“Who won the election?” 12-year-old Sammy asks Peter Dutton, leaning through the window of the passenger seat where the opposition leader sits.
The Coalition leader has just finished his last pit stop in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs for the day: a petrol station. By this point, he’s been to six of them in the last seven days – mostly cleared of regular punters – selling his party’s promise to bring down petrol costs by about $14 per car a week. Economic analysts put that estimate a lot lower – about $7.56.
“Are you related to Albanese?” Sammy asks, peppering Dutton with questions he can’t duck and weave from like in a regular press conference.
Sammy’s unexpected intervention at a Caulfield petrol station lasts just two minutes – and is a rare moment in an otherwise scrupulously controlled federal election campaign.
Before Sammy wandered through the tangle of cameramen with their lenses on Dutton, the only people attending the seven-minute bowser visit were politicians, their staffers, media and the petrol station staff, who were informed of the impending visit.
The meticulous planning is a regular feature of the modern Australian election but 2025 marks another change in how tightly scripted every handshake, smile, wave and petrol fill up has been.
The Australian federal police warned in March threats against elected officials have continued to rise. In the first days of both major parties’ campaigns, protesters crashed press conferences, masquerading as media and capturing headlines about their causes.
For those in the press pack, these interventions add colour and movement to the day’s story – a welcome addition for media trying to attract attention from a public typically uninterested or disillusioned by the political news cycle. But for politicians and protective personnel, these breaches demonstrate how quickly threats can become disasters if the intruders have violent intentions.
While the threat might be very real, further locking down a politician’s visit results in an even more sanitised campaign.
Australia is a fortnight into a five-week election campaign and there’s seldom a glimpse in the nightly news of leaders having unvetted public interactions, let alone on social media.
For two men vying to become leaders of the Australian people, neither have spent very much time with them – those outside the political class anyway.
While a public street walk was already a rarity in previous elections, it’s now a national security risk.
Both the public and the media are worse off for it, but politicians are too. When public trust in democratic institutions is at an all-time low, genuine engagement with the public, without all the smoke and mirrors, is crucial.
On Friday, Dutton denied there had been any changes this election campaign because of security concerns.
“It hasn’t stopped me from doing anything, and it won’t on this campaign,” he said.
“I think this is an opportunity to speak to the Australian people, to see as many people as humanly possible, and we’ll continue that over the course of the campaign.”
Bringing order to the press pack
Back in Dutton’s camp, the mood and strategy has shifted.
After a train wreck opening campaign week, the former policeman turned property investor turned MP is taking back control.
At the start of the week, the Coalition announced a spectacular about-face on its working from home policy, worried it was further bleeding votes from women. It also sought to put to bed some of the confusion around its promise to sack 41,000 public servants.
While many questions still remain about how the opposition would actually achieve the target with no forced redundancies, the opposition at least ruled out immediate mass cuts in Canberra.
On Tuesday, after Dutton apologised for the misstep – something the former Coalition prime minister often refrains from – the opposition leader was back in charge.
Dutton muzzled the press pack in a way Albanese has often struggled to achieve. Instead of pitting travelling journalists against each other in order to get Dutton’s attention during press conferences, the opposition leader has prioritised order.
In three press conferences between Wednesday and Friday, Dutton methodically gave each journalist a question in order of where they were standing.
The result meant media didn’t scream over one another to get their questions in. It also gave Dutton time to respond to each answer and disrupted any control the press pack might have tried to gain over a politician only wanting to deliver speaking points, not answers.
In a staid, scripted election campaign, press conferences can offer the only windows into a politician’s mindset, or sometimes the cracks in their facade. It’s not about the media gaining a scalp, but showing the unpolished parts of a person hellbent on being a perfect specimen for voters.
The whole script for election campaigns should be thrown out, but that’s unlikely to happen, given the major parties enjoy the political conventions that benefit them. And it’s unclear what an election campaign without the major political parties controlling them could even look like.
In the absence of difficult press conferences and leaders visiting real voters in real scenarios, it is more challenging for the Australian public to determine which leader makes the most sense for them.
Personal safety and control is paramount for those who want to lead, but it can only lead to worse outcomes for democratic institutions if it comes at the cost of genuine engagement.
And genuine engagement should not be defined by campaign managers and political party strategists.
