Speaker 1: I definitely did not anticipate Peter Dunnan's campaign being as
Speaker 1: all over the place as it has been.
Speaker 2: Sean Kelly has worked to elect two prime ministers. The
Speaker 2: art of campaigning is in his DNA.
Speaker 1: There were, of course, signs of a lack of preparation.
Speaker 3: Here is a dozen eggs, mister Dutton.
Speaker 1: Do you know how much they cost?
Speaker 3: About four dollars twenty No, you might.
Speaker 1: Get there was a lack of policy out there in
Speaker 1: the ether.
Speaker 3: Look, I think we've made a mistake in relation to
Speaker 3: this policy seruh.
Speaker 1: And I think there had been certainly intimations of failures
Speaker 1: around detail around costings before the campaign began.
Speaker 3: Where do you get this is a question where we
Speaker 3: find inefficiency, David, And it's not something you can.
Speaker 1: Do from But the thing about a campaign is you
Speaker 1: have a long time to prepare for it.
Speaker 2: Sean says. Dunton's lack of preparation is a feature, not
Speaker 2: a bug, and until now his loose approach has served
Speaker 2: him well. He's been the person willing to speak his
Speaker 2: mind without much thought, generate a headline and keep moving.
Speaker 2: But now under the scrutiny of an election campaign, the
Speaker 2: traits that powered his rise are working against him. From
Speaker 2: Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am today,
Speaker 2: former advisor to Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. Sean Kelly
Speaker 2: on the campaign that was and the result to come.
Speaker 2: It's election day, Sewan, thanks for joining me. You've been
Speaker 2: watching as Peter Dutton's campaign has unraveled. But talk to
Speaker 2: me about this final week. How do you think this
Speaker 2: last leg has gone for him?
Speaker 1: As an old colleague of mine remarked me the other day,
Speaker 1: it's like he's interrupting every mistake with another one. I
Speaker 1: mean this last few days you've had around their visa
Speaker 1: policy and working backpackers.
Speaker 3: What you just said, which is now good to have
Speaker 3: it clear that you won't touch their working holiday visas.
Speaker 3: We need a skilled workforce, David. But what the Labour
Speaker 3: Party is essentially done is brought in yoga teachers instead
Speaker 3: of construction workers.
Speaker 1: We've had Peter Dunn seeming to back away from earlier
Speaker 1: suggestions that he revised the curriculum of the fear that
Speaker 1: he had that school students were being indoctrinated. Now there
Speaker 1: are going to be no changes to the curriculum.
Speaker 3: I support young Australians being able to think freely, being
Speaker 3: able to assess what's before them, and not being told
Speaker 3: and indoctrinated with something that is the agenda of others.
Speaker 1: There was an attack on the Guardian and the ABC
Speaker 1: for being hate media, which was very Trumpian.
Speaker 3: Forget about what you've been tied by the ABC and
Speaker 3: the Guardian and the other hate media. Forget about that.
Speaker 3: Listen to what you're hearing on them.
Speaker 1: But then Jane Hume tried to walk it back and
Speaker 1: say it wasn't really a thing, but then Peter dudn't
Speaker 1: doubled down on it the next day.
Speaker 3: I just think they're so biased, and many of them
Speaker 3: just activists not journalists, that their position becomes counterproductive and
Speaker 3: they're playing to a particular audience, to a Green voter.
Speaker 1: You know, I wrote at the start of this week
Speaker 1: Peter Duncan needed the last week of his campaign to
Speaker 1: be strikingly different from the previous four. I have been
Speaker 1: stunned by the extent to which it has continued the
Speaker 1: tone of the previous four. I suppose I shouldn't be,
Speaker 1: because of course, this is what happens in politics. People
Speaker 1: get into habits they find it very difficult to break them.
Speaker 2: Tell me about the habits you've seen dunt in form
Speaker 2: over his career and how they're playing that now.
