Albo’s Dodge Campaign
Anthony Albanese is grinning with confidence in this final week of the election campaign. He’s already talked about running for a third term in 2028. Poll after poll has Albanese and Labor ahead of Peter Dutton and the Coalition.
When Anthony Albanese was running for Prime Minister in 2022 he was gaffe a machine beginning on the first day of the campaign, caught out not knowing the interest rate or unemployment rate. We he became Prime Minister he spent a lot of time drinking beer. He sculled a beer during his attendance at a Gangs of Youth concert in August 2022. He spent 3 days drinking beer at the 2023 Australian Open while there was an alcohol fuelled crime crisis in Alice Springs. His social media strategy appeared to be more focused on making him seem hip and cool than actually competently running the country.
Albanese spent much of his political capital and $450 million on the failed Aboriginal voice referendum. Then there was his government’s release of 224 criminal illegal immigrants following the NZYQ High Court decision. Strict visa conditions were only imposed on these criminal illegals after a number of them reoffended and there was public outcry. Albanese and Labor were behind in the polls at the beginning of the year, where they again failed to defend and protect Australia Day.
But after calling the election after the budget, he’s become surprisingly slick on the campaign trail. Albanese’s main stumble of this campaign was his fall off the stage in the first week. But his insistence that he didn’t fall off the stage, that he only stepped back, despite the fact that it was captured on video for all to see. This was emblematic of Albanese’s campaign strategy this election: stick to the talking points, rinse and repeat what you want to convince the voters are facts, and dodge whenever questioned on the actual truth.
In 2022, he constantly mentioned being brought up in a housing commission flat by a single mother to portray himself to Australians as an authentic everyman. This election at almost every campaign stop Albanese go to line involved whipping out his medicare card and claiming that all you need to receive healthcare in Australia is your medicare card, not your credit card. He repeated his talking point during the first debate at the Sky News People’s forum when asked a question about gap fees at the doctors. This proved that under his government, you need both your medicare card and credit card when seeking healthcare.
When questioned by the media over his election spendathon with his own treasury projecting a decade of budget deficits, Albanese dodges and instead talks about his government’s two surpluses. Never mind that these surpluses were achieved due to high commodity prices. He’ll refuse to answer when electricity prices will go down, even though he promised they would reduce by $275 last election.
One of Albanese’s favourite dodges is instead to talk about Peter Dutton. Repeating the lie that the Liberals planned nuclear reactors will cost $600 billion and have to be funded by secret cuts to Medicare. Albo claims the Liberals are borrowing slogans from foreign campaigns but will dodge that he’s referring to Trump and MAGA.
Albanese’s biggest dodges have been from questions from members of the public. Questions from Laurence McIntyre from What’s News, Harrison McLean from Melbourne Freedom Rally and Daniel about immigration were palmed away by Albo and the questioners removed by his entoruage.
If Albanese wins a second term on Saturday, it won’t be because of good governance or economic management. The polls also show there is not much satisfaction with his government’s performance. The only metric that will have won Albanese the election is his tricky dodging of questions from the media and the public.
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