Who are Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton?

Already and this is the Daily This is the Dahlias. Oh now it makes sense.

Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Thursday, the first of May.

I'm Zara Sidler, I'm Emma Gillespie.

Well, we are officially at the point to end of the election campaign.

Wowie.

I don't know how many times I'm going to say that this week, but hey we're here. In a matter of days, we're going to know which party is formed government and who the next Leader of Australia will be and so on today's episode, I thought it would be helpful to give a bit of a lowdown on who the two people lying for the top.

Job actually are.

You've heard their names many times before, Anthony Albertezi and Peter Dudden, from their time before Parliament to what they've pushed for inside of Canberra. We're going to take you through everything you need to know before the weekend.

All right, I think this is going to be a really helpful one for a lot of listeners today. Before we explain who the two leaders are, I think we should talk through the fact that these are not names that are necessarily going to appear on the ballots of most people's voting cards this weekend. There's an important difference between who the potential future leader is versus who we vote for on ballot day.

Yeah, exactly.

So I do think this is a good place to start because I think sometimes we look at the US and we think that we do things very similarly, but when it comes to voting, it's very, very different. So when we go to vote here in Australia, as you just said, unless you live in two electorates Graindler in Sydney or Dixon in Queensland, you're not actually directly voting for Anthony Alberenezi or Peter Dudden. Instead, you're voting for who you want to send to Canberra to represent your

And if the name Alex Dyson sounds familiar to you, that's because he is a former Triple j presenter.

He is, so he has decided to make the venture into independent politics. And so that was just an example of one of the seats and some of the names that you might see. And so, as we've spoken about on this podcast before, the way that government is formed is that whichever of the major parties reach seventy six seats of the available one hundred and fifty seats in the House, that's the party that forms government. And so the leader of that party then goes on to become the prime minister.

So while not every ballot will have Anthony Albanesi or Peter Dutton's name on it, there will be representatives of the major parties on those ballots.

Exactly.

Okay, gotcha. So now that we understand how the House of Reps forms government and how a leader becomes prime minister, let's talk about those two leadership options. We have Anthony Albanesi, who is, of course the current sitting Prime minister, the leader of the Labor Party, and Peter Dutton the opposition leader, the Liberal Party leader. Let's start with Anthony Albanesi. First, simple questions are but I'm sure a complex answer, who is albo?

Yeah, look, a small question there.

But as you said, Anthony Albanesi has been our prime minister since he won the twenty twenty two federal election. But he is by no means a new faith when it comes to politics.

So if we start way back at.

The beginning of the Anthony Albanesi story, he was born in Sydney in nineteen sixty three, so that makes him sixty two. As he regularly discusses and as has informed a lot of his politics, Albanize was raised by his single mother in public housing. When he was born, he understood his father to have passed away. He found out later in life that that was not the case, and there are lots of kind of podcasts and stories about meeting his father later in life, but we'll leave that

That is fascinating.

I think a lot of people don't realize how long he's been there.

Thirty years.

I mean both of them have been there for ages. So I was looking back at his first speech. We used to call them maiden speeches, but that term's kind of been thrown out a bit. Now we'll just refer to it as his first speech. And I think that first speeches are a really helpful way of understanding why someone goes into politics in the first place. Yeah, what's really driving them, what they want to achieve.

They often act as a bit of an opportunity for that person to tell the country what they stand for, what motivated them to want to be in public service. So there's a lot you can learn from someone from.

That address, definitely, And I mean it's crazy to think that it was decades ago now, but I'll read a little bit of it. Anthony Albanize said on the floor of the Parliament, I will be satisfied if I can be remembered as someone who will stand up for the interests of my electorate, for working class people, for the labor movement, and for our progressive advancement as a nation into the next century.

Of course, he was speaking in the last.

Century, very nineties child.

Yeah, And so during his very long career in parliament, Albanizi has held a number of portfolios and shadow portfolios, so he became a senior minister during the running Gillard years. He served as the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and then later as Deputy Prime Minister under Kevin Rudd. But then Labor lost power and the Coalition won successive elections and so Labor wasn't in power for nearly a decade, and so during that time Anthony alban Easy was understood

When Bill Shorten lost to Scott Morrison.

Exactly and no one was expecting it.

