Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs – and his decision to subject most of them to a 90-day pause – sent the markets into a tailspin. But this has given rallying succour to incumbent governments world over. Canada’s Liberals are reaping the rewards. What’s happening in Australia?
Anthony Albanese’s Labor party has governed for three years. Albo, as he’s known in the press, is defending a slender one-seat majority in the House of Representatives. And until recently, his chances of doing that successfully were close to nil.
Until the second half of last year, Labor had the slimmest of leads. It’s a decent indicator that in the fight between them and the Liberals, voters want them, but it’s not a watertight guarantee of success. The affable Kim Beazley, when he led Labor, won the popular vote in 1998, but the geographic spread of John Howard’s supporters kept the (very conservative) Liberals in charge.
This chart tells it best: Labor trailed the Liberals as the autumn turned to winter, but with spring Labor came back. The about-turn is clear.
Trump likely has some part to play. Albo’s own ratings, according to YouGov, went from 36 per cent favourable in November last year, to 40 per cent days prior to Trump’s inauguration, to 44 per cent now. At the start of the year, he trailed his conservative opponent Peter Dutton; now he, erm, trumps him.
But it’s not just Trump – and nor would I say it’s mostly Trump. Much of the resurgence for Labor can be laid at the feet of Dutton’s Liberals.
The crises in the cost of living is the defining political theme of our time: it killed Conservative hopes in Britain, wrecked the centrists in France and killed Kamala in America. It was going to deny Albo a re-election win. Almost three-quarters of Australians can’t name a single thing the government has done to help them financially. Fifty-nine per cent of voters feel worse off today than when Labor first came to power. It was an obvious strategy for the Liberals to adopt: go hard on that and say nothing else. It was working: the polls showed the Liberals beating Labor on the economy easily. Voters said they were focusing on the right issues. On the vibes and the data, the situation looked fatal for Labor… until Dutton made an about-turn in strategy I would urge many to study for years to come.
In advance of the election announcement, Dutton’s precision-based attacks on government failure on the cost of living were abandoned in favour of a standard-issue culture war talking points: railing against a “woke agenda” in schools; banning of working from home; and the slashing of tens of thousands of public sector jobs (to what end?) came after.
And all those data points I just mentioned? Collapsed. Dutton’s favourables are now the worst they’ve ever been. The Liberal lead on the economy is now down from 17pts to 7pts. The lead on “the right issues” – down from 9pts to just 1pt.
In the West, the right has seen the (hit and miss) benefits of going hard on “woke”. In Australia, it looks to be very much a miss. Here is a country where the cost of living is king, and the Liberals, keen to win big rather than win easy, were desperate to broaden their attacks. And so they tacked right; it may have cost them the election.
[See more: Donald Trump’s gamble with your pension]
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