Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: The twenty twenty five federal election campaign has already begun,
Speaker 1: even if unofficially. While most Australians are still enjoying their summer,
Speaker 1: Anthony Alberisi and Peter Dunn are already in fight mode.
Speaker 1: For Labor, the stakes are high to secure a second term.
Speaker 1: They're hoping to reverse their losses in Queensland and regain
Speaker 1: popularity with an apathetic electorate. For the Coalition, it's about
Speaker 1: regaining ground and suburban seats and capitalizing on the government's
Speaker 1: self inflicted wounds. Today the Saturday Papers Associate editor Martin
Speaker 1: mackenzie Murray on the shadow campaign already underway and what
Speaker 1: Labour insiders say is the biggest threat to the government
Speaker 1: winning a second term. It's Monday, January thirteen. Mardy, Happy
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five and good morning. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: ask you about what you did this summer, but what
Speaker 1: the Prime Minister did. What's he been up to?
Speaker 2: Well, he didn't go to the sport typically over the holidays.
Speaker 2: There are public appearances. Who had a beautifully dramatic summer
Speaker 2: of cricket the best it was, but Albanizy was a
Speaker 2: little conspicuous by his absence, and that's for good reason.
Speaker 2: He's sending a message that he is committed to work
Speaker 2: in preparation for the election which is imminent. Ish where
Speaker 2: he has been is Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia,
Speaker 2: where he began his quick tour last week. He went
Speaker 2: up to Cannes. He went to the great mining town
Speaker 2: of Mount iSER where he announced about fifty million dollars
Speaker 2: for housing infrastructure. He then flew to a cattle station
Speaker 2: in the NTA and then onto Kannanara in West Australia's
Speaker 2: Kimberley region.
Speaker 3: Here but in this very vast state of Western Australia,
Speaker 3: we announced two hundred million dollars of additional funding for
Speaker 3: community infrastructure and for housing infrastructure to allow new builds
Speaker 3: in housing.
Speaker 2: So he was out there promising the development of Australia.
Speaker 2: When it was asked of him in a media conference
Speaker 2: in Queensland whether or not government expenditure, including social expenditure,
Speaker 2: had aggravated inflestion, he was sort of unapologetically emphatic about
Speaker 2: defending the government's commitment to social expenditure and you're.
Speaker 3: Going to have to pull some pretty fast leavers to
Speaker 3: convince the electorate. I believe that they're feeling better off
Speaker 3: because right now most people are feeling like they're going backwards.
Speaker 3: Prime Minister, well, under Labor we will continue to build
Speaker 3: Australia's future. Under the Coalition, will go backwards under Peter
Speaker 3: Dutton and things will cost more. Their only plan that
Speaker 3: they've put forward is for nuclear reactors.
Speaker 2: There's sort of this informal campaign at the moment where
Speaker 2: it's not officially stated, but effectively the government has mobilized
Speaker 2: into a campaign activity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's clearly in campaign mode. Is there a date
Speaker 1: that seems to be firming for when the election will be.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of speculation, and of course, like with
Speaker 2: this tactical coyness, a lot of people are guessing, but
Speaker 2: plenty within the government believe that early April is a
Speaker 2: good gas which would oblige a declaration in early March.
Speaker 1: What are the benefits from a government perspective for choosing
Speaker 1: an early April date?
Speaker 2: So the benefit what I've heard is Albaneze wouldn't mind
Speaker 2: a fortnight of Parliament that's due to be recalled in
Speaker 2: February and then the avoidance of a budget which is
Speaker 2: going to be quite unflattering to the government.
Speaker 1: Until the election is called, we're, like you said, in
Speaker 1: unofficial campaign mode, what are the early signs of what
Speaker 1: the campaign will actually be about.
Speaker 2: Well, this is the great question.
Speaker 1: What's the battlegrounds?
Speaker 2: So there's the electoral calculus, so perhaps i'll begin there. Sure,
Speaker 2: Queensland was a huge problem in the previous federal election,
Speaker 2: as it was pointed out to me by a campaigner
Speaker 2: labor campaigner. They described it as almost a landslide the
Speaker 2: previous election outside of Queensland. So they had already historic
Speaker 2: heights in South Australian Victoria, they improved upon them. They
Speaker 2: overwhelmed in Western Australia, a state typically difficult for labor,
Speaker 2: but Queensland they in fact went backwards and their represent
Speaker 2: federal representation there is the lowest it's been since nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six. So Queensland for labor is a focus.
Speaker 3: We built areas where I was yesterday, Carota Kara, just
Speaker 3: around the Gimpi area. We built and started work on
Speaker 3: the Townsville Ring Road, on the mackay Bypath, on all
Speaker 3: of these projects up and down the Bruce, but it
Speaker 3: has been neglected by the former government. We're addressing that.
Speaker 2: For the coalition. Victoria classically a more liberal states lower
Speaker 2: case our liberal one that's been difficult for the coalition.
