The prime minister has more reason than most to be the boots on the ground after 63% of voters said he is not in tune with ordinary AustraliansFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAnthony Albanese might have expected to have been on his campaign plane on Monday, flying between marginal seats on the first day of the election trail proper.Instead he’s sloshing around in the wake of ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, the weather event that was meant to bear his name and blew his election announcement plan right off course.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading…The prime minister has more reason than most to be the boots on the ground after 63% of voters said he is not in tune with ordinary AustraliansFollow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastAnthony Albanese might have expected to have been on his campaign plane on Monday, flying between marginal seats on the first day of the election trail proper.Instead he’s sloshing around in the wake of ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, the weather event that was meant to bear his name and blew his election announcement plan right off course.Sign up for Guardian Australia’s breaking news email Continue reading…
Anthony Albanese might have expected to have been on his campaign plane on Monday, flying between marginal seats on the first day of the election trail proper.
Instead he’s sloshing around in the wake of ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, the weather event that was meant to bear his name and blew his election announcement plan right off course.
But the change of plans could also, ironically, prove to be a blessing in disguise for his re-election bid.
After a few incidents in recent history where his opponents were keen to paint Albanese as not being up to the job, the PM was eager to be seen as springing into action as the tropical cyclone bore down on Brisbane.
There would be no repeat of questions about playing tennis or flying to Perth after Melbourne’s Adass Israel synagogue was firebombed; no days of questioning over when, how or if he was briefed about the Dural caravan explosives.
Clad in a waterproof jacket, boots and a puffer vest, Albanese wanted to be seen as “on the job”.
Before and after Alfred smashed the coast, the prime minister headed north – first to Brisbane and then to Lismore – shaking hands and thanking volunteers and defence personnel.
Not only did he receive daily briefings from emergency management experts in full view of TV cameras in the national situation room, Albanese also held press conferences in front of large screens projecting synoptic charts (and shared them on his own online pages).
Giving Peter Dutton a kick for attending lavish fundraisers at a billionaire’s Vaucluse mansion was something of an added bonus for the PM.
Albanese has often turned up to natural disasters, a prominent example being standing in Lismore flood waters in 2022, so it would be remiss to look at this only through a political lens – sometimes people, especially community leaders, just want to help. To bear witness.
“I’m focused not on votes, I’m focused on Australians,” Albanese has said numerous times this week.
“Giving support to people in a totally non-political way.”
But he was also the opposition leader when Scott Morrison took his ill-fated trip to Hawaii during the black summer bushfires, so knows the perils of a leader who doesn’t “hold a hose”.
While most of the federal political class had long thought the election campaign would have been called on Sunday or Monday, there would have been a nervousness about the idea of TV shots contrasting Albanese having tea and scones with the governor general against Dutton in gumboots shovelling mud to help clean up his Brisbane electorate.
In the end, Albanese finally ruled out his election plans late on Friday night, an unsurprising development once Alfred got closer to the coast.
That Dutton himself hasn’t been more visible in the response efforts so far was explained on Monday, when he told Sky News his family was “trapped at home” due to the flood water, which was “up over our front gate”.
Albanese has the advantage of his literal home not being threatened by rising tides. But the prime minister has more reason than most to seize the day.
The Guardian Essential poll has had some grim reading for both major parties lately, with Dutton and Albanese both enduring negative approval ratings, but figures from a month ago painted a troubling picture for the prime minister: many voters simply doubted his ticker.
Sixty-three per cent of voters thought Albanese was out of touch with ordinary Australians, compared with 55% that thought the same of Dutton. Albanese was on a negative trend on that metric (only 47% thought he was out of touch in early 2022) while Dutton was on a positive one, improving somewhat from 61% in March 2023.
But more than half of voters (52%) believed Albanese doesn’t handle pressure well, while only 40% thought the same of Dutton. Albanese also trailed his opponent on questions of whether they were seen as “decisive”, 43% compared with 56% for Dutton.
Even as Albanese stresses it’s not about politics, it’s undeniable that disasters give leaders an opportunity to show voters they can be decisive, dependable in a crisis and in touch with the common Australian.
The federal budget – the budget we didn’t have to have and didn’t expect to have – will now be brought down in two weeks, on 25 March. Nobody really knows much about what will be in it; an extension of energy bill relief is widely expected, but whether it comes in the budget or closer to a likely early May election date is unclear.
But with Alfred, and its cleanup, probably dominating news headlines for the next week or so, Albanese will get more chances to keep responding. So will Dutton, when he’s able.
With election campaign HQs essentially already up and running even before the campaign is called, both sides are operating near their peak game-day level. How they respond to a literal cyclone and the cascading effects of a budget that most weren’t expecting to go ahead might go some way to deciding this election result.