Electioneering season has started – and Albo knows it
The best thing Anthony Albanese has done for his polling numbers since wearing a Midnight Oil shirt into Parliament has been to eviscerate Elon Musk across a number of media outlets this week.
He was handed a complete gift when one of the world’s most contentious men specifically targeted him online – and he came to fight.
Albo swooped. He called Musk “an egoist”, and “someone who is totally out of touch with the values that Australian families have,” on morning TV, “an arrogant billionaire who thinks he is above the law” and “so out of touch with what the Australian public want,” on pay TV, and barbed that Musk’s refusal to comply with takedown orders regarding videos of a violent stabbing “just shows his arrogance”.
Albanese’s stance is going over so well that even his political opponents are backing him on this one.
“This bloke thinks he’s above the Australian law, that he’s above common decency,” Albanese told one outlet. “I find this bloke on the other side of the world, from his billionaire’s establishments, trying to lecture Australians about free speech, well, I won’t cop it and Australians won’t either,” he told another.
The media outlets don’t matter — they are all just effective megaphones in the end — but when a Prime Minister uses the word ‘bloke’ twice in one day, and talks about what Australians will or won’t ‘cop’, well, you know that electioneering season has officially launched.
After all, when Albanese made the first of his many televised shots at Musk, he was speaking live from Papua New Guinea, where he was set to walk the Kokoda Trail.
This is a historic walk Australian politicians often do in order to mark their respect for the ANZACs, but also to publicly and officially broadcast this respect for the ANZACs to the voters. This is a walk Albanese could have easily done in private, but this isn’t an option when electioneering. And so we have a chat with Sarah Abo.
The latest NewsPoll data, taken on Monday, shows Labor slightly ahead 51% to 49%. Now, before I go on, it needs to be stated that Newspoll failed to predict Scott Morrison’s PM win in 2019, with a report commissioned afterwards finding this was “because the samples were unrepresentative and inadequately adjusted”. So, just how accurate a barometer these polls offer can be debated.
Regardless of accuracy, Albo will be nonetheless pleased to see that he is still the preferred PM according to the polls, with 48% liking him over the 35% that want Dutton in office (the latter figure being less than the percentage that voted for The Voice). 17% of Aussies are still uncommitted – which means close to a fifth of the nation doesn’t really want either of those blokes in power.
Albanese has been electioneering in other ways, too. His Future Made in Australia policy, a forward-looking plan to use taxpayer subsidies for clean energy projects, won over NewsPoll’s polling sample, with 56% in favour of this move, compared to 38% against.
The rising cost of living, however, is a less popular Albanese initiative, with a separate Nine News poll suggesting this as the reason for falling Labor support, tying it with the Coalition on a two-party preferred basis.
Not to worry, though. Albanese has the Stage 3 tax cuts to spruik soon – although he should probably stop using the vicious, violent ‘cut’ word, with the forced removal of resources that it suggests, and instead point to the extra cash in every bloke or blokette’s pay packets each fortnight. That’s a clear, easy win and a bloody bonza load of Chiko Rolls, as electioneering Albo would no doubt say.
Another clue that election season has officially started is Albo’s new Facebook cover photo.
Albanese is doing it for the kids — those kids who grew up in the housing commission in Marrickville like him, as well as those posh kids in Liberal electorates with 12-speed mountain bikes. This is all relevant to Mumbrella, of course, because state and federal governments spend nearly $450 million each year on such advertising – a figure that balloons during a Federal election year.
According to the Grattan Institute, the Morrison Government alone spent about $180 million of taxpayer money on advertising during the six-month lead-up to the 2022 election – compared with about $120 million in the six months leading up to the 2019 election.
Morrison was criticised for using the COVID-19 Economic Recovery Plan to promote the Liberal Party. The official paperwork even explains the plan: “to inform Australians about the government response to the recurring challenges being faced and reassure them there was an adaptable and future-focused plan in place for the economy.” A plan that involved keeping Morrison in government, of course. Very future-focused!
Further to this, Grattan Institute analysis found that around a quarter of all government-funded (read: taxpayer-funded) advertising isn’t for the greater good — public service announcements and the like — but is actually politically motivated.
This shouldn’t come as a shock, but it bears repeating. With the 25-year average of taxpayer-funded advertising campaigns sitting at about $200 million a year, “about $50 million on average each year has been spent on campaigns that are politicised”.
That’s a lot of money coming into the Australian advertising industry over the next 12 months – but it might not be as much as expected.
Government advertising spending dropped by $100 million during the 2023 calendar year — although 2022 was both an election year and during the pandemic — and it might not be the best look for any of the political parties to be spending an insane amount of money on propaganda during a cost-of-living crisis. Especially given Australians currently have record low levels of confidence in both our government and the economy.
This week’s Roy Morgan Government Confidence reading dropped to 76.5 points (neutral levels of confidence are 100). Tellingly, the poll found 54.5% of Australia said “the country is heading in the wrong direction”.
Consumer confidence levels dropped to 80.3 this week – the lowest in 2024 so far. Again, with neutral consumer confidence levels pegged at 100, Australians have now spent a record 64 weeks in a row with their confidence levels below 85. This is a lack of confidence not seen since the 1990 recession we had to have. Roy Morgan’s solemn report also notes “mortgage stress and cost of living pressures continues unabated”.
All of which is to say – Australians are scared. They are disengaged. They don’t believe. They certainly don’t want self-congratulatory political advertising when there is little to celebrate, nor do they want the mucky divisive politicking seen during last year’s Voice referendum, in which everyone voted and nobody won. They don’t want to see huge advertising budgets when fresh fruit has become a luxury item. They don’t want to be told the government works for them when they don’t see the work being done. There’s money going to overseas wars. There’s money going to banks and airlines — who are enjoying record profits and government support alike — and there will be money going into ineffective advertising telling us who will spend our money better. There’s money everywhere – but nobody has any of it.
It’s compulsory to vote, but it’s optional to give a shit.
So, maybe this next election cycle needs to look a little different. Political parties might need to take a softer approach or at least steer us away from the scurrilous attack ads that are the norm in US elections and seem to encroach more on our system every cycle. Maybe the ads can even adopt some honesty, with real figures and real promises and a real plan that stretches further than the line for the election booth. It’s a lot to hope for but it’s not an impossible dream. And it’s more likely than not to be someone in advertising reading this newsletter that makes one of the numerous little decisions that helps change the way political advertising is done in this country. Advertising is meant to convince us – it’s time to do some convincing.
After all, there are only so many billionaire supervillains that Albanese can take on before he changes tack. At least, until Clive Palmer bellyflops his way into this coming election, armed with a late-20s, Andrew Tate-style incel mouthpiece with a blonde bowl haircut and an invisible army of millions of angry voters. It’s inevitable, as is the fact that one of you will be doing the garish, bright yellow advertising ushering in this new era of awful.
Or, we can agree to play nice. Everything else in the advertising world has been upended, why not the humble political advert?
Enjoy your weekend.
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Nathan Jolly is the Deputy Editor of Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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Albanese’s assault on Musk is nothing more than a desperate attempt to grab last minute attention, like a spoilt baby throwing toys when they don’t get their way. typical of anyone who’s a “career politician” value added – nothing burger.
But hey, when you’re out of ideas and facing dwindling poll support, why not take a swing at the nearest high-profile target?
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