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ASHLYNNE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ashlynne McGhee. This is 7am.

There’s this old adage in Canberra that voters are always really kind to first term governments and always give them a second go.

That’s held true for the best part of a century now. Australians have gone to the ballot box and returned every first-term government to office. Usually by a slimmer margin but a win is still a win. But that looks to be tested when voters head to the polls next year.

Labor holds power with just the slimmest of majorities and with so many people struggling with the cost of living crisis, can the government hold on to power?

Today, The Saturday Paper’s new special correspondent Jason Kourtsoukis, on why Labor appears so calm in turbulent political times.

It’s Monday, April 29

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ASHLYNNE:

Jason, it's great to have you on 7am for the first time.

JASON:

Ashlynne, it's an absolute pleasure. I'm very excited to be chatting to you

ASHLYNNE:

Now, you're The Saturday Paper's news special correspondent in Canberra, and you've seen Anthony Albanese up close over the years.

JASON:

Yeah so, I came to Canberra as a journalist for The Age newspaper in 1998 and Anthony Albanese had come into the parliament in 1996. So he came to Canberra 2 to 3 years before me. So the first time I met Anthony Albanese was at a bar in Kingston called the Holy Grail. And it was a budget night. Back then it was usually a pretty big night. And I remember having this conversation with Anthony, and he'd a few red wines. I can remember... I certainly remember that. And, he was very spirited in his conversation. And, he likes to express his opinion strongly, forcefully, he doesn't hold back. He was very candid about what was happening behind the scenes. And, he's someone that really loves politics and politicking. So, I'm that kind of person too. So there's always something to talk about. It was... Yeah, it was fun.

ASHLYNNE:

And then you've also had this kind of front row seat over the last couple of years, where you've seen the, kind of, inner workings of the party.

JASON:

That's right. My last journalism job before joining The Saturday Paper was with Nikkei in Japan. And, when the government changed, I thought I've always wanted to try being a press secretary so why don't I put my hand up for that and that'll give us a chance to move back to Australia. And Claire O'Neill, the minister for Home Affairs, said why don't we have a chat. So we did. And that was a very, you know, exciting and interesting experience, of course, because from going from, being a journalist where you're always kind of on the outside looking in suddenly, you know, there you are on the inside. And, you can see a little bit about how government works. But it's good to be back in journalism.

ASHLYNNE:

Do you reckon he’s comfortable the way things are tracking right now?

JASON:

Well, from what I know of Anthony Albanese, I would say yes, he's probably pretty comfortable with the way things are going. It's like the iron rule of politics that every first term government gets a second term. And that has been the case since 1931 when Labor's James Scullin was thrown out after only two years in office but every other government since then has got at least two and so, I guess we've all got used to that. But of course, rules are, you know, made to be broken

Audio Excerpt – News reader:

“Let’s start today with the latest news poll. Not a lot changing, the government still heading for, what looks like, on these numbers, minority government”

JASON:

The two published opinion polls that we saw last week showed the government just hanging on to the barest of advantages.

Audio Excerpt – News reader:

“The data shows both major parties have lifted a point in the primary vote. Labor’s primary vote sits at 33% while the coalition is up 38%. Labor is ahead in the two party preferred vote of 51% to 49%”

JASON:

The other poll in The Age, in the Sydney Morning Herald, had it at around 50-50. So that snapshot that we're getting they're showing that Anthony Albanese has not been able to build up much of an advantage since the election. There hasn't been much of a honeymoon. One of the first things he said after being sworn in as prime minister was that he wanted to grow the room, as in, he wanted to make the caucus bigger. He wanted to increase the majority at the 2025 election. And the way the polls are looking now, he's not going to be able to do that. He's going to be heading for a minority government.

ASHLYNNE:

So, how’s this going to play out?

JASON:

Well, there's 151 seats in the House of Representatives and the Labour Party has 78. So they've effectively got a three seat majority. And no other incoming Labor government has had such a narrow governing majority in the first term in. I spoke to a couple of people this week. One of them was Tony Barry, he now works for Redbridge Consulting in Melbourne. That's a political consultancy that was founded by Kos Samaras, and Tony's actually a former Liberal Party adviser. One of the things that he said to me was that he could imagine a scenario where Anthony Albanese does lose government in one term. He thinks the cost of living crisis is biting very hard. And, in his view, voters aren't yet blaming the prime minister for the cost of living crisis but they don't think he has the answers, either. And if by the time we get to the next election that there hasn't been any turnaround in the interest rate trend, voters might be so pissed off, so angry with the government that they might be prepared to turn against it and toss that.

When you walk around the ministerial wing, you don't get the sense that any of the the senior people in the government are panicking just yet. There's a sense of, you know, everyone's pretty calm, getting on with the job, they're trying to put the budget together. They're all putting the finishing touches on that budget, which we're going to say in about two weeks from now. And I think, Bill Shorten probably... probably said it best this week.

Audio Excerpt – Interviewer:

“Are you worried about where you’re at in the polls?”

Audio Excerpt – Bill Shorten:

“I'm concerned for Australians who are doing a tough. I'm not worried, per say, about the government's electoral fortunes.”

JASON:

In his view, things are going okay.

Audio Excerpt – Bill Shorten:

“For me, and I know for most members of the government, what matters is how people are coping, and it's all about cost of living.”

JASON:

It's all about cost of living. And I think that's what the budget is going to be. It's going to be all about cost of living. The treasurer Jim Chalmers, confirmed last week that the budget would deliver a second surplus. He said that it's not going to be as large a surplus as last year. They're going to be hoping that this budget delivers the goods, and sets the government up for election in March.