Speaker 4: Well, my friends, is great to be back in Victoria.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much for being here today. I want
Speaker 4: to repeat what I've said.
Speaker 2: So Albanezy's busyness compelled Dutton's and last weekend he did
Speaker 2: something of his own informal campaign when he went and
Speaker 2: did an event in Melbourne Suburbs, which is an area
Speaker 2: that they're going to have to reclaim some seats.
Speaker 4: If we win Chisholm, we're a step closer to winning government,
Speaker 4: and if we win government, we can get Victoria in
Speaker 4: our country moving again.
Speaker 2: This is kind of the considerable feeling within the coalition
Speaker 2: is that they're going to have to take seats back
Speaker 2: from Labor that they lost in Melbourne Suburbs.
Speaker 1: You've been speaking to inside as people at various levels
Speaker 1: of the Labor Party, including people close to the PM.
Speaker 1: How are I feeling about their prospects.
Speaker 2: It depends who speaks to. So those close to the
Speaker 2: Prime Minister say he's very confident, bullish even about his
Speaker 2: prospects and the sort of the further away you go
Speaker 2: from the Prime Minister's office, I think, the greater the
Speaker 2: skepticism in the prime Minister's wisdom and confidence. There's been
Speaker 2: a lot of grumbling about Albanese's political judgment. That was
Speaker 2: the expensive coastal holiday home, which people were bitterly incredulous about.
Speaker 2: They thought that signified this very surprising absence of political judgment.
Speaker 2: And then of course there was the historic matter of
Speaker 2: Quantus and Albanesi when he was the Minister for Infrastructure
Speaker 2: and Transport, i e. The minister responsible for regulating Quantus,
Speaker 2: who was enjoying certain privileges. When that story came to light,
Speaker 2: Albanese became incredibly kind of bitterly defensive. Again, particularly those
Speaker 2: on the sort of the outskirts, those back benches, particularly
Speaker 2: those are marginal seats and who are becoming quite anxious
Speaker 2: about the polls, grumbled about the Prime Minister's kind of
Speaker 2: serial self harm. So it depends upon who you speak to.
Speaker 2: But certainly Albanesi is confident, and not just confident of returning,
Speaker 2: but confident of returning with a majority.
Speaker 1: After the break, Can the Labor Party ever win outright again?
Speaker 1: You been speaking with a lot of people inside labor,
Speaker 1: are longtime labor watchers, about how they're trying to reset
Speaker 1: their agenda this year, what are their chances of winning
Speaker 1: re election and how are they thinking about the parts
Speaker 1: of the country they'll do well and will they'll struggle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I imagined the electoral significance of Queensland for Labor.
Speaker 2: When you ask me how this might be or where
Speaker 2: it might be fought upon, then there's the thematic stuff,
Speaker 2: and I think this is the dispiriting thing. Certainly. The
Speaker 2: thing that was shared with me by one labor insider
Speaker 2: is that it augurs poorly any expectation we might have
Speaker 2: of a campaign that's fought on substance. And this is
Speaker 2: from a Labor insider. And the reason they say that
Speaker 2: is on one side, you have a weakened Prime Minister
Speaker 2: who seems kind of increasingly hapless, in articulate and charmless.
Speaker 2: The quite critical descriptions of the Prime Minister, who cannot
Speaker 2: sell an articulate and coherent vision for the country. On
Speaker 2: the other you have an opposition leader who has no
Speaker 2: vision whatsoever. And that's not to say he doesn't possess one.
Speaker 2: He certainly doesn't express it, nor has he needed to.
Speaker 2: There's been this kind of pragmatic restraint that Dutton has shown,
Speaker 2: and he's learned something from the previous election right where
Speaker 2: Albenzi could largely sit back, watch Morrison self harm and
Speaker 2: have the electorate not embrace Albanesi but in fact kind
Speaker 2: of reject Morrison. So on one side you have a
Speaker 2: prime minister who kind of offers no coherent, strong, articulate
Speaker 2: vision for the country, and on the other an alternative
Speaker 2: prime minister who needn't offer a vision whatsoever. And so
Speaker 2: what they're preempting with this is a campaign that becomes
Speaker 2: simply a highly personalized referendum on Albenzi.
Speaker 1: Is the government taking the threat from the rise of
Speaker 1: independence in the parliament? Seriously? What are they doing to
Speaker 1: mitigate that risk?
Speaker 2: It's a really really interesting time. We've been trending towards
Speaker 2: this place for a while now, and that place is
Speaker 2: a fairly evenly split electorate. So in the previous federal
Speaker 2: election it was split pretty evenly between Labor, the Coalition
Speaker 2: and Independence and Labor were euphoric obviously previous election. They
Speaker 2: returned to government after nearly a decade in opposition, but
Speaker 2: that euphoria concealed or disguised a really anemic primary vote.
