ELLEN RANSLEY: Anthony Albanese’s week goes from bliss to bleak with a steely reality check in Illawara

Anthony Albanese left Parliament House on Thursday evening with a pep in his step. With numerous signs suggesting Parliament won’t return, some in the building queried whether he could call an election as soon as this weekend.

But back on the quasi-campaign trail on Friday, the Prime Minister was swiftly served a steel wind turbine-sized reality check.

Arriving in Lake Illawarra in Whitlam — a Labor seat since its creation in 2016— to announce a replacement for retiring local member and Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones and to meet with local steelworkers, the Prime Minister was greeted with angry hecklers.

Unhappy about Labor’s decision to develop an offshore windzone off the Illawarra Coast, irate locals booed the PM and told him he wasn’t wanted.

“You don’t respect the region, we don’t want your wind farms,” one man told him.

“Get our of here Albo, we don’t want you here.”

Another suggested the PM should “put the offshore turbines in front of your mansion on the water”.

A senate inquiry into offshore wind industry was due to report back on Thursday, but a decision on Tuesday to extend that deadline to mid-March has added further fuel to Illawarra local’s anger, amid growing speculation Mr Albanese will call the election before that.

“They’re trying to bury the truth that is in those submissions that our community spent a lot of time putting together, sharing their experiences, and that’s what we need to make sure it is public, and we need to investigate that further,” campaigner Alex O’Brien told local reporters, as he demanded the report be fast tracked.

The PM mostly ignored the protesters until he fielded a question from a reporter about what impact Donald Trump’s proposed steel tariffs could have on the local steelworks.

“Turbines are made of steel by the way,” Mr Albanese said.

Someone was quick to retort “not Illawarra steel”.

The PM continued: “We want them built using Illawarra steel, and domestic manufacturing as well”, referring to Labor’s Future Made in Australia agenda.

The entire project has proven to be more of a headache than Labor would like, with hostile locals just part of the problem after the frontrunning developer pulled out of the running late last year.

Hecklers the tip of the iceberg

The PM may have tried his best to ignore the hecklers, but the palpable anger of so many locals is likely to come back and bite him, given Peter Dutton has pledged to scrap the project, which could whittle down the seat’s 8.3 per cent post-redistribution margin.

But he faces voter anger across the electorate. The incumbency curse that has crippled Governments across the world is out to get Labor.

The Prime Minister had an otherwise successful week, adding some final jewels into his first-term crown in legislating the last tranche of his Future Made in Australia policy, significant childcare reforms, and generational changes to electoral donation laws.

All the while, he made his case for re-election by talking up his achievements of the last two and a half years and the action taken to improve cost-of-living.

The PM has mostly cleared the decks, and insiders on all sides speculate an RBA rate cut next week could spur a visit to the Governor General.

What will follow will be a tough campaign. All sides agree there’s no such thing as a safe seat anymore, and the rate at which Australians are turning away from the major parties, Labor’s dive in recent polls, and even the 17 per cent swing against Labor in the Werribee state by-election has all MPs on edge.

And Labor is acutely aware that voters are still feeling pain caused by the cost-of-living crisis.

Add that all up, and the polls are pointing towards a hung parliament. Labor sources acknowledge they face the prospect of losing up to 10 seats.

While the PM still weighs up his election date options, the tactics in the House this week made clear just how aware Labor is of the mammoth task it has ahead of it.

Campaign trail writing in the dixer tea leaves

Every day in Question Time, the Prime Minister and his ministers are asked “Dorothy dixers” — planted questions from the Government’s own backbench that allow them to spruik their work, and warn about the alternative.

The Nightly’s analysis of the dixers asked of the frontbench in the last fortnight reveal the Government has given precious airtime to some of its most vulnerable seats — but giving questions to MPs on greater margins also shows an acknowledgement that there is indeed no such thing as a safe seat.

Gilmore on the NSW South Coast is the Government’s most marginal seat, holding it with a razor thin 0.2 per cent margin. The PM and his frontbench took six questions from local MP Fiona Phillips this fortnight.

Every answer began with a rousing endorsement of the two-term MP, who faces an uphill battle this time around against Liberal candidate and former NSW minister Andrew Constance.

Meryl Swanson, who’s margin in the central coast electorate of Paterson was slimmed down to 2.6 per cent in the re-distribution, had the second highest number of questions this bloc with four.

Lingiari MP Marion Scrymgour, who holds the NT electorate with a 1.7 per cent margin and will have a fight ahead of her, asked three questions.

The NSW redistribution has made Jerome Laxale’s Bennelong notionally Liberal-held on 0.4 per cent, with the first-term MP asking the frontbench two questions this sitting fortnight.

Outgoing Lyons MP Brian Mitchell also had two – including one on Thursday he acknowledged as his “last in this place” (which further fueled speculation the election will be sooner rather than later).

He leaves the seat with a 0.9 per cent margin, which former state Tasmanian Labor leader Rebecca White hopes she can improve.

With pollsters predicting Labor could feel their biggest hits in the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, MPs for Robertson (2.2 per cent), Aston (3.6 per cent), Reid (5.2 per cent) and Hake (7.6 per cent) all got two questions.

While Labor feels confident it can hold on to much of the gains it made in WA in the last election, Tangney is widely regarded as being the most likely to fall to the Coalition. MP Sam Lim had two questions this fortnight.

Fellow West Australians Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, 10 per cent) and Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, 9.4 per cent) also asked two questions a pop.

Boothby, in Adelaide’s inner-south and south-west, is Labor’s with just a 3.3 per cent margin. Local member Louise Miller-Frost asked two questions.

Blair MP Shane Neumann — under threat from the Coalition in the outer suburbs of Brisbane, where he holds the seat with 5.2 per cent — also got two.

Perhaps as an acknowledgement that every seat will be a contest, Canberra MP Alicia Payne (12.2 per cent v Greens) and Bendigo MP Lisa Chesters (11.2 per cent) both got two.

A number of other MPs asked one question this fortnight, including Josh Burns and Peter Khalil, whose Melbourne seats of Macnamara (12.2 per cent) and Wills (4.6 per cent) are being targeted by The Greens.

To each, the PM and his crossbench could talk up their action on cost of living, Medicare and health policies, “responsible economic management”, childcare education reforms, energy bill relief, housing policies, and “building Australia’s future” in general.

For all that Labor has achieved, the real test for the PM will be how he deals with angry voters out in the real world.