From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. The twenty twenty five federal election campaign has already begun, even if unofficially. While most Australians are still enjoying their summer, Anthony Alberisi and Peter Dunn are already in fight mode. For Labor, the stakes are high to secure a second term. They're hoping to reverse their losses in Queensland and regain
popularity with an apathetic electorate. For the Coalition, it's about regaining ground and suburban seats and capitalizing on the government's self inflicted wounds. Today the Saturday Papers Associate editor Martin mackenzie Murray on the shadow campaign already underway and what Labour insiders say is the biggest threat to the government winning a second term. It's Monday, January thirteen. Mardy, Happy
twenty twenty five and good morning. I'm not going to ask you about what you did this summer, but what the Prime Minister did. What's he been up to?
Well, he didn't go to the sport typically over the holidays. There are public appearances. Who had a beautifully dramatic summer of cricket the best it was, but Albanizy was a little conspicuous by his absence, and that's for good reason. He's sending a message that he is committed to work in preparation for the election which is imminent. Ish where he has been is Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia, where he began his quick tour last week. He went
up to Cannes. He went to the great mining town of Mount iSER where he announced about fifty million dollars for housing infrastructure. He then flew to a cattle station in the NTA and then onto Kannanara in West Australia's Kimberley region.
Here but in this very vast state of Western Australia, we announced two hundred million dollars of additional funding for community infrastructure and for housing infrastructure to allow new builds in housing.
So he was out there promising the development of Australia. When it was asked of him in a media conference in Queensland whether or not government expenditure, including social expenditure, had aggravated inflestion, he was sort of unapologetically emphatic about defending the government's commitment to social expenditure and you're.
Going to have to pull some pretty fast leavers to convince the electorate. I believe that they're feeling better off because right now most people are feeling like they're going backwards. Prime Minister, well, under Labor we will continue to build Australia's future. Under the Coalition, will go backwards under Peter Dutton and things will cost more. Their only plan that they've put forward is for nuclear reactors.
There's sort of this informal campaign at the moment where it's not officially stated, but effectively the government has mobilized into a campaign activity.
Yeah, it's clearly in campaign mode. Is there a date that seems to be firming for when the election will be.
There's a lot of speculation, and of course, like with this tactical coyness, a lot of people are guessing, but plenty within the government believe that early April is a good gas which would oblige a declaration in early March.
What are the benefits from a government perspective for choosing an early April date?
So the benefit what I've heard is Albaneze wouldn't mind a fortnight of Parliament that's due to be recalled in February and then the avoidance of a budget which is going to be quite unflattering to the government.
Until the election is called, we're, like you said, in unofficial campaign mode, what are the early signs of what the campaign will actually be about.
Well, this is the great question.
What's the battlegrounds?
So there's the electoral calculus, so perhaps i'll begin there. Sure, Queensland was a huge problem in the previous federal election, as it was pointed out to me by a campaigner labor campaigner. They described it as almost a landslide the previous election outside of Queensland. So they had already historic
heights in South Australian Victoria, they improved upon them. They overwhelmed in Western Australia, a state typically difficult for labor, but Queensland they in fact went backwards and their represent federal representation there is the lowest it's been since nineteen ninety six. So Queensland for labor is a focus.
We built areas where I was yesterday, Carota Kara, just around the Gimpi area. We built and started work on the Townsville Ring Road, on the mackay Bypath, on all of these projects up and down the Bruce, but it has been neglected by the former government. We're addressing that.
For the coalition. Victoria classically a more liberal states lower case our liberal one that's been difficult for the coalition.
Well, my friends, is great to be back in Victoria. Thank you very much for being here today. I want to repeat what I've said.
So Albanezy's busyness compelled Dutton's and last weekend he did something of his own informal campaign when he went and did an event in Melbourne Suburbs, which is an area that they're going to have to reclaim some seats.
If we win Chisholm, we're a step closer to winning government, and if we win government, we can get Victoria in our country moving again.
This is kind of the considerable feeling within the coalition is that they're going to have to take seats back from Labor that they lost in Melbourne Suburbs.
You've been speaking to inside as people at various levels of the Labor Party, including people close to the PM. How are I feeling about their prospects.
It depends who speaks to. So those close to the Prime Minister say he's very confident, bullish even about his prospects and the sort of the further away you go from the Prime Minister's office, I think, the greater the skepticism in the prime Minister's wisdom and confidence. There's been a lot of grumbling about Albanese's political judgment. That was the expensive coastal holiday home, which people were bitterly incredulous about.
They thought that signified this very surprising absence of political judgment. And then of course there was the historic matter of Quantus and Albanesi when he was the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, i e. The minister responsible for regulating Quantus, who was enjoying certain privileges. When that story came to light,
Albanese became incredibly kind of bitterly defensive. Again, particularly those on the sort of the outskirts, those back benches, particularly those are marginal seats and who are becoming quite anxious about the polls, grumbled about the Prime Minister's kind of serial self harm. So it depends upon who you speak to. But certainly Albanesi is confident, and not just confident of returning, but confident of returning with a majority.
After the break, Can the Labor Party ever win outright again? You been speaking with a lot of people inside labor, are longtime labor watchers, about how they're trying to reset their agenda this year, what are their chances of winning re election and how are they thinking about the parts of the country they'll do well and will they'll struggle.