And so when Labor lost, Bill Shorten stepped down and that is when Anthony Alberizi became the leader of the Labor Party, and we all know he went on to lead the party to victory at the twenty twenty two election, and at that election kind of similar to a first speech in Parliament, it's interesting to look back at what the priorities he set out in his first speech or his victory speech after becoming Prime minister was, because it's

It's incredibly different. And I think the big standout moment from that speech that many of us will remember is the referendum exactly.

So Anthony Alberzi got up and basically the first sentence, almost out of his mouth, was that he was going to implement the ull statement from the heart in full. Since that time, we've gone to a referendum that failed, but that was certainly one of the big policy promises from the Albaneze government at that time. His basic premise for or his basic promise I guess to the electorate was no one held back and no one left behind. So that set out a bit of what Anthony Abereneze wanted to.

Do with his three years in power.

He wanted to take significant action on climate change and he wanted to in his own words, build an economy that works for people and not the other way around. Obviously needs to be said that a lot has changed in those three years, a lot of external factors, also a lot of internal domestic matters that have shifted since. And so this time around we are looking, as we've spoken on podcasts this week, at quite different policy platforms than the last time around.

Yeah, and of course the mood is very different to twenty twenty two when we were coming out of COVID out of the pandemic. In that recovery phase, there was that sort of sense of uncertainty or disbelief of is it really over? Are we really moving on now? And then of course, you know, the cost of living crisis in the meantime has well and truly set in and that's dominated the campaigning on both sides absolutely this election.

Okay?

So, Peter Dudden was born in nineteen seventy in Brisbane, and similar to Albanesi, Peter Dunnan became politically involved at a really early age. So he joined the Young Liberals at the sprightly age of eighteen. It was only a year later, at the age of nineteen, that Peter dudd first ran for parliament.

Wow.

Yeah, I was not even thinking about parliament when I was nineteen.

We were very different nineteen year olds.

But clearly both of the choices for leader have long had these political aspirations. It wasn't something that came to them later in life, but rather certainly fostered early on. So it dudn't ran for parliament at the age of nineteen. He contested a state seat. So he contested a seat in the nineteen eighty nine Queensland state election, but that was a safe labor seat and he ended up losing. And so when he was unsuccessful at that election, he

Working class boy from Marrickville.

Exactly, that narrative has been very strong, and the narrative of Peter Dudden and his experiences as a policeman, I'd say are equally as strong.

And a number of his policies.

I think if listeners don't know a lot about Peter Dutton, what they do know is that he was a cop once.

Yeah, exactly.

So he served as a Queensland Police officer for just under a decade, so for nine years. During that time he worked in a drug squad in Brisbane and then he worked later with this sex offenders squad. And I think it's probably that latter experience that has come to the fore a lot. He often talks about the unspeakable things that he saw during his time in the police force and how that drives him to want to protect specifically women and girls. Peter Dudden ended up leaving the

So he worked in that for a bit.

But then in two thousand and one his political aspirations came swinging back and to Dudden contested the seat of Dixon in Queensland and he won, starting his parliamentary career at the turn of the century.

Interesting that both Dutton and Albanzi had dabbled in state politics or started around state politics for advising, advising, and then their first big political gigs were on the federal stage.

Yeah, it is really interesting and I think goes to a kind of class of people who have spent a long time in and around politics. I think there are kind of two categories of politicians, those that had very different careers and those that have kind of always been

Had shaped his worldview.

He said, and I quote, I often say to people that as a police officer, I've seen the best and the worst that society has to offer. I've seen the wonderful kind nature of people willing to offer any assistance to those in their worst hour. And I've seen the sickening behavior displayed by people who frankly barely justify their existence in our sometimes over tolerance society. In that same speech, he went on to say to me, the Liberal Party was a party founded in many ways on the principles

I was going to say the retoric of both of their first speeches in parliament. You know, even though we're talking about the late nineties and two thousand and one, these quotes could be them today. Really, so as much as the world around them has changed and they have changed, their kind of moral compass or their political focus hasn't really shifted that far away. None of these quotes are that surprising.

No, no, not at all.

And I'll just really quickly jump through the rest of Dudden's parliamentary careers, so he held key government positions throughout the kind of last decade or so. He was Home Affairs Minister. I think that's probably where people first became familiar at least kind of on a national stage with Peter Dudden.

That was during a heightened period of illegal immigration, the stop the Boats era.

