The approach Peter Dutton is now taking in prosecuting his attacks on Anthony Albanese has undergone a remarkable change.
The opposition leader is now trying to paint Anthony Albanese as someone who is not telling the truth.
It is the same approach Albo took when attacking former Prime Minister Scott Morrison ahead of the 2022 election.
At the time, Labor discussion groups confirmed that in the wake of the bushfires, Morrison’s honesty had begun to be questioned.
His subsequent obfuscation on many issues cemented voter concern, which was duly highlighted in the Labour Party’s inquiry.
It was a potent attack because it meant that anything Morrison said or did could be questioned as yet another example of his untrustworthy ways.
The attacks worked because they reflected a sentiment that voters already had.
Once Labour realised that such sentiments existed among voters, Team White pushed to make that point at every opportunity.
I remember speaking to the current Prime Minister about the strategy and its success after the election victory.
Anthony Albanese harshly criticised Scott Morrison’s character and won the election. This week, Dutton began to focus attention on Albo’s veracity.
As Team Dutton looks to employ the same strategy against Albo now, the question is whether the tag will stick.
Do voters feel the same way about Albo as Prime Minister as they did about Morrison?
It is hard to imagine the Coalition moving in that direction – essentially attacking the Prime Minister’s character – if its group research did not suggest that voters were at least beginning to distrust Albo’s words.
Even if that is the case, I get the sense that concerns about Albo’s veracity are nowhere near the same as those there were about Morrison when he lost the 2022 election.
These sentiments would appear to contradict the “nice guy Albo” messages that previously leaked from Liberal Party discussion groups about the Labour leader.
These findings dictated the decision months ago to attack Albo’s competition, or more precisely, its incompetence.
The feeling in opposition circles was that his route to an improbable victory – defeating a one-term government for the first time since 1931 – lay in asking voters to put aside the fact that they think Albanese might be someone they would like to have a drink with and instead judge him on what has been a poor performance as prime minister.
The approach would target Labor on everything from cost-of-living pressures to rising inflation and high interest rates and the per capita recession that Australians are forced to endure.
Sounds familiar! Dutton appears to be copying Albo’s smear tactics.
The opposition will not stray from this strategy, but has decided to add another line of attack to the mix: assassinating Albo’s character.
The aim is to attack the Prime Minister’s recent obfuscation on issues such as the disagreements between the government and the Reserve Bank and Albo’s words to the head of ASIO.
For example, this week Albo omitted a key part of what ASIO chief Mike Burgess said when he quoted a television interview the spy chief conducted about Palestinian refugees in Australia receiving security assessments.
Dutton accused the Prime Minister of “deliberately misquoting” his security chief.
Dutton said: ‘What the Prime Minister did here was read out a sentence but left out part of it and skipped over words, which gave him the rating that Mike Burgess gave during his interview at the weekend.
“I have never seen anyone who occupies that chair as Prime Minister accused of deliberately misleading Parliament, in my 20-odd years in this Parliament,” he said.
“And it is unprecedented that the Prime Minister of the day does not stand up and fiercely defend his position.”
Albo said he simply wasn’t going to read the full transcript.
Perhaps the nice-guy tag that seemed associated with Albanese’s premiership is fading, either because of his approach to political debates or because voters are losing patience in the context of tough economic times.
If Dutton is right and doubts about Albo’s veracity are beginning to weigh on people’s minds, amplifying those doubts is an opportunity that should not be missed.
Because when the election campaign begins, such sentiments will undermine the Prime Minister’s ability to sell himself to voters.
It would be in the same way that such attacks on Morrison’s character made him the number one barrier to the Coalition’s chances of being re-elected.
Even if the strategy ultimately doesn’t work for Dutton, attacking Albo’s character will leave him damaged after the election.
Assuming he wins, but only wins badly, and is forced to govern in a minority, a wounded Albo might find it harder to keep his internal opponents at bay, for example.
It would also put the Prime Minister in a disadvantageous position immediately after the election, even if he won it. That was Julia Gillard’s experience after narrowly winning the 2010 election.
He lost all momentum in victory, allowing Tony Abbott to dictate terms for the next three years before a flourishing Coalition election victory in 2013.
As Dutton plays to win the next election, attacks on Albo’s (dis)honesty could well be an insurance policy designed to discredit the Prime Minister for what could become a two-term strategy for the Coalition.