Yeah, so I imagined the electoral significance of Queensland for Labor. When you ask me how this might be or where it might be fought upon, then there's the thematic stuff, and I think this is the dispiriting thing. Certainly. The thing that was shared with me by one labor insider is that it augurs poorly any expectation we might have of a campaign that's fought on substance. And this is
from a Labor insider. And the reason they say that is on one side, you have a weakened Prime Minister who seems kind of increasingly hapless, in articulate and charmless. The quite critical descriptions of the Prime Minister, who cannot sell an articulate and coherent vision for the country. On the other you have an opposition leader who has no vision whatsoever. And that's not to say he doesn't possess one. He certainly doesn't express it, nor has he needed to.
There's been this kind of pragmatic restraint that Dutton has shown, and he's learned something from the previous election right where Albenzi could largely sit back, watch Morrison self harm and have the electorate not embrace Albanesi but in fact kind of reject Morrison. So on one side you have a prime minister who kind of offers no coherent, strong, articulate vision for the country, and on the other an alternative
prime minister who needn't offer a vision whatsoever. And so what they're preempting with this is a campaign that becomes simply a highly personalized referendum on Albenzi.
Is the government taking the threat from the rise of independence in the parliament? Seriously? What are they doing to mitigate that risk?
It's a really really interesting time. We've been trending towards this place for a while now, and that place is a fairly evenly split electorate. So in the previous federal election it was split pretty evenly between Labor, the Coalition and Independence and Labor were euphoric obviously previous election. They returned to government after nearly a decade in opposition, but that euphoria concealed or disguised a really anemic primary vote.
Labor received thirty two percent of the primary vote, about thirty four to thirty five percent the coalition and the
remainder going to independence. So that is unprecedented. And so for all of the euphoria that Labor enjoyed, there was still the issue of that primary vote, and the Labor inside has said that he felt that the Labor was more vulnerable to this kind of erosion of the primary vote and this dissolution of traditional tribal loyalties that, as the historian Frank Bonjorno was talking to me about, has been eroding. Typically a bunch of kind of cultural allegiances.
It might be to church, it might be to a union, it might be to a political party, it might be all of the above. These were allegiances that were in in the family and often inherited into generation l that's no longer true. We're kind of at a hinge point,
I think. And the sum of this is the Labor insiders said they didn't want to be overly dramatic, but they did not think it implausible that the previous federal election was the last time that Labor would enjoy a majority, and when I put that to Frank Bonjoorno, I said, you know, this is this alarmist and you know he was emphatic, absolutely not. It's hardly controversial judgment to think that that might be the case, that Labor will struggle to form majority government into the future.
You talked about the euphoria that Labor felt when they won and the big promises that Albanesi made. That not the first thing he mentioned was the referendum on the Voice. How much damage did the loss of the Voice referendum due to Albanesi's popularity.
I think it was known at the time that it was rather damaging, but in retrospect it was more damaging than I think even I realized. He had pegged so much of himself to it and the reference It wasn't a minor loss. It was a rather kind of resounding loss, and I think we can look back now and see how crippling that was to the government's self conception, its credibility, and its optimism.
This next question probably answers itself mighty, But if Alberanesi loses after just one turn, whose fault will there be?
So one thing I've been talking about a lot this week with Labour insiders and also with the historian Frank Bonjorna. Is in this era of increasing fractiousness and increasing voter in patients, like the conventional wisdom was a first term government would not be voted out in Australia. One labor insider says to me, well, what's the value of conventional wisdom anymore? So when you say whose fault is it?
How do you pass an era? So the context of Albanese leadership, which is an era of declining primary vote for the major parties, declining tribal allegiances, a political context that is more difficult to assert national mandate. You have this kind of larger context, So where do you separate
that from the individual himself Albanesi? And it's a mixture, right, So I think you know when insiders complain about Albanese's inarticulacy, his haplessness post referendum, that kind of sudden evaporation of credibility and direction. They also had a very awkward inheritance of inflation as well, a problem that hadn't stricken Australia in decades. Where does one separate those two? And I
think well, certainly for the labor inside it. There was some forgiveness for Albanesi given modern times, given the difficulty of governing, but also that he is perhaps the wrong man, the wrong man in the wrong time.
It's going to be a big year, Marty. Thank you for coming and thank you for your time.
Thank you.
Also in the US today, special counsel Jack Smith, who led too unsuccessful federal cases against President elect Donald Trump, has resigned. The former war crimes prosecutor have pursued Trump on charges of trying to overturn the results of the twenty twenty election and mishandling classified documents. Mister Smith lost in both a district court and in the Supreme Court,
which was made up of three Trump appointed judges. His resignation was expected, and a synagogue and cities Inner West has been targeted with anti Semitic graffiti and an attempted arson attack. Police Commissioner Karen Webbs that the two people believe responsible used a clear liquid to light a fire at the synagogue, which distinguished itself in a matter of minutes.
A number of red swashtickers have being spray painted at the front New South Wales Premier Chris Mins says the attack marks and escalation in anti Semitic crime in New South Wales. The investigation has now been taken over by counter terrorism police. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.