In a Quagmire of His Own Making

It’s a fundamental tenet of communications that a good rep takes a long time and hard work to build, while a negative perception can build overnight and be near impossible to shake. For politicians especially, there’s a point at which negative perceptions become all-but fixed in the minds of voters.

At that point, they’re pretty much screwed. One of the few to survive this in recent decades was John Howard. In his second term, Howard was seen, as a leaked memo from his party’s president warned, as “mean, tricky, and out of touch”.

But Howard was a wily and capable politician. He went on to win two more elections, becoming Australia’s longest-serving PM in uninterrupted terms (Robert Menzies was cumulatively PM for longer, but spread over two separate terms).

Anthony Albanese is not a wily and capable politician.

The millstone of negative perception consequently is weighing heavier around his political neck. No matter what he tries. Tax cuts, power bill rebates… none of it can buy Albo any love.

Lamenting his lot on the Australian National University’s Democracy Sausage podcast last week, Albanese claimed he was being hounded by the “right-wing media”.

How to win media friends and influence journalists, Albanese-style.

That anyone could question Albanese’s competence astounds me. To paraphrase Harold Macmillan, we have never had it so good, aside from skyrocketing power bills, a cost-of-living calamity, rampant anti-Semitism, an endemic housing crisis, a slowing economy, rising inflation, a record number of Australians suffering mortgage stress, a return to protectionism, and a looming energy catastrophe. A doddle really.

Someone needs to tell Albanese that, when you’re sinking in the quicksand of negativity, shouting and screeching at everyone else is only going to drag you under faster.

Let’s begin with looking at what Albanese has said about his opponent since becoming Prime Minister. He will have you know the Opposition Leader is a very negative person, for example: “Peter Dutton can continue to wallow in his negativity; I think Australians will judge him for that” […]

Even listening to Dutton is dangerous, says Albanese, for he is “trying to drag you into his politics of negativity and conflict”. As for whatever Dutton puts up in the way of policy, it is a “really negative plan”.

And if there is one thing Albanese cannot abide, it is negativity. “Peter Dutton … only has negativity to offer the Australian people,” he says. “He has just offered negativity and saying ‘no’.” When people listen to Dutton, “what they’ll see is just this wave of negativity and fear campaigns”. It is a case of “another day, another bit of negativity from Peter Dutton” […]

As the Prime Minister said in parliament, Dutton “gave us Jack Nicholson in The Shining – smashing through the walls, with his clear hatred – full of negativity”.

The Australian

Albanese is the classic drowning man: panicking and flailing wildly.

This sort of stuff might play to the Canberra peanut gallery and the taxpayer-funded luvvies in Ultimo, but it isn’t going to wash with voters in the vast suburban sprawl – sprawling ever-further, thanks to unchecked mass migration.

Outside of Albo’s little bubble, people are focused on not just out-of-control mass migration, but housing, cost of living, energy, crime… Like him or not, at least Peter Dutton is talking about this stuff, rather than boutique leftist nonsense, and offering solutions. Even if the left hate them.

Albo ought to just shut up and sink quietly.