Just months out from an election, a government floundering in the polls, rocked by bitter infighting and lacking a clear policy agenda looks set for defeat.
That was the script in early 2019, when Scott Morrison looked like a caretaker prime minister.
But the Coalition clung on, in no small part thanks to Morrison’s ability to make a Bill Shorten Labor government look very, very scary. Now, with the government once again struggling with a long list of self-inflicted wounds, its attack dogs are trying to do the same to Anthony Albanese’s far more cautious opposition.
Here’s a list of the latest scare campaigns being tried on for size in question time.
Weak on national security
This has long been a theme for the government, trying to drum up fear of China while painting Labor as weak on foreign policy and national security — despite it being largely in lockstep with the government on many of these issues.
But the rhetoric really escalated during question time last week, when Defence Minister Peter Dutton claimed the Chinese Communist Party was backing Labor to win the election. As support for the incendiary claim, Dutton referred to ASIO chief Mike Burgess’ threat assessment, where the top spook spoke of a thwarted pre-election foreign interference plot.
At Senate estimates last night, Burgess issued a subtle rejoinder to Dutton, saying the agency “was not here to be politicised”.
When asked by Labor’s home affairs spokeswoman Kristina Keneally whether the agency had any concerns about Labor candidates, Burgess said Albanese’s reference to a conversation between the two, where he never raised specific concerns about Labor, was accurate.
Death taxes!
In 2019 a viral misinformation campaign about Labor introducing death taxes hurt it. More recently, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has repeatedly raised the spectre of death duties and inheritance taxes during question time.
The treasurer’s smoking gun appears to be a 30-year-old speech Albanese made while a NSW Labor figure, breathlessly reported in The Australian last week. It led Albanese to try to table his first year economics essay in Parliament yesterday.
Labor has repeatedly ruled out introducing any kind of death or inheritance tax, with opposition Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers labelling it an “unhinged scare campaign”.
tHe gReEns
The government has also tried hard to blur the lines between Labor and the Greens, repeatedly trying to convince voters with memories of the chaotic (but productive) Gillard-Rudd government that a new left-wing coalition is coming to raise your taxes.
In question time yesterday, Dutton claimed Labor can only be in power with the assistance of the Greens. Unless he’s talking preference flows, polling suggests Labor would win an electoral majority in its own right if a vote were held today. Dutton claimed the Greens would then make Labor cut the military budget.
Frydenberg too has hammered the “Labor-Greens coalition” line as ammunition for his claims about death duties. Labor has repeatedly ruled out forming a minority government with the Greens, despite its leader, Adam Bandt, talking up the prospect over the last year.
‘Never had the makings of a treasurer’
Another Frydenberg special has been to lay into Albanese for never having held a Treasury portfolio or delivered a budget. By that standard, Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Fraser would all be ineligible for the prime ministership.
