CAMERON MILNER: Voters don’t like Albanese, he’s just the least worst

This election is all over bar the shouting. Anthony Albanese will be Prime Minister again after Saturday, quite possibly with a majority in his own right.

Soft voters, already spooked by seeing Peter Dutton has no coherent plan to fight cost of living, are likely to break hard for Albanese on the basis of not wanting to see the Greens and teals in the driver’s seat, especially if they think Albo will be back regardless.

The polls are only snapshots in time, but the trend is Labor’s friend. It’s been all one-way traffic since the “independent”Reserve Bank board moved to cut interest rates back in February.

Albanese should acknowledge the work put in by Treasurer Jim Chalmers on not only the board, but also delivering a Budget that looked like it was dealing with cost of living. The most telling point in the avalanche of published polls is that Labor now leads the Liberals on which party is better able to handle the cost of living.

Dutton is right to attack Labor by asking voters “do you feel better off than you did three years ago?”.

But when then US presidential challenger Ronald Reagan used the same line against the hapless Jimmy Carter years, he also had an aggressive tax reform plan to super-charge the economy.

Dutton asked the question but his shadow treasurer Angus Taylor doesn’t have an answer.

Likewise, Albanese’s planned tax on unrealised capital gains that could’ve become the mother of all scare campaigns about Labor’s secret plan to tax the family home.

Mediscare 1.0 was created by Bill Shorten off the back of one IT outsourcing contract, so a latter day Albo-scare on a tax on success should’ve been more than possible.

Point for point the Liberals have been beaten badly in the undercard fights. Chalmers is the political and intellectual superior of Taylor. Chalmers a future leader, Taylor is a flake.

Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley, in witness protection most of this campaign, makes Albanese’s deputy Richard Marles look good.

That takes real effort and she should actually be given more credit by Labor.

Marles is the stumblebum amateur golfing enthusiast who used RAAF planes as an Uber service so he could tee off in time at his local course while pretending to know anything about his defence portfolio.

The most unbalanced match-up, though, by far is ALP national secretary Paul Erickson and the Liberals’ Andrew Hirst. Erickson was always going to be ruthlessly efficient, sandbagging seats and running dead again in teal-vulnerable seats.

Hirst, by contrast, is the bloke that smashed the Liberals by allowing teals to win seats in 2022. Dutton’s challenge has been fighting on two fronts and Hirst’s incompetence is the root cause for that structural deficit in this year’s election.

This doesn’t mean voters have forgiven or forgotten Albanese. This isn’t some great reconciliation. Plenty of people stay in bad relationships and that’s no different for many long-suffering voters and Albo.

Albo shouldn’t mistake acquiescence with affection. Voters have no love for the bloke who daily disappoints and treats being PM as just shits and giggles, with a side serving of freebies, upgrades and flying high on Toto One.

After nearly three decades face down in the trough of corporate largesse, at least Albo is at least a known quantity for voters.

He continually meets low expectations and never fails to disappoint with his insipid weakness.

As the world deals with China and Russian aggression and the Trump political metronome, the consistency of a dud being re-elected to head the government seems somehow comforting.

See, Albanese has delivered on his small target agenda that he campaigned with in 2022. He promised to do so little and delivered even less. Albo is Mr Consistency.

Albanese is like picking between Natural White and Off White to paint both the inside and outside of the house for the next three years. A safe choice for those happy for three more years of blanc mange.

Either way it will just be one giant missed opportunity to reform our nation the way Labor greats like Chifley, Whitlam, Hawke, Keating and even Rudd promised — before being let down terribly by the incompetence of Wayne Swan as his treasurer.

The Albanistas subscribe to a political justification of Nietzschean proportions — just being there is an end in itself, no tangible record of what was done the day before or a plan for the next is required. It’s just the unbearable lightness of being that is the end in itself.

The PM will be burdened with an even shorter to do list than he was after 2022, such is the ever-shrinking Labor agenda under the Albanese.

Albanese will crow after Saturday night that he’s broken the voodoo of PMs past. Despite being involved intimately in two of those leadership changes, Albanese has wanted to emulate Howard’s record of staying leader for one term and being re-elected.

Well big whoopie! Glad to see Albanese in true form, trying to emulate someone else’s achievements rather than be remembered for any of his own.

But that’s where the comparison ends.

Howard had the courage to take the GST and Work Choices to voters as fundamental Liberal reforms. John Howard’s strength stands in total contrast to Albanese’s weakness to put before voters a real plan for change rather than an administrative to-do list.

Albanese’s claim to fame is being a time server, not that in the time he had he served well.

So let Saturday roll around, see Albo claim victor, but know that familiarity for voters still breeds contempt for him as PM.

In uncertain times and a Liberal economic plan that was dreadfully undercooked, voters decided if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.