Waiting for a crazy brave move to slip the gears of machine politics as usual
Could a really gutsy gambit be what’s needed in this so far too predictable election campaign? Dennis Atkins thinks what we’ve seen so far suggests it might.
They say election campaigns are like an MRI of the soul of the candidates. After just a couple of days our first glimpses would reveal contrasting but quite compelling images.
Scott Morrison presents as just himself and so far it’s as close to the real deal as you can get. He is a kind of Deus ex machina, a self-styled divine figure who, when the magnetic resonance imaging gets below the surface, is actually machine-like.
He calculates, assessing the consequences of everything – always measured against his goals and advantage, personal and political.
The campaign launch was as terse as we’ve seen. Tight, scripted in the style of Roman Polanski’s Chinatown – a contrast from the madcap Coen Brothers flavour of the lead up when the Liberal Party appeared on a crisis-palooza of self-harm.
After his abrupt “This is a choice between saintly-but-not-perfect-me and the profligate tax and spend crazy leftie” introduction, Morrison took just six questions, dealt with them like he was pinch-hitting on a Saturday afternoon. He had one mission, to get his core message on the nightly news. He succeeded.
He is a machine when he switches on. As he has told politicians and a few journalists, for him it’s all transactional and there’s nothing more transactional than an election. You vote for me, I get elected.
Morrison will stay like this for the next 40 days, as much as he can. His failures, self-built crises and sheer lack of judgment and skill of the past three years are unlikely to be repeated in the coming six weeks although everyone on the campaign trail is at risk.
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Morrison uses bluster, bullcrap and bollocks to minimise the risks. He speaks in picture-book simple sentences and deploys lies and alternative facts with stunning ease. If his act wasn’t so shamelessly selfish, you’d be impressed.
Anthony Albanese’s soul might look a bit wobbly after what was described as an election losing stuff-up in Tasmania on Monday morning, visiting a marginal Liberal seat with the ink on the Parliamentary dissolution documents still damp.
After what Albanese clearly thought was a good launch day, his event in Launceston had a freewheeling look about it. Nothing can go wrong, was the message from a confident Albanese visage.
As soon as you see that you know something is going to go wrong. The Labor leader couldn’t nominate the unemployment number or the official RBA cash rate. Bad headlines, negative “Breaking News” crawlers and small books of critical commentary were flashing through the brains of everyone in Labor’s campaign team, on and off the road.
It’s not an election-losing moment but it should be processed as a lesson. Having these key facts memorised and ready for instant reiteration is what you call the most basic of basics in campaigning.
It was a stuff-up the International Space Station might have noticed if it wasn’t flying over China. But a stuff up it was and Albanese made the only self-effacing apology he could have but will now be on notice not to do it again.
In an election where economic management is the loudest ringing bell, this is ground that a challenger cannot afford to disturb.
Otherwise, Albanese’s MRI might have shown an overactive frontal brain lobe where thoughts are turned into speech. While the Labor leader regarded his launch performance a winner, it wasn’t that good.
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There was a message but you needed a compass, cut lunch and map to find it. When you located it, it was positive enough, although it might have tended too much to the traditional Labor menu of caring without any offsetting attention to the jobs and work side of things.
So it’s competing MRI results. The reigning champ is a mechanical political operator who has a track record for the relentless destruction of the truth, opponents and good administration. He really is, as his Liberal critics claim, a “my way or the highway” guy.
The pretender is a practiced, caring politician who seems unsure of what suit he’s wearing at this early stage of the campaign. He might find his political and policy clothes and also get his mojo working but he needs to have this settled by the other side of Easter, a festival of death and resurrection. Symbolism, maybe.
This is going to be the third longest election campaign during the last four decades. In 1984 Bob Hawke had a 54 day gallop around the hustings thinking he outrun challenger Andrew Peacock.
It almost backfired with the Liberal leader repeating an unceasingly negative mantra about tax increases and Labor’s incumbency and apparent supremacy proving fragile.
Then in 2016 Malcolm Turnbull decided he could watch Bill Shorten unravel during another 54 marathon to the polls. Again, the long run gave Shorten enough time and room to chase Turnbull to the edge of defeat.
This current 41-day exercise is midway between the minimum and maximum lengths for official campaigns.
After the Hawke near death experience most leaders have gone for the safety of the shortest way to the polls – 33 or 35 days. It’s been considered the best route for minimising mistakes and risk.
Maybe Morrison has Albanese’s measure – as he keeps telling his political colleagues – and he will give the Labor leader enough time and room to make mistakes or fall short.
The other side of this risk equation is Morrison falling short, running out of ideas and options in the run to the post.
Last Saturday in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick, one of the favourites, Zaaki, looked a winner 75 metres from home. A 40/1 chance, Think It Over, was taken cheekily to the outside fence by crack hoop Nash Rawiller, picking up extra lengths on sounder going, away from the heavy inside running.
The bold, gutsy move on a horse which might have had little chance running a conventional race paid off.
Can either of the contenders in this election find that kind of opportunity and would they be brave enough to take the risk.
This could be an election where fortune favours the brave.