Speaker 2: Labor received thirty two percent of the primary vote, about
Speaker 2: thirty four to thirty five percent the coalition and the
Speaker 2: remainder going to independence. So that is unprecedented. And so
Speaker 2: for all of the euphoria that Labor enjoyed, there was
Speaker 2: still the issue of that primary vote, and the Labor
Speaker 2: inside has said that he felt that the Labor was
Speaker 2: more vulnerable to this kind of erosion of the primary
Speaker 2: vote and this dissolution of traditional tribal loyalties that, as
Speaker 2: the historian Frank Bonjorno was talking to me about, has
Speaker 2: been eroding. Typically a bunch of kind of cultural allegiances.
Speaker 2: It might be to church, it might be to a union,
Speaker 2: it might be to a political party, it might be
Speaker 2: all of the above. These were allegiances that were in
Speaker 2: in the family and often inherited into generation l that's
Speaker 2: no longer true. We're kind of at a hinge point,
Speaker 2: I think. And the sum of this is the Labor
Speaker 2: insiders said they didn't want to be overly dramatic, but
Speaker 2: they did not think it implausible that the previous federal
Speaker 2: election was the last time that Labor would enjoy a majority,
Speaker 2: and when I put that to Frank Bonjoorno, I said,
Speaker 2: you know, this is this alarmist and you know he
Speaker 2: was emphatic, absolutely not. It's hardly controversial judgment to think
Speaker 2: that that might be the case, that Labor will struggle
Speaker 2: to form majority government into the future.
Speaker 1: You talked about the euphoria that Labor felt when they
Speaker 1: won and the big promises that Albanesi made. That not
Speaker 1: the first thing he mentioned was the referendum on the Voice.
Speaker 1: How much damage did the loss of the Voice referendum
Speaker 1: due to Albanesi's popularity.
Speaker 2: I think it was known at the time that it
Speaker 2: was rather damaging, but in retrospect it was more damaging
Speaker 2: than I think even I realized. He had pegged so
Speaker 2: much of himself to it and the reference It wasn't
Speaker 2: a minor loss. It was a rather kind of resounding loss,
Speaker 2: and I think we can look back now and see
Speaker 2: how crippling that was to the government's self conception, its credibility,
Speaker 2: and its optimism.
Speaker 1: This next question probably answers itself mighty, But if Alberanesi
Speaker 1: loses after just one turn, whose fault will there be?
Speaker 2: So one thing I've been talking about a lot this
Speaker 2: week with Labour insiders and also with the historian Frank Bonjorna.
Speaker 2: Is in this era of increasing fractiousness and increasing voter
Speaker 2: in patients, like the conventional wisdom was a first term
Speaker 2: government would not be voted out in Australia. One labor
Speaker 2: insider says to me, well, what's the value of conventional
Speaker 2: wisdom anymore? So when you say whose fault is it?
Speaker 2: How do you pass an era? So the context of
Speaker 2: Albanese leadership, which is an era of declining primary vote
Speaker 2: for the major parties, declining tribal allegiances, a political context
Speaker 2: that is more difficult to assert national mandate. You have
Speaker 2: this kind of larger context, So where do you separate
Speaker 2: that from the individual himself Albanesi? And it's a mixture, right,
Speaker 2: So I think you know when insiders complain about Albanese's inarticulacy,
Speaker 2: his haplessness post referendum, that kind of sudden evaporation of
Speaker 2: credibility and direction. They also had a very awkward inheritance
Speaker 2: of inflation as well, a problem that hadn't stricken Australia
Speaker 2: in decades. Where does one separate those two? And I
Speaker 2: think well, certainly for the labor inside it. There was
Speaker 2: some forgiveness for Albanesi given modern times, given the difficulty
Speaker 2: of governing, but also that he is perhaps the wrong man,
Speaker 2: the wrong man in the wrong time.
Speaker 1: It's going to be a big year, Marty. Thank you
Speaker 1: for coming and thank you for your time.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Also in the US today, special counsel Jack Smith, who
Speaker 1: led too unsuccessful federal cases against President elect Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: has resigned. The former war crimes prosecutor have pursued Trump
Speaker 1: on charges of trying to overturn the results of the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty election and mishandling classified documents. Mister Smith lost
Speaker 1: in both a district court and in the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: which was made up of three Trump appointed judges. His
Speaker 1: resignation was expected, and a synagogue and cities Inner West
Speaker 1: has been targeted with anti Semitic graffiti and an attempted
Speaker 1: arson attack. Police Commissioner Karen Webbs that the two people
Speaker 1: believe responsible used a clear liquid to light a fire
Speaker 1: at the synagogue, which distinguished itself in a matter of minutes.
Speaker 1: A number of red swashtickers have being spray painted at
Speaker 1: the front New South Wales Premier Chris Mins says the
Speaker 1: attack marks and escalation in anti Semitic crime in New
Speaker 1: South Wales. The investigation has now been taken over by
Speaker 1: counter terrorism police. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.