ELECTION 2025 – THE PARTIES, THE ISSUES, THE PROSPECTS – DARRIN BARNETT

With just three weeks of campaigning to go, The Sydney Institute invited The Hon Pru Goward, Director, Bespoken Consulting and former Minister for Housing and Darrin Barnett, media and government Relations professional former Labor ministerial advisor to lead a discussion on the issues and party prospects in the 2025 federal election. As the Trump administration provoked global financial turmoil, Pru Goward and Darrin Barnett made their assessments on Monday 7 April 2025 at The Sydney Institute.

ELECTION 2025 – THE PARTIES, THE ISSUES, THE PROSPECTS

DARRIN BARNETT

Kerry Packer famously quipped: “You only get one Alan Bond in your lifetime, and I’ve had mine,” after selling the Nine Network to Bond in 1987, and then buying it back three years later for a quarter of the price.It wouldn’t surprise me if someone makes a memorable quote in a month’s time: “You only get one Donald Trump in your lifetime, and Anthony Albanese just had his.”

It’s no secret that the government was struggling at the end of last year. Stubbornly high inflation, a bunch of interest rate rises and supply chain problems off the back of COVID had resulted in a cost-of-living crisis. A failed referendum on The Voice merely added to the perception that Albanese had struggled to get much done in his three years in office. All Peter Dutton needed to do was to continue to reinforce one simple message: “Were you better off three years ago?”

But fast forward the clock to today and a resurgent Albanese is now within sight of majority government according to the Sydney Morning Herald today:

Majority government could be within reach for Anthony Albanese as Labor opens up its lead over the Coalition after week one of the federal election campaign. With just weeks until Australians take to the ballot boxes, Labor is leading the Coalition 52 to 48 per cent on a two-party preferred basis, the latest Newspoll shows. The result is a percentage point improvement for Labor since the previous Newspoll was published on March 30.

I’m not sure that majority government will happen but I think Albanese has a much better chance of getting to the 72 seats that either Labor or the Coalition need to achieve to put them in a viable position to try to wrangle the crossbench to form government.

The likelihood of minority government is currently reflected in both opinion polls and betting markets – neither a reliable predictor – but as the late, great political journalist (albeit at state level) Paul Mullins told me many times: “Politics is about two things: perception and momentum.” Right now, Albanese looks like a Prime Minister and Treasurer Jim Chalmers looks like he is in control – particularly given his experience in Wayne Swan’s office during the GFC.

Peter Dutton, on the other hand, looks rattled. He has been forced to backtrack from his plans to cut public service jobs due to a work-from-home backlash and now has a $7billion budget black hole on his hands. As we head towards Easter and ANZAC Day, time is not on the Opposition Leader’s side and the chaos out of the United States isn’t helping. US President Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” Reciprocal Tariff announcement late last week has already sent shock waves through our share market and money markets. The following lines from The Sydney Morning Herald show the extent of the panic:

More than $160bn has been wiped off the Australian share market this morning as fears of a full-blown trade war grip investors. The Australian dollar has fallen to its lowest level since Covid against the US dollar as global markets sell off against the prospects of a global recession. One dollar was buying just 60 US cents on Monday morning after falling to a low of 59.64, its lowest point since April 2020. It was worth 64 US cents on Wednesday, hours before US president Donald Trump set markets reeling with his tariff announcement.

Today also saw the release of the Pre-election Fiscal Outlook, or PEFO. PEFO also showed the growing unease among Treasury officials that President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs will shock global trade and growth. The documents state:

The increase in tariffs announced over the past few days have been more significant than expected. The potential magnitude and persistence of the economic effects of these announcements has resulted in greater-than-usual uncertainty around the outlook.

Voters often favour incumbents during a crisis and Albanese immediately jumped on the bandwagon, expressing concern for jobs and the economy – and the Labor stronghold of superannuation in particular. Chalmers, on the other hand, pointed out the risk of changing the government, but also flagged the possibility of future rate cuts: “Australia is better placed and better prepared than our peers,” he said. “This would be the worst time to risk a change of government, to a Coalition government, which would make wages lower, taxes higher, and who has secret cuts to pay for nuclear reactors.” The Treasurer said the impact of Australia’s 10 per cent tariffs should be “manageable” but noted markets were now expecting an interest rate at the next RBA meeting.

Of course, the Treasurer is not in control of such things, merely a commentator… “I don’t predict or pre-empt those decisions, but the market is certainly now expecting multiple interest rate cuts over the course of the year, beginning in May.”

The big loser out of Trump’s tariff announcement and general chaos is Peter Dutton. Fairly or not, he most closely resembles the American President and given his voter base, has more to lose. Dutton’s problem is simply that in order to win the election, he needs to head to the political centre. Centrists, however, think he is too much like Trump. His hard right voter base, on the other hand, see any drift to the centre as abandonment, if not downright betrayal. So they are increasingly looking to park their vote elsewhere, further to the right.

Clive Palmer, who has played a significant role in recent elections, may have gone too far towards the US President with his Trumpet of Patriots. As a result, votes appear to be leaking from both Dutton and Palmer to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

This may not mean a great deal in the lower house but could be significant in the Senate.

The Coalition had a particularly strong result in the 2019 half-Senate election and multiple Senate spots could be up for grabs for the hard right. Even Jacqui Lambie, the Tasmanian firebrand who is this time also running candidates in New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia may be a beneficiary. Jacqui had this to say in today’s Herald Sun and it’s instructive on where things are at:

Senator Lambie says the cost of living crisis and a deep distrust of politicians will be the biggest issues of the election campaign. She said she reckoned giving the Albanese government a second term would likely deliver stability Australia needed amid global chaos brought by the US re-electing Donald Trump. I would feel more confident in seeing whether these guys [ALP] have got what it takes in the next three years than going back from scratch rather than going back to an old party again and then restarting. I just don’t think the country can afford that instability. You wanna play Trump, you’ve got to play right back at him and there needs to be repercussions for what he’s done to Australia (but) both of our leaders do not have the courage to do that.

