CAMERON MILNER: Two big wins are headed Anthony Albanese’s way. He’ll squander them

Anthony Albanese has declared that if someone didn’t vote for Scott Morrison last election, they won’t be voting for Peter Dutton this time around as this is somehow an immovable statement of fact.

If this is actually what the PM thinks and what his dwindling inner circle believes, they are beyond hubris and are living in the land of the totally self-deluded.

It fails the most basic understanding of the polls and the conversation happening in the commuter belt and outer suburbs of our nation’s cities.

Albanese fails to realise voters feel lied to, let down and cut loose by Labor.

People are being crushed by a cost-of-living crisis that is felt in every weekly shop, every school extracurricular that needs to be budgeted for meticulously.

The is all while Albo’s coterie of corporate executives “budget” by taking their January skiing getaways in Niseko rather than Val d’Isere.

Malcolm Turnbull was aptly summed up by Peta Credlin as Mr Harbourside Mansion and Albanese is now as Mr Clifftop Mansion.

The aloofness to Labor’s impending electoral drubbing is all the more confounding given he only just beat Morrison in 2022.

If you were looking at a racing form guide, the 2022 election was the equivalent of a Group 3 race at Mudgee on a Thursday compared to the Group 1 at Randwick the next election represents.

Morrison was just so bad. He did borders okay, but once he got to the Lodge he had all the energy of a Chiko Roll-munching couch potato in a Cronulla Sharks cap.

You can see the punters’ current conclusion for the race ahead.

Dutton Dasher, a true stayer from the Howard’s Battlers bloodline and previously trained by the lacklustre Andrew Hirst stable, now under the nothing-to-lose Jamie Briggs stable. Showed great form in the Voice Cup to win by three lengths, having started back in the field. Track conditions didn’t suit in the Dunkley By-election Plate, but coming off much better recent form and firming as a short priced favourite.

Compare that to the Albanese Ambler. Sired by Copacabana Coaster and never really showed any ambition in its younger years. Questions over recent form and whether the now six-year-old gelding has the staying power. Best form was winning the COVID Cup, but lost the Primary Plate and Mining States double. Trained by Madam Penny Wong under the guidance of strapper Katy Gallagher. Money on a place at best.

The more voters see Albo the more they want to vote for Dutton.

Labor though has two small slivers of hope on the horizon.

RBA Governor Michele Bullock will wade into the betting markets and place an interest cut on Albo that will get some to look again, briefly, at Labor’s cost-of-living measures.

The second is Albanese, with the help of Rudd in Washington, will get a deal out of Trump on steel and aluminium. As certain as the sun comes up tomorrow, Trump will relent, having secured Australia’s longer term anti-China positioning.

Albanese will revel in both the interest rate gift from Bullock and talking up how he saved the steel and aluminium industries back home.

It will be a short-lived sugar hit that will make headlines but not move votes longer term.

It’s why in meetings with ministers last week, corporates and community advocacy groups were told to ready for an April election, either April 5 or 12.

The logic then was to go in the afterglow of an interest rate “win”. Now Trump’s tariffs open a new opportunity for a further “win”.

Both major parties are spending big on advertising, a sure sign both sides know it’s on.

The weekend by-elections in Victoria have shown just how soft the Labor vote is there, putting a swag of Federal seats in the gun. Labor copped a 16 per cent primary swing in Werribee and though they didn’t run in Prahran, local analysts say the size of the Greens’ and Liberal primaries could see Josh Burns run third in Macnamara federally.

Everywhere Labor looks they are on the defensive, yet the Albanistas are briefing out wins everywhere in the belief that simply saying it will make it so.

It’s reminiscent of Anna Bligh who led Labor in Queensland in 2012 to its biggest ever loss by chasing Liberal-held seats that were never going to fall, all while failing to sandbag Labor’s next generation of talent.

Bligh couldn’t even stick around to take her medicine, infamously resigning on election night before the final results were known.

Albanese could well do the same. The Grayndler concession speech on election night may well be as memorable as his one in 2022 when he told voters his solution to their cost-of-living pressures was implementing the Uluṟu Statement from the Heart in full. You remember: Voice, Truth and Treaty!

He’ll have Jodie, a lifetime of grandfathered parliamentary super and the retirement villa ready for him to evict another tenant from, so losing isn’t actually going to cost him much at all.

It’s not like the “always underestimated” Albanese has been anything less than just always underwhelming. He’s actually not done one signature thing once he got there, even totally losing a 60-40 lead on the Voice in six short months. In that way he’s a lot more like Morrison than he’d like to admit.

You don’t have to like Dutton to see he’s strong. Even those who still won’t vote for him tell you at least you know what he stands for.

As the horses round the corner for the straight, punters will have gone in heavy on the Dutton Dasher while the Albanese Ambler will be plodding along, under heavy whip but with one eye on the long paddock and a life by the sea.

The Albanistas will still hope the jockeys in the teal and green silks can box in the Dutton Dasher, but based on all the recent form the longer the race goes the more Albanese will just slip down the field as the Dutton Dasher pins its ears back and looks for the finishing line.

Polls don’t lie, punters don’t throw money away and the election campaigns these days rarely change voters minds that much.

The formal campaign is days to a few weeks away and it’s showing all the signs of being a referendum on Labor and cost of living. None of that bodes well for Labor.

Cameron Milner is the former Queensland State Labor secretary