CAMERON MILNER: Anthony Albanese on cusp of Voice-like election loss as Coalition poised to win back majority

All the opinion polling evidence points to Labor being returned with nothing more than a minority government supported by fickle Teals and extreme Greens. The federal election will now likely run full term with an election in May 2025. Labor simply doesn’t have the Liberal or Green seat gains to offset the many losses coming.

The only other option is Labor loses altogether after just one term.

Many in the commentariat think that the only way for the Liberals to win is to win back all the Teal seats. But what if Peter Dutton simply won enough seats directly from Labor to secure a win?

The lesson learnt of how Albanese almost single-handedly converted a soft 60:40 support for the Albanese Voice in March 2023 to a hard No with 60:40 against just six months later shows just how volatile the electorate is and what a terrible campaigner Albanese is with voters.

Dutton picked the mood exactly on the Voice, just as he has with the white-hot anger of voters on the cost of living pressures this time around.

The electorate is under more pressure now financially than in a generation. The cost of living isn’t class or geographically constrained. This isn’t about unemployment and people needing to find work.

This is a crippling personal recession for virtually every Australian with the national economy only staying out of recession with the tsunami of immigration let in by Albanese in a vain attempt at avoiding bad headlines on the economy. We simply didn’t have the accommodation for all these new immigrants. That in turn has driven house prices to spiral even higher and sent rents soaring across Australia.

The Labor government has a $33 billion housing fund that in two years has spent $3 billion and not delivered one single new dwelling.

Australians are now alone in the world with their wages having gone backwards in real terms under Albanese - that’s in contrast to people living in North America, Japan and all of Western Europe.

Topping it all off the RBA has warned that interest rates may not come down or, if so, only a little before the next election. This has set off the usual Labor bashing of the RBA along with a particularly misogynistic attack from ALP National President, Wayne Swan employing domestic violence references attacking female Governor, Michelle Bullock.

The electoral landscape is bleak for Labor and it just continues engaging in self-harm. Just take the 3,000 Gazans on tourism visas without full security checks by ASIO or the torrid Census question issue over counting trans and intersex Australians.

The glib line that Peter Dutton is unelectable is easy to say for Labor, but the evidence just doesn’t support the contention. I well remember the same being said of Bill Shorten in 2016 and he got within one seat of winning. That was from a harder start on just 55 seats than that of Peter Dutton’s 58.

Except for South and Western Australia, brand Labor is worse now at the state level than it was in 2022. Labor failed to win Tasmania, lost Northern Territory and will I think now lose Queensland on October 26. Minns and Allan are both trying hard as new premiers, but voters aren’t buying in.

So, money where the mouth is time. With a federal election only six months away I don’t see Labor winning back from the Greens any seats it lost last time. It is under very serious threat from the Greens in Wills and could lose McNamara to the Greens if only 247 people switch their primary votes from Labor to the Greens based on previous results.

This is why the issue of the Liberals and Labor putting the Hamas-sympathising Greens political party last on how to vote cards is critical. Labor won’t and will excuse a preference deal with the extreme Greens, thereby ensuring even more from the minor party are elected to our Parliament.

I think the Teals will struggle to hold Goldstein, Curtin and Mackellar from the Liberals. The Teals have already lost North Sydney, which has been abolished.

This leaves then the main game of Labor losses to the Coalition. Labor already is down one with the loss of Higgins in the re-distribution.

On the basis of the cost of living biting harder in outer metro and regional areas, expect Labor to lose the following off the bat: Gilmore, Lyons, Lingiari, McEwen, Paterson, Robertson and Aston.

On the basis of WA polls, post-McGowan, Tangney and most likely the new seat of Bullwinkle loom as Liberal gains.

The Liberals are therefore up 11 net, then on the 2022 election result, sitting on 69 while Labor is down seven from their current 78 to 71.

Then it gets interesting because individual MPs will sandbag, but on the basis of further erosion of the Labor primary vote, I can see Boothby in SA, Reid and Bennelong in NSW and Chisholm in Victoria — all held by the Coalition as recently as 2022 — returning to the Liberals.

Liberals to 73, Labor to 67.

This is before there are line-ball contests from MPs who I think will just win in Parramatta, Hunter and Blair on the basis of the strong personal brand.

Labor only needs another Dai Le in Blaxland, Watson or McMahon after the Muslim vote has splintered the Labor primary to put them all in play. The sleeper in all senses of the word is Anne Stanley in Werriwa only protecting a 5 per cent margin.

Labor looks stupid enough to want to preselect an Anglo inner-city climate change expert in Gorton - where 47 per cent of all residents were born overseas - over a community representative candidate in the local Mayor for Brimbank, Ranka Rasic. After the disaster of Kristina Kenneally has Labor learnt nothing?

All of the above seat-by-seat predictions are in the results range of MRP polls conducted by widely respected Redbridge pollsters and many others like Resolve and Newspoll.

The Albanistas still think amongst the Greens and remaining Teals they can cobble together the nine votes they need for a majority and an independent speaker. Hubris knows no bounds.

Because the alternative is equally true. The Liberals would only need Bob Katter and Dai Le to gain a majority while gifting a Teal the speakership … did anyone say Steggall, Ryan, Wilkie or Spender?

In the end, I don’t think Australians vote to divide our nation. They certainly didn’t when it came to the Voice with Albanese losing nationally and in every state.

I think with the prospect of Albanese clinging to power with extreme Greens and out-of-touch Teals they send him out a one-term loser just like they did Scullin in 1931 after Australians lived through another truly appalling cost of living crisis, the Great Depression.

The memories of Gillard and Swan’s Wattle 1.0 deal in 2010 when they also lost the majority government in only one term is a more recent memory of Labor chaos for voters.

Labor is headed for a guaranteed minority government, yet a total loss, Voice-like, is still within Albanese’s grasp. Just give him the next six months to make it a certainty.

Cameron Milner is director of GXO Strategies and a former ALP State Secretary with three decades’ experience on Labor campaigns