AUSTRALIAN POLITICS IN THE LEAD UP TO THE 2025 ELECTION – JOE HILDEBRAND

As Australians waited to find out whether the prime minister would call an early federal election in 2025 or go his full term till May, opinions varied on what the outcome of that election might be. In this atmosphere, The Sydney Institute asked two younger contributors to the public debate to offer their sense of where politics might be heading in the lead up to any election. On Wednesday 12 February 2025, Joe Hildebrand, Australian journalist and TV show host, joined Freya Leach, Director of the Centre for Youth Policy at the Menzies Research Centre to put their views to The Sydney Institute on the state of the political parties for the federal election in 2025. Joe Hildebrand’s paper is taken from an edited transcript of his speech on the night.

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS IN THE LEAD UP TO THE 2025 ELECTION

JOE HILDEBRAND

It’s lovely to be here. Obviously, 2025 is a huge year in politics. As Gerard is fond of saying, it’s always unwise to make predictions in politics, especially about the future, but I think we can certainly lay out the land and see the sort of terrain over which the election, whenever it’s called, is going to be fought.

We’ll see two very different styles from Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese. Obviously, Albo is instinctively, and I think intellectually, more of a tactician than a strategist. He’s someone who is used to getting things done. He is someone who is used to winning battles rather than planning wars. And so you will see, from his and Labor’s point of view – and you’re starting to see a bit of it already – seat by seat urban warfare. If anyone is in an electorate on less than five per cent and you want a swimming pool, now is the time to ask. I promise you, you will get one. Whereas, obviously, Peter Dutton is clearly going for more of a broader, bigger, the country is broken approach. The country is heading in the wrong direction. A W B Yeats, kind of things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. We’re spinning into oblivion and it’s all Albo’s fault.

The other issue, that will loom very large, is cost of living; it is obviously the number one thing. Ironically, that is the one thing that neither side can really do much about. Obviously, Albo blamed all of it on Scott Morrison when he was Opposition leader, and he was wrong. But then, of course, the Opposition now is blaming everything on Albo, and they’re wrong too.

Now, getting the 12 interest rate rises was bad luck. Getting two budget surpluses was good luck. And, apparently, that was because of fantastic management by treasurer Jim Chalmers. But if you’re going to take credit for what you get accidentally, you have to wear the blame for what happens, despite you, as well.

The other big thing will, of course, be anti-Semitism in the community, and the impact that this could have on the result. The Greens completely dived in Prahran in the Victorian State by-election on the weekend. The result, given the Greens’ stand on Palestine, does show that there is a huge amount of community concern around anti-Semitism. The loudest members of the community are often extremely anti-Israel and pro-Palestine. But the vast majority of people just put their heads down. They don’t say a word, but they are, I think, very uncomfortable. The prevailing view is, as I see it, we don’t care what happens over there and we don’t know what your problem is with each other but just don’t bring it over here. We do not do this here. We do not want to see it here. We don’t care whose side you’re on. We don’t care who started it or who killed who. Whatever is happening here, whoever is doing the bad stuff here, that’s what we care about. Overwhelmingly, the perception is that it’s Jewish people who are being far more targeted here than anyone else. A pretty accurate perception, obviously.

I’m not sure how it will be felt across the board, but certainly Dutton, on that kind of value stuff, if you like, can afford to be much more unequivocal, much more overtly pro-Israel. Meanwhile, Labor is constrained. And it is a fact that, aside from everything else, Dutton and the Coalition do not rely on a single Muslim vote. The seats that have the largest Muslim population are simply just not in play for the Coalition at all. For all that, I don’t believe the Muslim Votes, or Muslim Voice, will be an electoral threat to Labor in those seats of high Muslim populations. But it is just one of those things., it’s not that that’s going to beat them.

The other, additionally complicating, factor is the right of the Labor Party. Far more sensible and pragmatic, the right side of the party is also the faction that represents the real working-class seats. In other words, the people that Labor should be representing. These are working people in the outer suburbs, overwhelmingly, these days, often migrant, multicultural communities. They are all Labor heartland where the right is. The problem is that this is also where those large Muslim populations are. This is a worry for Albanese. The right includes the sort of people who would normally be in the centre of Australian politics, who would usually be in the Labor friends of Israel. Bob Hawke was front and centre as an absolute stalwart in support of Israel. Labor right people today are the ones that now have to worry about Muslim votes in their seats.

