Campaigning PM dismisses ‘boring’ election timing questions

Welcome back to your weekly federal politics update, where Brett Worthington gets you up to speed on the happenings from Parliament House.

You could be forgiven for thinking the election campaign was well under way. 

Billions were being pledged, heads were being protected by fluorescent yellow hard hats and there was no shortage of orange high-vis vests as Anthony Albanese headed to Whyalla on Thursday.

He even found time for a prime ministerial selfie or two.

It didn’t hurt that Albanese, a man struggling to regain ground in published opinion polls, found himself basking in the glow of a Labor leader who can do little wrong in the eyes of South Australian voters.

A day earlier the PM found himself sitting down for a cuppa with a couple of constituents in his inner Sydney electorate, chatting away (as naturally as one can when you have camera crews surrounding your kitchen table) about the Reserve Bank’s rate cut. 

So busy was the PM this week that he didn’t even have time to wait to be asked a question before launching into his talking points on ABC Radio Melbourne.

RAF EPSTEIN: We’re joined by the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese. Good morning.
 
ALBANESE: G’day Raf. And indeed, inflation did go up right around the whole world. In some countries it hit double digits and so that’s placed in pressures. So, Australians, like other global citizens have had a tough period. We had COVID then we had global inflation. But yesterday, I think, was welcome news for millions of Australians. It certainly is the rate relief that Australians needed and that they deserve and that they’ve earned.

It was quite the offering from a man who insists on the orderly flow of question (just one) and answer when he holds a press conference. 

So with all this campaigning, albeit unofficial, when will Albanese rip the bandaid off and offer voters certainty?

“It’s so boring. It’s so boring… what’s boring is questions about election timing,” he told a reporter in Whyalla, who’d had the temerity to ask if the election would clash with Adelaide’s hosting of the AFL’s Gather Round. 

Albanese found himself in the safe Liberal seat (where Labor is yet to announce a candidate for the yet to be announced but very much underway federal election) to announce a $2.4 billion rescue package for Whyalla’s steelworks with SA Premier Peter Malinauskas.

Malinauskas has clearly been worried about the steelworks for some time, having first raised issues with the PM last year.

He’s called in the administrators and neither is ruling out nationalising the steelworks if a private operator isn’t willing to step in.

“We’re not supporting [Sanjeev] Gupta,” Malinauskas said.

“His debts are his debts to be accounted for. No one’s bailing him out. Far from it.”

This, the premier and PM insisted, was about ensuring Whyalla wasn’t wiped out, a turn of phrase that can send shivers down the spines of anyone who remembers former federal cabinet minister Craig Emerson’s ill-advised foray into singing. 

(Look, the song is cringe enough, but the hardest part to sit through is the awkward popping at the start). 

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So when is the election? Who knows.

But those who read the tea leaves on such things suggest Albanese visiting the governor-general this weekend is unlikely (increasing the odds for an April 5 or April 12 election).

If so, it’s a tough break for bureaucrats who’d hoped an election call would see next week’s Senate estimates cancelled.

Good luck finding someone to feel sorry for a bureaucrat though. 

Reserve Bank bookends campaigns 

This week’s Reserve Bank cut will see households with an average mortgage save about $100 a month. 

For a more specific calculation you can use the ABC’s repayment calculator, but odds are it’s going to be nowhere near close to offsetting the increases in payments in recent years. 

With Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and his merry Coalition repeatedly asking voters if they feel better off than they did three years ago, the PM and Treasurer Jim Chalmers have spent recent days barnstorming radio and TV seeking to convince voters that brighter days are ahead.

The PM will get another chance when he appears on the ABC’s Q&A on Monday night.

Three years ago, the first post-COVID rate increase came during Scott Morrison’s ill-fated re-election campaign. 

Albanese hopes the RBA’s decision to book-end the electoral cycle with its first rate cut since 2020 will go some way to easing voters pain.

But with energy bills and groceries showing few signs of easing (and the RBA pouring cold water on further rate cuts in the short term) Labor is flirting with offering more cost-of-living relief.

It’s little wonder to see why. Labor’s heartland, especially in outer suburban Melbourne, has been smashed by inflation and that never bodes well for a re-election.

Forecasting a political storm

Rate cut aside, the PM also caught a lucky break from the Bureau of Meteorology.

It was just a couple of weeks ago that Albanese’s staff found themselves in a mad dash to prevent their boss being photographed with a life-size Where’s Wally — the headlines of which would have written themselves.

Forecasting they could have an issue on their hands, the bureau got ahead of a possible issue and changed the name they’d be ascribing to the next cyclone.

You can only imagine the panic in the bureaucracy when it occurred to them that the next cyclone was due to be called Anthony before an election.

That sound you can hear is the Coalition’s collective disappointed sigh that the next cyclone will now be called Alfred.

Dutton calls out Trump

There have been no shortage of comparisons between Peter Dutton and Donald Trump.

Heck, even the Betoota Advocate has taken to calling the opposition leader Temu Trump.

But Dutton has found himself openly disagreeing with Trump, even more so than the PM has been willing to, in recent days.

Dutton had no qualms last week saying that if Trump imposed tariffs on Australia it would hurt the relationship between the two countries. 

He went further on Thursday saying Trump had “got it wrong” in accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of being a “dictator” and “doing a terrible job”.

One person offering no such words about Trump was the controversial billionaire Clive Palmer, a man with time on his hands as he awaits hitting the high seas in his long-anticipated Titanic II.

Having failed to have his former political vessel, the United Australia Party, refloated, Palmer has re-emerged as part of the Trumpet of Patriots (TOP), which he awkwardly called the Trumpet of Parrots at one point on Wednesday.

With it’s “Australia First” pitch to “Make Australia Great Again”, Palmer is bringing big TOP energy Down Under, with another yellow coloured party that he wouldn’t be disappointed if parallels were drawn between its name and Trump’s GOP.

Palmer spent $120 million on election campaign material last election and netted just a single seat in the Senate. 

He’s again willing to spend up big before new campaign spending laws come into force.

“I’m more than happy to spend my funds on something productive, defending the right of free speech. Whatever’s required to be spent it will be spent,” he said.

Talk about someone whose never been afraid to blow his own trumpet.

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