ASHLYNNE:

After the break, Labor’s big bet that voters don’t like Peter Dutton.

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ASHLYNNE:

So Jason, Labor appears to have a reasonably clear strategy. What do we know about the issues they're getting ready to fight on?

JASON:

Well obviously, cost of living is the big issue and the the biggest measure of whether the government is getting on top of the cost of living crisis will be interest rates. So, will the reserve bank start cutting interest rates. We had been thinking that would happen towards the end of this year, but after the quarterly inflation figures last Wednesday, I think market expectations are now pushing a rate cut into early next year. So that will make the government a bit more anxious and nervous, because they'll want to have at least 1 or 2 rate cuts through before they go and ask the Governor-General to dissolve parliament. So what the budget has to deliver is, easy to understand cost of living relief measures so that people can understand quickly, okay, the government is making the cost of medicine cheaper. Or they might be providing relief for education, HECS, something that people can grasp really quickly and delivers the message that we understand that your household economic situation right now is very, very difficult. And we are doing everything we can to make it easier for you.

Audio Excerpt – Anthony Albanese:

“Well, thanks very much and it is indeed great to be here to talk about what will be one of the themes of the budget that the treasurer will hand down next month, which is a future made in Australia.”

JASON:

The second part of the government's strategy is what the Prime Minister has called a future made in Australia. And this is a policy that he outlined earlier this month in a speech to the Queensland Media Club.

Audio Excerpt – Anthony Albanese:

“I want manufacturing to be brought back here in Australia. We need to be more resilient as an economy. We need simply to make more things here.”

JASON:

I think this is going to have a particular focus on Queensland, that's why the Prime Minister launched it in Queensland and that's why he's been back several times since that speech over the last two weeks. But also this is about lifting the Labor Party's electoral fortunes in Queensland, where it has just a handful of seats. And if it's going to hold on to a majority government, it has to start winning more seats in Queensland. The other thing that the government will be focusing on is Peter Dutton.

Audio Excerpt – Anthony Albanese:

"And I was reminded that the leader of the opposition, his big commitment to being made leader was that he'd smile more! Give us a smile! It was gonna be like little miss sunshine, mister speaker.”

JASON:

And we saw a bit of a, a kind of a preview of this strategy in the two by-elections, that both sides have contested, since the May 2022 election. And the reason why they're focusing on Peter Dutton is because they think that people see him as... what they know of Peter Dutton is that he's a little bit too harsh and that he's got a mean streak, and they'll do whatever they can to bring that to the front of voters minds when they when they go to the into the ballot booth next year.

ASHLYNNE:

So, Jason, is focusing on the opposition leader's perceived deficits as an election strategy, does that actually work anymore? Or do voters now expect, you know, more big picture and bold ideas around things like the economy, health, education, the environment.

JASON:

I think if you ask the average voter, what do you prefer, negative campaigning or positive campaigning? I think most people will say they don't like the negative side of campaigning. Unfortunately though, negative campaigning does work and it does cut through. And so I think what we're going to see is a blend of the two things. Labor will be emphasising a positive agenda, you know, the future made in Australia and other things like that. But they're also going to be going pretty hard on, on Peter Dutton himself. And the other thing about Peter Dutton is that he's perhaps not as well known as we kind of political insiders might think he is. I mean, Peter Dutton has been in Canberra, in federal parliament since the early 2000’s, and been a very senior minister for many of those years. And so for us political insiders, here inside the parliamentary triangle, we think he's a very known quantity. But the Labor strategist that I've been talking to this week, they think that people out there in the community, they don't know him that well, and what they do know of him, they don't like him that much. So I think we're going to see the Labor Party try to emphasise that as much as they can. And they're going to show us that kind of, the scary side of Peter Dutton and try to play it up as much as they can.

ASHLYNNE:

And finally, Jason, after speaking to Labor figures and pollsters all week, I wonder what your sense of how Labor's adapting to this new political reality that we're in. Like you've got a fractured electorate, minor parties, new generation of voters, a whole lot of change happening. Will this strategy that we're starting to see take shape now, will that work? Will it impress voters?

JASON:

It's hard to say, Ashlynne, whether it's going to work because obviously, it's been a long time since we've been in a situation like this. The two major parties have dominated politics basically since the 1930s. And we've never had such a cross-section of minor parties, independents, teals, you know, it's such a big presence in the parliament. It's going to be very difficult for either of the major parties to stop that, for, you know, in the foreseeable future. It's probably also worth mentioning that the last time we had a minority government, this was under Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, that it was actually quite a successful period of government. That the government was able to work very well with the cross-bench and that it wasn't the chaotic free for all that many people had feared.

So that might give voters confidence that, it's not going to be such a bad thing if we slip back into minority government. It's another kind of check on the political process. You know, that I think that idea appeals to a lot of voters

ASHLYNNE:

Jason, thanks so much for your time today.

JASON:

Ashlynne, absolute pleasure talking with you.

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SCOTT:

Also in the news today...

Rallies against gender-based violence over the weekend drew tens of thousands of people to the streets as part of a national day of action.

This year, it’s believed a woman has been murdered in a domestic violence incident every four days, an increase on last year, when a woman was killed each week.

And,

One of the UN’s top experts in removing mines and unexploded bombs has said that the level of wreckage and debris and undetonated explosives in Gaza right now, would take over a decade to clear.

Pehr Lodhammer, who was in charge of UN efforts to remove mines and explosives from Iraq, said there is 300kg of rubble for every square metre of land in Gaza and that with 10 percent of weapons likely failing to detonate, the rubble would be filled with explosives.

I’m Scott Mitchell, this is 7am. Ashlynne McGhee will be back with you tomorrow. Take care, bye.

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