Another election campaign fueled by fear campaigns is looming, but how will this one be different from the previous ones?
Cost of living challenges are the dominant focus for most Australians right now and that is unlikely to change before Election Day. The Coalition attacks will blame the Albanian government for making the situation even worse. Their aim will be to scare voters so that they do not risk three more years of Labour.
It will be a tough sell if history is any guide. No first-term government has lost a re-election bid since 1931, although in more recent times some have come close.
For example, the Labor government elected in 2007 under the leadership of Kevin Rudd almost lost the 2010 election under Prime Minister Julia Gillard. They only won by forming a minority government with the support of the transversal bench.
Some Liberal strategists do not believe that the leader of the opposition, Peter Dutton, can win the next election, but they are confident of taking the narrow majority from Labor. He currently holds 78 of the 151 seats in the House of Representatives.
Peter Dutton, left, and Anthony Albanese, right, are employing a fear campaign in the yet-to-be-announced federal election.
Dutton’s strategy of promising to build nuclear power plants while questioning the realism of meeting 2030 emissions reduction targets may make it harder for the Liberals to win back Teal seats like Wentworth and Kooyong.
But he hopes Australians in general will no longer be ideologically opposed to nuclear power. He cites Labour’s reliance on going it alone on renewables as a risky business – an energy source that is both unreliable and expensive.
Anthony Albanese, on the other hand, believes he is an election winner targeting Dutton’s plans for nuclear power. The Labor Party is preparing the mother of all scare campaigns in a bid to sow doubt over Dutton’s election as prime minister.
Meanwhile, Greens leader Adam Bandt today declared that neither major party’s plan is capable of meeting the emissions reduction targets Australia has signed up to.
This could cause political difficulties for Labour, as some voters were concerned about what deal they would make with the Greens if they formed a minority government after the election with their support.
Labor strategists point to Bill Shorten’s success in selling his ‘Mediscare’ campaign in the 2016 election.
Then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was expected to win comprehensively in 2016, but when the formal election campaign gun was officially fired, Team Shorten relentlessly took aim at the Coalition, branding it “abolish Medicare” if it won a second term.
Political ads were numerous and references to Turnbull’s supposed “plans” were endless whenever opposition MPs appeared in the media.
It worked, almost. Turnbull’s government returned with the narrowest of majorities, 76 seats in the 150-seat chamber. It took a week of recounting at Capricornia headquarters in Queensland before the Coalition could be sure of forming a majority government.
“If you thought the Mediscare campaign was strong, wait until you see what we do about nuclear power,” a Labor MP who did not want to be named told Daily Mail Australia.
Qualitative research has revealed to Albanese that when Australians are asked about their concerns about nuclear energy, doubts arise.
Labor’s plans include flooding Dutton’s campaign with protesters in protective suits and reminding voters in key marginal seats that a nuclear power plant will soon be installed there if the Coalition wins.
While debates around nuclear power have changed globally in the decades since the heady days of the 1970s and 1980s, Australia is an untested market.
Recently published opinion polls have revealed that voters are no longer as opposed to nuclear power as they once were, but the Labor Party’s internal focus groups delve deeper into voters’ feelings than headline figures can. of the surveys.
This qualitative research has revealed to Albanese that when Australians are asked about their concerns about nuclear energy, doubts arise.
This is precisely what a Labor election campaign aims to do, and some Liberals are so worried about the possibility that they are privately suggesting Dutton quit politics and take the political humiliation now, rather than risk further electoral backlash. forward.
But given that the Mediscare campaign in 2016 was largely based on the false premise that the Coalition wanted to abolish Medicare, it is doubtful that Dutton could walk back his nuclear intentions even if he ruled them out. Labour’s anti-nuclear message seems set in stone.
In the early years of the Howard government a moratorium was imposed on the use of nuclear energy. It has remained in place ever since, despite the latter years of Howard’s leadership commissioning an independent study into the viability of nuclear power in Australia.
We have the second largest deposits of yellowcake in the world, the key ingredient used to produce nuclear energy, and we are one of the largest exporters. However, “going nuclear” has never been a serious proposal until now.
If Dutton stands firm and announces the details of his planned nuclear policy (he promised to do so more than six weeks ago), it will be the first election campaign in which voters will be able to choose whether to accept or reject “going nuclear.”
Team Dutton knows cost of living pressures are on voters’ minds
The independent review commissioned by the Howard government almost 20 years ago concluded that “going nuclear” was economically viable but needed to be adopted quickly. That never happened, and since then nuclear technology has been perfected, as have safety standards. Likewise, technologies related to renewable energy have also advanced significantly.
This is where the dividing lines in this debate will likely form. But with a twist.
Team Dutton knows that cost-of-living pressures are at the forefront of voters’ minds. For the Coalition, the challenge is to bring any and all policy issues back to the dire state of the economy, blaming Labor mismanagement for circumstances becoming as bad as they are.
It is at this point that the moment of the elections appears again.
Albanese wants to go to the polls soon, towards the end of this year, if he thinks he can win. The prime minister previously promised to run for a full term, which would mean elections in 2025, sometime before May.
But with expected interest rate cuts later this year looking less likely, any delay risks angering voters when the first half of next year arrives and no such cuts have yet occurred. Especially if unemployment rises, as predicted in the Budget, and the economy remains stagnant.
Some economists even think that interest rate increases could be on the cards if “say” inflation doesn’t fall further.
Income tax cuts starting on July 1 will allow many Australians to have more money to help with cost of living pressures when they receive their salaries.
But that extra money circulating in the economy could be inflationary, and will voters give Labor due credit for the tax cuts when they were initially legislated under the Coalition leadership?
A Liberal strategist Daily Mail Australia spoke to declared headlines of so-called “climate wars” are nonsense.
“These elections will focus on people’s material concerns, not on an insignificant objective that does not affect their daily lives,” he argued.
We will finally be able to discover whether the Coalition’s failure to take action against climate change framed as an ideological struggle is harming it or not. Or whether in these tough cost-of-living times Australians are willing to give the green light to nuclear power, writes Peter van Onselen.
When economic times are tough, voters return to the “core issues” when deciding who to vote for. For the political left and younger generations, action against climate change is defined as a central issue, because it is considered to have to do with the survival of the planet.
The 2024 (or 2025) elections will test this proposal. We are certainly living in difficult economic times, as the per capita recession persists.
We will finally be able to discover whether the Coalition’s failure to take action against climate change framed as an ideological struggle is harming it or not.
Or whether in these tough cost-of-living times Australians are willing to give the green light to nuclear power, convinced by the argument that renewables alone are too expensive.