Anthony Albanese could have spent Christmas at home with his fiance and his summer playing cricket.
But he overcame it and this week he packed his bags and traveled north for a week-long drill, preparing to run in an election against the wind.
There is a common view in Australian politics that an election campaign before Australia Day is doomed to failure: Australia has never held a federal election in January or February.
Who wants to worry about politicians when there are much more pressing issues like reserving a spot on the beach with your oversized cabana?
For Albanese, however, the fact that much of the country has gone offline works well.
Since Monday, Albanese has been traveling through northern Queensland, the NT and northern Western Australia (with a stop in Perth), rarely taking members of the press gallery with him on the trip.
This is not simply a campaign to shore up seats that could make or break the Labor election: the Prime Minister openly acknowledged while in Huge Bay that it was not an “objective seat” for Labor, any more than his visit to Kennedy was. which is indisputably Katter. country.
It was about preparing him for a better start to this election than the last.
In 2022, Albanese stumbled on the first day when he could not say what the current Reserve Bank interest rate or the national unemployment rate was, amid the debate over rising inflation.
The embarrassment-inducing gaffe was compounded by Albanese’s defensive rebuke to journalists moments earlier, when he insisted he would not participate in statistics “auctions” while boasting about his knowledge of gasoline prices. , bread and other household items that had been shot. Scott Morrison.
It cost him days of momentum in the election campaign.
There is no room for mistakes on the first day
Peter Dutton is reputed to be better at staying on message and dodging questions that could trip up other politicians.
But the prime minister, speaking from Dutton’s home state of Queensland, was keen to point out some of the opposition leader’s more relaxed moments, such as when he was open to localized tax rates.
Speaking from Labor’s at-risk Lingiari headquarters in the Northern Territory, he made sure to mention Dutton’s withdrawn promise to hold a second referendum on constitutional recognition.
And he criticized Dutton for answering fewer questions at press conferences with the Canberra press gallery over the past six months than Albanese had asked in a single day from Mt Isa.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is expected to hold a campaign-style rally in Melbourne this weekend. (AAP: Russell Freeman)
“He’s not going to give any tough press conference, he’s given a press conference in Canberra for many, many months. He did it at 1:50 pm because he knows that question time starts at 2:00 pm; answered two questions,” Albanese said.
“I will continue to be held accountable. “He needs to be held accountable for these thought bubbles.”
Albanese may be hoping that a little summer practice will ensure that it is his opponent, not him, who makes a mistake on the first day this time.
The prime minister has even less margin for error than usual in these elections.
In the run-up to 2022, a confident Albanese said Labor was “kicking into the wind” heading into that campaign.
This time, they will be kicking against it.
A global wave of anti-incumbent sentiment has toppled governments of all stripes or eroded their margins.
The coalition is a stone’s throw away
A loss of just three seats will force Labor to move to a minority government, although the path to a majority government is not easy for the Coalition, which would need to win 21 seats.
Analysis by pollster RedBridge after a redrawing of electorate boundaries at the end of the year suggests the chance of Labor being able to maintain a majority is close to zero.
They now predict the Coalition will be the largest bloc in parliament after this election, with between 64 and 78 seats to Labour’s 59 to 71 seats, according to year-end polls.
Even the prospect of that must be uncomfortable for a government that recently regained power after almost a decade of coalition government.
But it is not in Queensland, where Albanese has been rehearsing his speech, where the fight will be won or lost this time.
Indeed, Redbridge does not expect a single seat to change between Labor and the Coalition in that state (Labour, for its part, believes it at least has a chance in Leichhardt, where LNP veteran Warren Entsch is retiring).
The erosion of the Labor vote over the year has put the Coalition within striking distance, and its best improvements have come where the fight is expected to be fiercest, in suburban and outer regional seats, particularly in Victoria and New South Wales.
Almost all the seats that seem too close to call are around Sydney or Melbourne and their suburbs; seats like Reid in western Sydney, Dobell, Hunter and Robertson to the north of the city; like Chisholm and Aston in Melbourne, or McEwen to the north.
Early in his term, Peter Dutton made it clear that he would not focus on the old blue ribbon seats that turned to the teals as the Coalition’s route back into government.
If there is a way to make Albanese a one-term prime minister, it will most likely be through the suburbs and regional cities.
The cheeky Queenslander is expected to hold a campaign-style rally in Melbourne’s east on Sunday, where the Coalition wants to win back the Aston and Chisholm seats.
For Dutton, who said over the New Year that “there was no point in starting this season believing you can only win next season’s grand final”, it seems he doesn’t feel a rehearsal is necessary.