Herein lies the problem for Dutton – he cannot play the strong man or he looks like Trump and if he drifts too far to the centre, conservatives will park their vote elsewhere as a protest. The Opposition Leader cannot read straight from the Coalition election playbook that has proved so successful over the past two decades This doesn’t even bring into play the Teals, to whom he hasn’t paid any real attention to at all – at least not in a policy sense.

Rejecting tax cuts and incentivising the use of fossil fuels via a petrol excise reduction won’t endear him to the wealthy, socially progressive seats where the Teals have taken hold. The Coalition strong suits of national security and economic management won’t work like they normally do during a domestic election campaign. As already mentioned, he already has a $7 billion black hole entirely of his own making. And everything he does on immigration and national security will be seen as Trump-lite and voters don’t seem to like it.

At the end of last year, there was a possibility of the Opposition Leader identifying himself as a change maker. But now he is hamstrung and bleeds votes to the left and the right with every policy announcement. Much like Bill Shorten in 2019, Dutton and Trump are the story, every day. This appears unlikely to change and the opportunity to run a change campaign has slipped into the ether. And the use of the so-called culture wars – for instance Dutton saying he won’t stand behind the Aboriginal flag or invoking a DOGE-style attack on the public service are serving as a distraction rather than a vote winner.

How did it go so wrong for Dutton? At the end of last year, Dutton was in poll position. He had done a very effective job of discrediting the Prime Minister, whether through the Voice referendum or highlighting cost-of-living pressures. The following trends had been noted in published and private polling:

• The Coalition was polling well in outer-suburbia
• The Coalition was performing well among voters born overseas and speaking a language other than English at home.
• Labor had lost the gender vote advantage that it had in 2022.
• Labor was, however, holding its advantage among 18-34s and renters.
• Voters wanted a plan on housing and cost of living.
• Almost half of the electorate believed Australia was on the wrong track – particularly amongst women.
• Cost-of-living anxieties continued to dominate the personal issues agenda – grocery prices, energy bills and gas bills the main concerns.
• Over 60 per cent of Labor voters nominated cost-of-living as the most influential issue on voting intention.
• Close to one third of voters said they were spending more than 40 per cent of their household income on rent or mortgage.
• Nearly half said they were spending more than 30 per cent of their household income on rent or mortgage.
• More than half believed their future standard of living will be worse than pre-COVID, while just 20 per cent believed it will be better.
• “Disappointed” and “frustrated” were the two main words used to describe the landscape.
• Unusually, close to half of the vote intention was soft.
• More than one third of the electorate felt their values don’t align with Labor or Coalition.
• Nearly one quarter don’t believe they have shared values with any of the parties, including Greens and Teals.
• Nearly one third those who voted Labor in 2022 don’t believe the Labor Party shares their values.
• This number was around 20 per cent for the Coalition.
• Dutton ready for government measurement had improved from net –20 in November 2023 to net +1 in November 2024.
• Just 31 per cent of voters believed they were better off than they were two and a half years ago.

There was a mood for change but was there really a choice?

Paul Kelly in The Australian in March put it this way:

The media, naturally, is obsessed by the competition between Albanese and Dutton. Yet this misses the point entirely. Neither offers an adequate agenda. The campaign shapes as a contest between two highly unsatisfactory offerings. This is so obvious, yet we seem incapable of recognising the obvious and demanding something better. Don’t fall for the myth this election is a great battle of ideology and ideas. The rhetorical differences are huge and the policy differences are minor, energy aside. Don’t expect the Coalition to run on big tax reform or a bold winding back of Labor’s workplace laws.

In the same article, economist Chris Richardson said:

We, as an electorate, have asked our politicians to avoid challenging us. It is becoming easier to become prime minister but much harder to do something as prime minister. In this election the two sides seem to be agreeing on mediocrity. In terms of the forward estimates I think they are agreeing on more than 99 per cent of the budget. That’s an acceptance of a status quo that is failing. We have stopped fighting harder for our future. And our politicians have stopped challenging us.

Campaign tactics

As previously discussed, the Coalition’s strong suits are national security (including Defence) and a strong economy. These are considered by many insiders as tier one issues and a heavy concentration on them often results in a Coalition victory. Labor’s strongholds have traditionally been health, education and to some extent industrial & workplace relations, plus the recent addition of climate change. These are often seen as tier two, except for health and in particular, Medicare.

In 2016, the infamous Mediscare campaign almost got Labor over the line. Medicare is such a strong issue for Labor that it has made protecting universal healthcare front and centre of this campaign. Peter Dutton was Health Minister when Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey sought to introduce a co-payment via their infamous 2014 Budget. Albanese will point this out countless times as we head towards election day, while more urgent care clinics plus a fear campaign on what the Trump administration might do to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme are also proving effective. Canada also has a scheme similar to the PBS and with their election due to take place before ours, a win against the odds for the incumbent progressive government would be welcomed by Albanese.

The prospect of more interest rate cuts will help Labor, despite the fact there have been several rate rises under its watch. So, while the ducks continue to line up for the Prime Minister, Dutton’s campaign has been faltering.

The issues the Opposition Leader wanted to focus on are either deemed too Trumpian or simply not cutting through. The ultimate result may well be that by running full term, a confluence of events will see Albanese earn another three years in the Lodge. The main question now seems to be whether he can govern on his own or needs minor parties and Independents to provide confidence and supply.

Albanese would clearly prefer the former but the Australian public may hold a different view. And as we all know, the voters always get it right on election day.