The contours of the race are becoming clearer: this election is being driven by fear.
The early skirmishes are done with. The artillery is in play. A numbing bombardment of negative messaging.
“Stop frightening pensioners!” demanded Scott Morrison on Tuesday, as Labor stepped up its claims of a secret Coalition plan to extend the cashless debit card to aged pensioners.
Also known as the Indue card after the private company that administers it, the card is currently used in a series of trials where “high levels of welfare dependence coexist with high levels of social harm”.
Such recipients cannot use the cards for gambling or liquor, or generally to withdraw cash.
In practice, they can’t use them in secondhand stores, either.
Despite an auditor general’s finding that the card has delivered no demonstrable “reduction in social harm”, the government has more than flirted with the idea of using the card more widely. This week, however, it ruled out any application to the age pension.
“It’s an out-and-out disgusting lie,” said Morrison.
But the prime minister is an expert at scaring pensioners. He probably owes his government to it.
The Australian National University’s 2019 Election Study found the largest reason Labor voters gave for switching to the Coalition at the last election was the economy and “taxation”.
That issue alone generated a 4.5% swing, overwhelming the slight shift from the Coalition to Labor by voters citing the environment (1.5%) or Medicare (1.0%) as their reason for doing so.
In 2019, Morrison ran a relentless scare campaign about Labor’s “retiree tax” based on Bill Shorten’s promised reforms to franking credits. In the New South Wales seat of Cowper, a retirement belt between Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour with on average some of the oldest and poorest voters in the country, Morrison achieved twice the swing of the national average.
So he can expect no mercy from Labor on its cashless pension card campaign. “We will not be stepping back from this important issue,” confirmed shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers on Monday.
Labor knows there are no electoral virtues in being pure. Its 2016 “Mediscare” campaign, warning of a fictional Coalition plan to privatise public health, brought Malcolm Turnbull to the very edge of oblivion and guaranteed Shorten a second tilt.
So pick your poison. Pensions, the NDIS, Medicare, open borders, Chinese Reds under Labor beds … it’s all getting a run.
But if fear works, what is the cost?
The ANU study shows Australians’ “satisfaction with democracy” plunged from 86% in 2007 when Kevin Rudd was elected, to just 59% by the time of Morrison’s victory in 2019.
An era of party coups and spectacularly abandoned promises has eroded trust at a time when everything negative, from misremembered jobless figures to unwanted handshakes, live on forever, cycled endlessly in the digital vortex.
For this campaign, Labor has consciously limited its policy differences with the Coalition. But all that leaves are scare campaigns – and a beauty contest.
The latter, also known as a horse race, seemed a pretty sure thing for Labor when the other runner was an unloved donkey with three years of lead in its saddlebags. And what lead! Rorts and scandals … unheld hoses … a nag who couldn’t stir itself to race for vaccines in the middle of a pandemic!
Surely, all Labor needed was discipline and a new suit and glasses for the boss.
So why is it proving so hard to put the other bugger away?
For one thing, he has already won at the distance.
Morrison also has three other advantages easily overlooked.
In 2019, he was just eight months on from the epic bloodletting that tore his party apart. A subset of Liberals was mourning Turnbull, Peter Dutton had been humiliated, and high-profile ministers were making sometimes pointed departures. Chief among them, the other leadership contender Julie Bishop.
None of that is a factor three years later.
Also in Morrison’s favour is the electoral pendulum. Reset by distributions, Labor must defend eight seats on margins of less than 2%. It holds five seats on 1% or less. But to win outright, Labor needs to hold all of those and gain seven. That would require a uniform swing in its favour of at least 3.3%.
The final factor is history.
Since the second world war, “governments only change on big waves”, says Essential pollster Peter Lewis.
That requires revulsion. Or excitement.
Labor has consciously removed any policy excitement, save for a national integrity commission. More money for aged care and childcare are doubtless welcome but there are no signs of specific savings to pay for them. There are no nation-building reforms. Not yet. Maybe something will come.
Morrison, meanwhile, must extinguish any hint of excitement for change.
In that, Albanese has unwittingly helped him by suppressing the larrikin wit that for so many years made him popular, at least among those who dealt with him. In his most famous speech he declared “I like fighting Tories. That’s what I do.” But he had friendly dealings with the other side of the aisle. And when he resigned his cabinet position to support the return of Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard made a rare exception and refused to accept it.
Just when he needs it, there is little sign of that “Albo”, a genuine, not a confected Australian original.
Horse race or beauty contest, the punters aren’t overjoyed by either runner.
But vote they must. So, cue the fear.
• Hugh Riminton is national affairs editor at 10 News First