Speaker 1: I think because of the way Peter Dutdan presents, people
Speaker 1: tend to assume he's quite a disciplined guy. You know,
Speaker 1: he has this the bearing of the policeman that he
Speaker 1: once was. Often speaks in quite quiet and measured tones,
Speaker 1: even if the topic that he's discussing is is one
Speaker 1: that is one that sounds like it's provoking anger, and
Speaker 1: I think that gives you a sense that is this
Speaker 1: disciplined guy. Actually, the pattern in Peter Dudden's career going
Speaker 1: back to quite early on, is it he's pretty loose. He's
Speaker 1: pretty loose. In an interview, and I spoke to Lec Blaine,
Speaker 1: who wrote a quarterly I Say about Peter Dunne, and
Speaker 1: he made the point that the habits which helped Peter
Speaker 1: Dudden rise in the Liberal Party, being able to make
Speaker 1: kind of incendiary comments on right wing media, like a
Speaker 1: media that was friendly to him, helped him now are
Speaker 1: hurting him. If you look at things that have really
Speaker 1: propelled Peter Dunnan through the party, it has been that
Speaker 1: willingness to go just a little bit further than everybody else.
Speaker 1: Right wing shock chocks have loved having him on. They
Speaker 1: will say something to him and he is more than
Speaker 1: happy to repeat it back to them, and that then
Speaker 1: becomes the news. But that means that he often says
Speaker 1: things which he hasn't really considered deeply, and you can
Speaker 1: see that in this election. You know, he makes these
Speaker 1: comments about what the Indonesian president had said when that
Speaker 1: was absolutely not true, and suddenly it's consumed in a
Speaker 1: new cycle over that for a couple of days. And
Speaker 1: I think that also says something about the Liberal Party,
Speaker 1: you know, is that tendency actually what the party should
Speaker 1: be valuing, because depending on what happens tonight, arguably it
Speaker 1: hasn't helped them that much in the end.
Speaker 2: So if we do what Peter Dutton has asked us
Speaker 2: to do and think about the previous three years, I
Speaker 2: would suggest he would say his crowning moment during that
Speaker 2: past three years politically was the defeat of the referendum
Speaker 2: and the campaign that he, along with others run to
Speaker 2: defeat that referendum. So what lessons do you think he
Speaker 2: took from that experience?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Look, I think the voice is so fascinating because
Speaker 1: it was the biggest debate of this term and it
Speaker 1: has a lot of substantive importance. Obviously, the overall verdict
Speaker 1: has been that it hurt Anthony Albuneasy, that it gave
Speaker 1: voters the perception that he was distracted by a cultural
Speaker 1: issue at a time when he should have been focusing
Speaker 1: on cost of living. But I think I think in hindsight,
Speaker 1: what it really did was get Peter Dudden focused on
Speaker 1: a cultural issue when he could have been focused on
Speaker 1: cost of living, and when he could have been taking
Speaker 1: the opportunity to broaden his image. Because the real difficulty
Speaker 1: for Peter Dutden is that he since the very beginning
Speaker 1: of his career has presented as a kind of strong man.
Speaker 1: Now he obviously needed to soften that in various ways,
Speaker 1: and I think with the Voice he instead leaned into
Speaker 1: that image and that's all Australians heard from him for
Speaker 1: a very long time, and he took from that that
Speaker 1: that would work, that he could continue in that vein.
Speaker 1: But the problem in taking that lesson from a referendum
Speaker 1: is that we know that referendums don't succeed unless you
Speaker 1: have bipartisan support. So Peter Dutton had pretty much doomed
Speaker 1: the referendum from the moment he said no, the Coalition
Speaker 1: is not going to support this. Everything he did after
Speaker 1: that was really not that relevant. But I think he
Speaker 1: probably convinced himself that he won that campaign by going
Speaker 1: out there and campaigning and being a great campaigner, and
Speaker 1: by leaning into the vibes and Australians were sick of workness.
