Voters aren’t hearing us: The tough advice from Albanese’s inner circle

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Anthony Albanese is getting a lot of free advice at the moment. Whenever a government slumps in the opinion polls, it’s open season.

Commentators, talkback radio, and the opposition are full of it. Advice, according to the definition in Ambrose Bierce’s 1911 classic The Devil’s Dictionary, is “the smallest common coin”. In other words, it’s worth 5¢.

Illustration by John ShakespeareCredit:

But on Friday the prime minister got some paid advice, from an employee of the Labor Party. The party’s national secretary, Paul Erickson, gave his report to the ALP national executive as the party begins preparations for the next federal election.

It was a warning against complacency. Which it should have been. Labor has just been humbled by the Voice referendum. The government took a proposal with five years of solid majority support in the opinion polls and watched in dismay as the Coalition and the No campaign turned it into a losing proposition in just two months.

It was the first meeting of Labor’s governing committee since the referendum, so the first opportunity for Erickson to present his analysis. The national secretary leads the party’s organisational wing, so he’s responsible for electoral strategy, party finances and campaigning.

Erickson made no excuses for himself, for Albanese or their campaign. He acknowledged that the No campaign did a better job. “We can’t afford an ounce of complacency about what this means for Labor,” he told the closed-door meeting, according to people present. He made four observations about the Voice campaign to the assembled union chiefs, members of state and federal parliaments and various office-holders.

First, that fewer and fewer people get their information from traditional news sources such as TV, radio and major news organisations. For some it’s a decision based on “news fatigue”. Others escape to streaming services and avoid hard reality.

Second, that public debates and discourse increasingly is fragmented by social media, and the social media platforms that people use are changing constantly.

Third, largely because of points one and two, there’s a growing “disconnect” between political news and voters, said Erickson. In other words, when politicians and advocates speak, it’s less and less likely that voters will hear.

The man with tough advice: ALP national secretary Paul Erickson, standing, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Labor’s national president Wayne Swan at the party’s national conference in August. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

It’s self-evident that, taken together, these three elements put a political premium on clever digital campaigning because it’s the most effective way to reach down the spinning kaleidoscope of the internet to contact disconnected and fragmented audiences at the far end of it.

Labor’s national secretary conceded to the meeting that the No campaign’s digital campaign was superior.

Finally, even if voters do hear, many won’t believe what they’re hearing because the electorate is withdrawing trust from governments and public figures, Erickson said. This factor, naturally, favours negative messages and negative campaigns because they feed on public suspicion.

None of this is new, and none peculiar to Australia. But all four elements, according to Erickson, increasingly bear on campaigning. And the No campaign did a better job of taking advantage of all of them, he said.

The implications are profound. These are the elements of political communication, fundamental to campaigning and winning power. And here’s Labor’s key machine man admitting that its rivals exploited them more skilfully. If you can’t communicate with voters, how can you persuade them to vote for you?

Those gathered at the meeting, held in one of parliament’s committee rooms on Friday morning, naturally were keen to hear Erickson’s plan to fix this problem, to improve Labor’s performance for the forthcoming election.

He didn’t have one. The national secretary undertook to come back to the party executive early in the new year with his proposed solutions. If it’s winning advice, it’ll be worth the value of three national budgets – more than $2 trillion.

Although the government is at the midpoint of a three-year term with the next election not due until May 2025, Erickson agreed that it was always possible that the government could call an election next year. So he has a big problem to solve, with limited time.

The problem is working against Labor already. The Albanese government has allocated $23 billion to implement a 10-part policy to cushion low- and middle-income people from the rising cost of living. Who can name more than one or two of them, beyond the political operatives and the people in the front-row seats of political observation?

Labor has increased subsidies for child care, paid subsidies for electricity bills, required chemists to dispense double-sized scripts so patients save the price of a second visit to the doctor, tripled the incentives paid to doctors to bulk-bill patients. It has increased the minimum wage, argued successfully for higher wages for carers, waived fees for some 300,000 TAFE places. And so on. Albanese and his ministers recite this list endlessly.

Few know, fewer care. The evidence suggests voters aren’t hearing, aren’t connecting. The Albanese government, like all incumbents, has the political problem of trying to convey a positive message in a theatre that inherently favours negative ones.

And its measures mostly are softening rising prices, not cancelling them. People still feel the worsening of their living conditions. It’s a much easier case for an opposition simply to say that you’re feeling the pain and the government’s to blame.

Which brings us to Peter Dutton. Erickson gave Labor’s national executive his distillation of the opposition leader’s strategy. In three parts.

According to people present, Erickson said Dutton’s primary aim was always to put priority on the unity of the Coalition. It was only held together by a shared hostility to Labor. This meant that any ideas the Coalition would pitch would represent the lowest common denominator of whatever Dutton, Barnaby Joyce, Ted O’Brien and Bridget McKenzie could agree on.

Second, Dutton would oppose practically everything Labor proposes. He would do this to foster division, but also to force Labor to negotiate with the Greens to get its bills through the Senate. One key implication, said the secretary, is that Labor must take the challenge from the Greens as seriously as it takes the one from the Coalition.

Third, Dutton depended on generating as much opposition to Labor as possible in the electorate, but with special emphasis on the outer suburbs and the regions. The cost of living would remain the “number one issue” in the electorate, said Erickson, and Dutton would have no positive offerings to deal with it at the election.

So, for Labor, “one of the basic tasks we need to set ourselves for the campaign is to highlight the fact that Peter Dutton’s approach will make life harder, not easier”, said a person with notes of Erickson’s presentation. Dutton’s negativity would hurt, not help, families.

In response to Erickson, the union leaders around the table were especially vocal on the paramount importance of the cost of living. Their members were hurting and needed much more help. It was Labor’s job to deliver that help, they said.

Albanese, who’d been briefed in advance on Erickson’s observations and agreed with all of them, had left the meeting by this stage. But, in his opening remarks to the Labor executive, he’d told the group that the government’s top priority would remain relieving the pressure on families.

The government isn’t doing enough to satisfy its own constituencies in addressing the cost of living. In truth, no government can. But the internal pressure on Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers will continue to mount next year in the approach to the May budget.

Albanese and Chalmers will do as much as they responsibly can to help households without reigniting inflation, but the prime minister is determined that Labor holds its nerve.

Labor has to fix the failures of its political communications. Better yet, it would be well advised to summarise its purpose, caught in a catchphrase. Because what’s the Albanese government’s overarching purpose? No one can say.

But Albanese is confident that Labor will hold power at the next election. An election is a different proposition to a referendum. In a referendum, the No case only need create sufficient doubt about the proposition on offer. In an election, it’s a choice between two sets of doubts.

The Albanese government and Labor believe Dutton will offer a rich source of doubts for voters approaching the ballot box. And while living standards are falling today, they anticipate that the economic cycle will have turned in the government’s favour by the next election day, that interest rates will be falling as inflation moderates.

So they’re far from panicking. The greatest risk to Labor is internal – that it will erupt as it did under Kevin Rudd and under Julia Gillard. That’s certain death. And that’s my five cents’ worth.

Peter Hartcher is political editor.

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