Most people probably don’t remember that Peter Dutton was once health minister. So it was interesting when, three weeks ago, announcing his candidate for the Dunkley byelection, Anthony Albanese reminded reporters that Dutton had been labelled Australia’s worst health minister by doctors, and that he had tried to introduce fees for GP visits.
With the exception of Julie Bishop, most people might forget that Peter Dutton was once health minister. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The attack didn’t really register, and quite possibly won’t, but it gained something when, three weeks later, data suggested incentives introduced by the Albanese government had led to a small improvement in the bulk-billing rate.
Political attacks always work best when based on contrasts. When Dutton accuses Albanese of trying to “please everybody”, it works because it highlights the fact that Dutton is unconcerned about opinions. Labor’s attack on Dutton’s health record works far better when there is a sense Labor is actually doing something on health.
The most fundamental contrast in politics – one which seems barely to have occurred to Labor until this year – is between government and opposition. Governments can do things, oppositions can’t.
This year has seen a series of political reversals. Late last year, I listed three ways Dutton was besting Albanese. The first: he was willing to pick fights, where Albanese ducked. Already this year, Albanese has picked two fights, with the supermarkets and on tax cuts. The second was speed: Dutton was nimble, Albanese lumbered. This year, Albanese struck first on supermarkets; when Dutton sought to hit back, Labor responded fast. Just two weeks later, Labor switched topics to tax cuts, and now it was the Coalition’s turn to lumber clumsily: it would reverse Labor’s changes, no it wouldn’t, wait and see, we’ll wave them through.
Together, these two enabled the third reversal. Last year, Dutton drove debate. Now, with the tax cuts, Albanese has got the nation talking about what he wants, on his terms – something he had largely failed to do both as opposition leader and prime minister. Not skilled at sharp attacks or witty lines, he has two options. One is to avoid topics, as he did in the 2022 campaign, which has shaped his governing style since. As one old Labor colleague remarked to me, it has been a prime ministership marked by omission.
Until January, when he used the other option: dominating debate by making a splash. Last week I put this in political terms, saying Albanese had discovered the way to win an election was by doing things. But as my old colleague reminded me, it is more substantive than that. Prime ministers can take a little while to understand the immense forces at their disposal: the fact that they can act and intervene in millions of lives.
This is part of what Paul Keating meant with his old suggestion that governments should act like the Road Runner: “If you run fast enough, you burn the road up behind you – there is no road for anyone else.” When oppositions struggle, it is not because they don’t have access to the same size soapbox: it is because they literally can’t do anything. What we have seen in recent weeks is a prime minister beginning to grasp the opportunities and satisfactions of governing – and an opposition leader discovering the frustrations of opposition.
Albanese has finally come to the realisation that he’s in power
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04.02.2024
Most people probably don’t remember that Peter Dutton was once health minister. So it was interesting when, three weeks ago, announcing his candidate for the Dunkley byelection, Anthony Albanese reminded reporters that Dutton had been labelled Australia’s worst health minister by doctors, and that he had tried to introduce fees for GP visits.
With the exception of Julie Bishop, most people might forget that Peter Dutton was once health minister. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The attack didn’t really register, and quite possibly won’t, but it gained something when, three weeks later, data suggested incentives introduced by the Albanese government had led to a small improvement in the bulk-billing rate.
Political attacks always work best when based on contrasts. When Dutton accuses Albanese of trying to “please........
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