Yeah, exactly, and so he became the face really of border security. And then later with Scott Morrison, Dudden alongside being Home Affairs Minister, it was at one point also the Minister for Health, the Minister for Sport and the Minister for Defense.

So he's really tried his hand a lot of different portfolios there.

Prior to winning the leadership in twenty twenty two, Dudden had contested the leadership of the Liberal Party before, but he hadn't been successful. So people might remember during the Turnbull years there was a time where there was a bit of unrest in the party.

We'll put it that way, delicately, put Zarah.

Thank you, and Peter Dunnen put his name for it or put his hand up to run during a leadership spill. He wasn't successful at that time. Scott Morrison went on to become Prime Minister, but then when Scott Morrison lost the election, Peter Duddaen was elected as leader unopposed, and so that brings us to today. He's hoping to win the election and to become the next Prime Minister of Australia.

Okay, So we've got these two mainstays of the alien political landscape with quite different stories, but there's also a lot in common there. They've both spent time as leader of the opposition, they've both been in federal Parliament for decades, and they're both vying for the same job. But before we go on Zara, regardless of who wins, it will be a big deal. Whatever the result is on Saturday, it's going to be a significant one. Yeah, can you just explain why?

Yes?

So, if Peter Dudden pulls off a victory this weekend and becomes Prime Minister, he will become the first opposition leader to unseat a first term government since nineteen twenty nine.

That's nearly one hundred years, so many years.

So let me just unpack that.

So, Anthony Albanezi was elected last election, his government, the Labor Government, has served one term so far. If Dudden is able to win on Saturday, that will mean that labor doesn't get a second term, and that it's the first time that that's happened since nineteen twenty nine.

This is kind of a trend that we see throughout polling all around the world that the incumbent government, as in the government that's serving at the time of the election, voters anecdotally will favor what they know, the kind of rhetoric of if people are apathetic, they might think, oh, well, better the devil.

You know.

Yeah, It's been such an interesting time in global politics because for a long time that was believed to be the case, and incumbents did have this kind of advantage. But last year we saw a bunch of incumbents, and specifically kind of moderate or progressive incumbents.

All lose in a row.

But then we had the Canadian election just a couple of days ago, where the incumbent government was once again restored, and so there is a lot of chatter out there about whether or not the US election has actually flipped that. Yeah, and that perhaps we are now going to go back to, as you said, that incumbency advantage. I've just said the word incumbency like I like it's in one sentence.

But to the heart of what you're saying is that I guess trends have changed, but more than ever this year we find ourselves in more uncharted territory basically on climates.

Of changing, and anyone that knows a trend is making it up, but just on the idea of the kind of historic moment that we're in.

It's not just going to be historic.

If Peter Dudden is successful, If Anthony Albernizi is successful, he will become the first prime minister to win two elections in a row since John Howard in two thousand and four.

These two facts, these two starts, are bonkers because we're saying that a first term government hasn't lost its crack at a second term in nearly one hundred years.

But a leader of a party hasn't led as prime minister for two terms since two thousand and four.

And that is, of course, because we have had so many changes in leadership since that all happened. It has become a lot harder to unseat a leader. Those leadership spills you might have noticed, haven't happened for a little bit. That's because both parties have said, like enough, we must not have this again.

So it is harder.

But that means that, yeah, for the last twenty odd years, that's that's been the case. And so if Anthony Albanezi wins, he's going to be the first one to do it, a kind of double whammy since John Howard.

Whatever happens, it's history in the making, we're.

Going to be talking about it no matter what.

It's exciting. I'm sure there's you know, a lot of fatigue setting in for people out there every day through there's only a couple of exactly every corner you turn, every page that you scrolled past, every TV as you see, it's a lot.

Sce you receive in an unsolicited sense.

And wonder where on earth did they get kay number. But it's exciting to have these little tea bits to kind of look forward to and remembering the kind of historical moments that come with any kind of democratic election.

Exactly couldn't have put a better I'm Zara, thank you so much for taking us through that.

It was really really helpful and interesting.

Thank you and thank you for joining us for another episode of The Daily Os. We've got one more day of the working week before the election. Make sure you are sending any friend who's saying I'm not political these podcasts because everyone needs to vote and therefore they need to be informed. We'll be back later today with the headlines, but until then, have a great day. My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Caalcutin woman