Speaker 1: And then Donald Trump came along and emphasized that view,
Speaker 1: validated it in the eyes of meaning in the coalition,
Speaker 1: and I suspect Peter Dutton and I think that meant
Speaker 1: that they headed into this campaign in exactly the wrong position.
Speaker 2: After the break the gift Trump gave Albanezi Sean, we've
Speaker 2: talked about Dutton, now let's talk about the Prime minister.
Speaker 2: How would you raide his campaign?
Speaker 1: Really pretty good, nothing dramatically impressive. He's been pretty sharp.
Speaker 1: He's been far on message than I think we've come
Speaker 1: to expect from the Prime Minister over the past couple
Speaker 1: of years. And that's been there since the start of
Speaker 1: the year. Very early on in the year, I said
Speaker 1: we were seeing a little bit of a new Anthony Albanesi.
Speaker 1: He is much sharper and I think what's really interesting
Speaker 1: about Labor and what I think has helped the Prime
Speaker 1: Minister on the campaign trail is for various reasons, they
Speaker 1: got out all of their policy well before the campaign.
Speaker 1: He hasn't had to think on his feet in a way.
Speaker 1: He's had to relentlessly prosecute the messages that Labor have
Speaker 1: been prosecuting for the last three years.
Speaker 2: And do you think that the fact that Alberanze, given
Speaker 2: the global events that have been happening around us, particularly
Speaker 2: over the last hundred days, so that sort of steady,
Speaker 2: non exciting type of leadership and campaigning has basically played
Speaker 2: into his hands.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think this is a really important fact.
Speaker 1: You know, we can say because it is true that
Speaker 1: Anthony Alberanesi has had a pretty good campaign, Peter Dudden
Speaker 1: has had a disastrously bad campaign. But in the end,
Speaker 1: there was one factor that shifted everything and it was
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, and specifically with Donald Trump the tariffs, it
Speaker 1: just unleashed a sense that the globe was in this
Speaker 1: hugely uncertain time and that then I think drove people
Speaker 1: back towards incumbents. We saw that, of course in Canada
Speaker 1: in this last week specifically, I think it helped left
Speaker 1: wing incumbents versus right wing insurgents like Peter Dudden. It
Speaker 1: hurt a lot of right wing candidates, and I think
Speaker 1: it definitely hurt Peter Dudden in this workmanlike approach that
Speaker 1: Albaneze has taken to the prime minship, which I think
Speaker 1: has been making a virtue of his weaknesses in some ways.
Speaker 1: It was also born out of a sense that politics
Speaker 1: had become too volatile in recent years. He used that
Speaker 1: term conflict fatigue, and I think that is some form
Speaker 1: of anticipation of the environment in which this campaign has
Speaker 1: ended up taking place. It was essentially alban Esy seeing
Speaker 1: that there was a lot of uncertainty in the electoral
Speaker 1: landscape and that voters would end up gravitating towards somebody
Speaker 1: who was just a little bit quiet, who had brought
Speaker 1: the tone of politics to a calmer place, and that
Speaker 1: is what has ended up helping him enormously these last
Speaker 1: five weeks.
Speaker 2: So if you think about Anthony Albanese's Prime ministership to date,
Speaker 2: what will you remember about it?
Speaker 1: Look, I have this theory about politics. It's a bit
Speaker 1: of a loose theory, but I call it the rule
Speaker 1: of three and it's what three things can you remember
Speaker 1: from the last term of government, and if two out
Speaker 1: of the three things you remember are positive, then that
Speaker 1: government is likely to be reelected. I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: you do remember from this term. Perhaps in later years
Speaker 1: you will remember the government in the end defeating inflation.
