – were horribly wrong. At least federal politicians get regular opportunities to return to their homes, constituents and neighbours – real people with real life concerns. The reporting class stews in Canberra, staring at the political sewer. Much of what happens there means little to ordinary Australians. That 2019 Labor review by party stalwarts Craig Emerson and Jay Weatherill started with a sobering evaluation of its campaigning efforts, which are often glorified by the press gallery: “Labor has failed to win a majority in the House of Representatives in eight out of its last nine starts.” Gulp. “Labor lost the election because of a weak strategy that could not adapt to the change in Liberal leadership, a cluttered policy agenda that looked risky and an unpopular leader,” the review says in a pithy summary. The last point mirrors my assessment in a column published in The Sunday Times a day after the election, before the ink was dry on the result: “The exit polls yesterday had the vote at 52-48 for Labor. More than 60 losing Newspolls told us that the wave was against the coalition. So what went wrong? In two words: Bill Shorten.” The voters choked. This time around, will those two words be Anthony Albanese? Two days before the 2019 election, The Guardian’s political editor Katharine Murphy published an exclusive Essential poll which showed that 59 per cent of those surveyed thought Shorten would win. The polling for preferred PM had Morrison dropping three points in a week to 39 per cent, ahead of Shorten on 32 per cent. “The Labor leader’s rating in the preferred prime minister question this week is his highest relative to his opponent since Morrison took the Liberal leadership – up five points since September 2018,” Murphy wrote. The Labor review had this as one of its first findings, among 60: “Bill Shorten’s unpopularity contributed to the election loss.” An Essential poll last month had Morrison on 44 per cent as preferred PM – five points ahead of his rating at the 2019 election – with Albanese on just 28 per cent, four points behind the “unpopular” losing Shorten. So why is the focus of the Canberra media reporting on Morrison’s purported unpopularity? Perhaps the reporters confuse their own feelings about the Prime Minister for those of the community generally. In its principal findings, the Labor review says the party did not have a “persuasive strategy” nor a “simple narrative that unified its many policies.” But it sagely counselled against being a small target or falling into the mindless identity politics miasma that absorbs the political/media class but leaves many ordinary Australians unmoved. “Working people experiencing economic dislocation caused by technological change will lose faith in Labor if they do not believe the party is responding to their needs, instead being preoccupied with issues not concerning them or that are actively against their interests,” the review said. “A grievance-based approach can create a culture of moving from one issue to the next, formulating myriad policies in response to a broad range of concerns. Care needs to be taken to avoid Labor becoming a grievance-based organisation.” So, for example, trying to attract female voters through a focus on things like the gender wars might be a mistake. And if Labor is to heed the message of the 2019 review, it will not repeat one critical mistake made by Shorten and his allies. Who can forget that famously smug “We’re Ready” pre-poll picture of Shorten, Chalmers, Chris Bowen, Penny Wong and Tanya Plibersek. The definition of hubris. “Labor was the official opposition, yet it was treated and behaved like a government in exile, making itself the issue,” the review said. “While many media outlets were hostile to Labor’s attempts to talk about the Government because they, like most of the Australian community, thought Labor was going to win the election, this should not have deterred Labor from making the campaign a referendum on the Government’s disunity. “Labor should not be less ambitious about policy, but its policy agenda should be less complex. “Labor has won elections with bold policy platforms and lost elections where it has pursued a ‘small target’ strategy.” But if the Emerson-Weatherill document has been dusted off, Labor will be narrowing its policy focus on issues that don’t frighten voters and sharpening its negative campaigning skills. Frankly, the biggest problem for the incumbents is the It’s Time factor. But what can Labor do about Albanese?