That makes it difficult for them, and it’s also probably one of the reasons why Labor thinks it’s probably better and easier to run a sort of seat by seat, local issue-based campaign. So, you’ll be talking about one thing in Watson and another thing in Tangney, matters that will be different and hopefully not too contradictory. I suppose you’ve got the Labor Party going through what the Coalition is also experiencing with having to beat off the Teals while also reflecting robust conservative social values in the outer suburbs that they’re hoping to win. Labor also has its own problem with the Greens and having to think about inner-city seats. In Brisbane at the 2022 election, Labor thought it was going to win two or three easily and ended up losing one to the Greens.

Albanese is nothing if not an optimistic bloke. His confidence is both his best asset and his worst liability. But he is confident that he will win government, and confident that, perhaps, he may even scrape in with a majority. They think they might pick up two out of the three seats in Brisbane that went to the Greens with Ryan going to the Libs. Max Chandler-Mather is in all sorts of trouble. And so that’s another challenge for Labor as well. So, you’ve got the Muslim Votes and you’ve then got the Greens.

We all know that Labor relies on Greens preferences to get elected. That’s no secret. But Labor hates the Greens at the same time, and the animosity has never been higher. It is personal as well with Albanese, because they blockaded his electorate office and have tried to steal his job at every election. They never get very far but when Albanese retires that may be a different story. Labor is sort of living with a monkey on its back, if you like. And so that will be another challenge. In the Queensland State election, and it may also happen in the federal election, Labor had the choice of giving second preferences on how-to-vote cards not to the Greens but to the Legalise Cannabis Party. The party was started by Jeremy Buckingham, who is an ex-Green who has positioned his party as being sort of libertarian, neither left nor right, in favour of freedom and targeting demographics like tradies, who prefer to have a smoke instead of a beer after work.

Will most people think about that? I’m not sure. Again, most people will be thinking about cost of living, their own hip pocket, fears in some sectors about safety in the community, and Australia’s social fabric disintegrating. Labor will be in a very practical and almost transparently transactional way, saying, “Look, we’re going to give you this. We’re going to do this for you. Here’s your childcare, here’s your free TAFE; is 300 bucks off your bill not enough? We’ll make it 400, whatever.”

Labor still relies too much on framing Peter Dutton as the devil. People do not think that. And just because Labor and their mates think that, does not mean the rest of the community do. That’s the sort of insularity that saw Kamala Harris go down and saw the Voice go down. Relying on the people who say, “But everyone I knew was voting for it.” or “No one I knew was voting for Donald Trump. They all hate him.” Labor overstates that sort of perspective.

However, I do also think there is a risk in Peter Dutton becoming too Trump-like. So, when he said, “I fully endorse Trump’s plan to buy the Gaza Strip and turn it into luxury beachside condos,” not even Trump actually supports that. People think, will he or won’t he? You know, it’s classic madman diplomacy. It works in the US, where you have to get out the vote and you’re already politically activated by the time you get to the ballot box. It doesn’t work so much in Australia where the most apathetic voters end up determining who is in the government, not the ones who are most driven by ideological red meat issues. It might make the Dutton base love him even more, and it will have my beloved colleagues at Sky jumping up and supporting it. But what happens to women voters? What happens to any hope of recapturing the Teal seats?

As for prime ministerial leadership, I think the electorate is very, very frustrated at Anthony Albanese. But I don’t think it hates him and there is not the visceral level of hatred as there was with Scott Morrison which came with an ugliness in those Teal seats. People think that Albo has been a bit slow or a bit useless or hasn’t quite stepped up to the mark. But I think the sentiment is they want him to do better and to improve, rather than to just change ship. Albanese is aware he needs to show that he has taken the middle ground. The problem is he does not have a lot of experience in occupying the middle ground. So, who knows what we might see in the election outcome.