Speaker 1: You know, inflation seemed like a really negative thing for
Speaker 1: most of this term. I think it probably ends up
Speaker 1: seeming like a positive achievement of the Albanese government. The
Speaker 1: voice ends up being seen as a failure obviously, though
Speaker 1: perhaps you can surmise a future where people think, well,
Speaker 1: at least Albanzi was brave for attempting it, for listening
Speaker 1: to the requestsive indigenous people, and I really struggle to
Speaker 1: get to a third. And look, this is the thing
Speaker 1: about Urbanezi. He has been very explicit from very early
Speaker 1: on that his approach is to go gradually, is to
Speaker 1: not get people off side, It is to not pick
Speaker 1: fights and to build change over time. But then there
Speaker 1: are also long building crises, and I think this is
Speaker 1: the place Australia finds itself in at the moment. We
Speaker 1: have education standards which have been declining for a long time.
Speaker 3: Now we have a.
Speaker 1: School system, which, rather than shrinking inequality between students, widens
Speaker 1: the learning gap between students. We have a healthcare system
Speaker 1: which is struggling to get enough GPS, which we know
Speaker 1: bulk building has been under pressure. We have age care
Speaker 1: in trouble, we have childcare standards in trouble. Across the
Speaker 1: entire life cycle, our standard of living in this country
Speaker 1: is facing huge threats. Now those are often slow building crises,
Speaker 1: doesn't make them less like crisis. And I think in
Speaker 1: a way, the test of this government is going to
Speaker 1: end up being has it acted dramatically enough fast enough
Speaker 1: to turn those problems around by the time it has
Speaker 1: to hand over power to somebody else.
Speaker 2: And finally, seawn Y knew this question was coming, who
Speaker 2: is going to win and why? I'll add on top
Speaker 2: of that, what do you expect the new parliament to
Speaker 2: look like?
Speaker 1: Broadly, Look, I really don't know. I really don't know.
Speaker 1: First up, any election can go anyway. Things can always
Speaker 1: shift in ways that people don't expect. People keep pointing
Speaker 1: back towards twenty nineteen and the fact that Bill Shorten
Speaker 1: unexpectedly lost. I suspect that this is not like that
Speaker 1: for the simple reason the polls were shifting back towards
Speaker 1: the Coalition for a very long time before that election.
Speaker 1: The final polls didn't pick up the extent of that,
Speaker 1: but the trend was there. In this election, the trend
Speaker 1: has been towards Labor. I think it would take something
Speaker 1: really out of the box for Peter Dudden to win tonight,
Speaker 1: but of course it's possible. It will be fascinating if
Speaker 1: Labor do end up in minority. We see the Teals
Speaker 1: trying to prove that they can win in an environment
Speaker 1: without Scott Morrison and actually have an agenda of their
Speaker 1: own that is not just an absence of what the
Speaker 1: Coalition is doing. And we have the Greens really trying
Speaker 1: to be the party of renters, shifting a little bit
Speaker 1: further towards economic issues and away from their traditional ground
Speaker 1: of climate environment issues. So whatever the actual result is tonight,
Speaker 1: each of the parties is behaving in very very different
Speaker 1: ways than what we are used to and of course
Speaker 1: the Teals in that environment are still pretty new, So
Speaker 1: I think whatever happens tonight, we will see a new
Speaker 1: landscape because some of those experiments will continue to go
Speaker 1: forward if they're being successful, and the failed ones, you know,
Speaker 1: those parties will have to go back to the drawing board.
Speaker 2: Saw never a dull moment. Thanks for coming in and
Speaker 2: speaking of it.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Seven Am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and
Speaker 2: a Saturday paper. It's made by Atticus Basto, Shane Anderson,
Speaker 2: Christen Gate, Eric Jensen, Ruby Jones, Sarah mcphe, Travis Evans,
Speaker 2: Sultan Facho and me Daniel James. Our theme music is
Speaker 2: by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Bordeo and Tonight,
Speaker 2: I'm heading to the Labor Party's Election Night party and
Speaker 2: I'll have a full report for you first thing in
Speaker 2: the morning. See you then,