CAMERON MILNER: Truth is stranger than fake news for Anthony Albanese, but Australia really does want you gone

If only Real Albo could blame it all on Fake Albo.

If only he could just cry that his free fall in the polls was the result of misinformation and disinformation spread by malicious actors and political enemies.

But it’s the truth of his deeds that has led to more than half of Australians saying he doesn’t deserve another go as Prime Minister after less than a term in office.

The polls are now all one-way traffic, even as Australians are already being inundated with dubious claims and cleverly edited sound bites — such as the ALP’s fully authorised and paid for ad attempting a Mediscare 2.0.

The far more pervasive and dangerous content is to be found on social media platforms. There’s content targeting the radicalisation of Muslim youth as well as headlines from Russian websites screaming about Penny Wong’s “arrest”, complete with digitally rendered pictures of Wong in an orange jumpsuit and cuffs — all circulating on social media news feeds unchecked.

More than ever, voters need trusted and regulated news services to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Social media is a sewer of fake news and outright lies — TikTok being by far the worst.

Artificial intelligence has added a new speed and apparent credibility to this fake content.

Even basic tools can produce content convincing enough to fool the uninitiated — or those voters who are simply too busy surviving the Albanese cost-of-living crisis to pay too close attention to the images in their feeds.

The more political parties themselves blur the lines and twist the truth, the more vulnerable they also become to lies, damn lies and statistics. Anthony Albanese genuinely believes the RBA’s rate cut is all his own doing. All the while, voters who are suffering hear: “You’ve never had it so good, cut the whinging”.

Having watched the chaos of this term of Government, voters are left wondering what is real and what’s not. They have to pinch themselves that Labor could’ve stuff it up this badly, this quickly.

If you’d said in May 2022 that Albo would trash his working-class, Houso kid image by settling on a $4.3 million clifftop retirement mansion seven months before attempting re-election, you would’ve been laughed down

Then there’s the selfish desperation of renting that house out at a discount — netting himself big money in negative gearing tax advantages in the process — within weeks of the election. Sounds like fake news, but it’s sadly true.

Then there’s Albanese’s defence of his 22-year-old son’s Qantas Chairman’s Lounge membership. Surely that’s a scurrilous, false story peddled by the “right-wing media”? Afraid not.

To think the party of Bob Hawke would be so cowed in the face of rank anti-Semitism is hard to believe. Worse is the way certain ministers have fanned the flames of hatred by downplaying acts of terrorism, violence and hate towards Jewish Australians. This is the lived experience of Australians as they see Albanese’s weak leadership and acquiescence to anti-Semitism deliver such vile acts.

Had you written this anytime before October 7, 2023 you would’ve been dismissed as being in need of a reality check.

Add in swanning around on Toto One, taking Qantas upgrades while denying competitors entry to the Australian aviation market, and so meekly accepting being called a “handsome boy” by Beijing and it isn’t hard to see why the ALP are where they are.

The reality is the Albanese Government is at the precipice of an electoral wipe-out because of just how badly they’ve governed.

No one asked Albo to perpetrate the act of self-indulgence that was his Voice campaign, on which he squandered all his electoral goodwill.

No one asked him to promise $285 off power bills and then fail to deliver.

No one asked the Albanistas to be so arrogant, complacent and dismissive of Peter Dutton that he now is within a handful of seats of a Liberal majority.

The truth, as a number of us have been writing (only to be dismissed by the know-it-alls and blow-hard lobbyists closest to Albo) is the cost-of-living crisis has worsened on his watch. People are not better off than they were three years ago.

Albanese has committed numerous acts of deliberate political self-harm. This is lot less bad luck than plain old bad judgment.

Labor wants to paint a narrative of media attacks based on political bias, when in fact straight reporting of this Government’s actions is enough to cause it harm.

The facts speak for themselves. They speak of a failure to act and of failed acts. A failure to make calls in the community’s best interests. They speak of spectacular weakness from the top.

The reality is this has been a very poor Government that hasn’t stood up for Australians in their hour of need. They’ve failed to get inflation under control and they’ve failed to protect our Australian values by giving no quarter to terrorists like Hamas.

Labor will no doubt scrape the bottom of the sludge bucket of negative campaigning and play the victim of “fake news” online, but no amount of crying about misinformation or disinformation will excuse this Government’s actual performance.

The election can’t come soon enough. Voters are about to give the Prime Minister and his Albanistas a truth-telling commission without holding back. Voters have had it with Albo and are about to exact a very real revenge on the Labor Party as a consequence.

Cameron Milner is a former secretary of the Queensland Labor Party