Cameron Milner: Election a battle between Albanese’s Shein and Dutton’s Temu

Voters used to treat their politics like they did their favourite department store or make of car: they chose their favourite and stuck with it.

This election though, the options are more like Anthony Albanese’s Shein to Peter Dutton’s Temu.

It’s cheap, you know it won’t fit and it won’t last, but it’s all voters can afford in this cost-of-living crisis. It’s all just fast politics for the moment.

But like so many online purchases, even as you hit purchase, you are wondering if what you ordered will ever be delivered.

And voters know it’s all on the credit card.

Because of this, both sides plumb ever lower levels of brand equity with the punters.

Elections used to be like the Boxing Day sales: much anticipated events. Now every other week there’s a discount on something and you only have to go without a little before a politician throws a freebie your way to regain your momentary attention.

Liberal and Labor used to feel like Myer versus Grace Brothers, both full of value and sold with great care and service.

Under Albo and Dutto, their parties just look like the battle of the $2 shops. It’s Albanese’s “everything must go sale” versus Dutton’s Dollar Dazzlers’.

There’s no returns policy with either of them and the warranty only lasts until 6pm on Saturday May 3 and after that there’s no consumer rights available.

You want a refund on Albo’s $275 off your power bill promise? Sorry, no rain checks.

Labor versus Liberal used to be Ford versus Holden, now they’re just peddlers of the latest imported ideas. Gone are the distinctly Australian-made policies.

You want to trade up with your next family car purchase, so you go into the dealership of the brand you and your family have been buying for years.

There you are met by the 30-year veteran of being face down in the trough of corporate largesse: Albanese, who will say and do anything to get you to buy the car, but just like Matilda’s dad, that other used car salesman, you find out afterwards he’s wound the odometer back and put sawdust in the gearbox.

Albo might run around with a Medicare card, but he would never have done a Whitlam and introduced it in the first place.

Gone too are the intellectual greats like Bill Kelty who, along with Keating and Hawke delivered genuine inflation-fighting reforms such as the accord that gave workers not only superannuation savings, but also removed wage-based inflation from our economy.

Nah, these days both parties have shut the local production lines down and simply front the latest imported ideas.

Forgiving already successful tertiary students the debt they owe taxpayers for their education — an Albo centrepiece of this campaign — was Joe Biden’s middle class welfare 1.0.

Liberals running around in MAGA hats pining for a tangerine tan have worked out just how toxic Trump is when you import his ideas. Public servants returning to work from their taxpayer paid for offices: Trump said it first.

Labor’s claim to convert Australia into a green energy superpower is straight out of Keir Starmer’s Labour manifesto.

Australian politics used to have strong leaders who had done their apprenticeships and learnt from the best.

Keating had Jack Lang, Howard had Robert Menzies. Bob Hawke was raised by the great Australian trade union movement.

Now, at this election voters are voting for anyone else but the major parties, so disappointed and disillusioned are they with what’s on offer.

Elections used to be major events, catching the attention of the nation.

Polling day used to be like the Melbourne Cup, the event the nation stopped for and watched.

Now people get to vote over 13 days and it’s treated with all the enthusiasm of “meh”.

You can watch on as Peter Dutton, who stood up for a viewpoint on the Voice and had a strongman brand, become this back flipping political jelly back as the election is called. The newly minted Dutto.

Saying “sorry I stuffed up” twice in two weeks is considered virtue signalling by Senator Jane Hume. To voters it just looks weak and confused.

Dutto has been focus grouped to his political death. Sure, not everyone liked him. Tesla drivers from Toorak were positively revolted by him, but now he’s looking like just another Albo, weak as the proverbial.

The Liberals’ great failure has been to take the risk of losing as being somehow more important than the chance of governing after just one term out of office.

It’s hard to imagine seeing a worse campaign effort from the Liberals. It simply wouldn’t have been allowed to happen in Howard’s day under either Sir Lynton Crosby or Brian Loughnane.

Howard took fundamental changes like a GST and Workchoices to voters. The Liberals’ signature policy today is 12 months of cheaper fuel paid for on our collective credit card.

Voters see through this like a cashback offer on their home loan, knowing you always have to pay it back for longer later on.

Now the Liberals are left with backing in virtually every bad Labor idea and simply not putting in the long hours to come up with a plan to fight the crippling cost of living.

Cost of living is the only issue of concern to voters. Instead we see Labor running a scare campaign on Trump and the Liberals chasing Russian bases in Papua. Talk about being distracted and not dealing with the only issue voters care about.

Every day voters aren’t being reminded of Albo’s cost-of-living crisis is a day Labor wins.

Australian politics just used to be so, so much better than what we are now being offered by a weak Albo and an ever weaker Dutto.

Cameron Milner is a former Queensland Labor State secretary