Federal Election 2025: Why this Federal poll is a pedestrian battle of the least worst

Australians couldn’t feel less inspired by the options in this election.

Again, voters are being offered two leaders who have failed to ignite any passion in the community despite clocking up more than four decades in political experience between them.

It feels like Australian politics is on a serial Groundhog Day mediocrity loop whereby voters are constantly having to choose between two uninspiring leaders.

It is little wonder that the anyone-but-those-two vote is so high, currently at 40 per cent in Newspoll’s latest survey of public sentiment.

Which is why the mood in Parliament House this week was so thoroughly surprising.

Close-up encounters with both the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader revealed two men, supremely confident in their ability to win a majority.

Less than 24 hours before heading out to Government House to call his May 3 election, Mr Albanese was spotted mingling at the café in the bowels of Parliament House.

Apparently bored, he ventured outside of his Prime Ministerial office with one of his closest allies, Finance Minister and campaign spokeswoman Katy Gallagher, to grab a caffeine fix.

This was not the act of a man who has spent the last 18 months being battered in the polls, which have never recovered to his post-2022 election honeymoon as a result of his calamitous decision to hold the Voice referendum.

However, he displayed the same self-assurance when he almost strutted to the lectern on Friday morning to make his opening pitch to “fellow Australians” just after his dawn visit to Yarralumla.

Asked if he was ready, Mr Albanese quipped: “You bet,” before adding “born ready.”

Even his internal detractors admit he is on form. And his confidence is somewhat validated.

The Prime Minister goes into the campaign in the best shape Labor has been since October 2023, when the devastating scale of the Voice referendum loss was laid bare.

His last few weeks have been the best. Cyclone Alfred allowed him to revive some of the disaster politics that benefited the State premiers for so long during the pandemic, as he flooded Queensland television with daily media appearances.

The spectre of Peter Dutton abandoning his home town to attend a fundraiser in Sydney during the same time was an unforced error, so close to the finishing line, that Labor has gleefully capitalised on.

The Opposition Leader has arguably had his worst few weeks in the job by contrast. Proposing a referendum on deporting dual citizens convicted of serious offences like terrorism and child abuse was such a surprise that his frontbench colleagues found out about it in the media.

His ill-discipline and inability to stick to cost-of-living issues even risked derailing his run at the top job in the final stretch.=

So it was equally surprising to measure his confidence levels after the Parliament’s final question time on Thursday when he spoke of winning a majority and talked of there being 41 seats in play.

Their confidence is not totally shared by MPs, many of whom know their leaders are a drag on the party’s vote.

Mr Albanese declared he wanted an election debate on policy, yet he did not answer the substance of many policy questions put to him, including when The Nightly asked why reserving gas for the east coast domestic market, as Mr Dutton proposed in his budget reply speech on Thursday night, was a bad idea given that it is being backed by the Australian Workers Union.

Mr Albanese could only say that his policy, a code of conduct for the gas industry, was delivering more gas than Mr Dutton’s would. This will be cold comfort to those who have only watched their energy bills go up and up since that code was introduced.

The Prime Minister belied the truth when he pulled out a Medicare card and waved it before the cameras.

MPs on both sides know their own leader is their ultimate weakness, and in a way, the uninspiring choices of Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton emerge as each other’s best assets.

Which is why both leaned heavily into attacking each other during their opening pitches.

“This election is a choice between Labor’s plan to keep building or Peter Dutton’s promise to cut,” he said.

“This thing here — your Medicare card — they’re all in your hands.

“Peter Dutton needs $600 billion to pay for nuclear reactors.

“That money has to come from somewhere. Everything in Peter Dutton’s record tells us that he will start by cutting Medicare, and he won’t stop there.”

Without ever mentioning the United States or Trump, Mr Albanese said Australia didn’t need to borrow from other countries, referencing Mr Dutton’s Elon Musk-esque plan to DOGE the public service by cutting 41,000 people.

This attack hurts Mr Dutton, who has little warmth to his public image.

“We’ve had two callers today saying they’d like you to smile more, that it might sway their vote, Is that something you’ll do?” 3AW radio host Tom Elliot asked the Queenslander.

“Mum gives me that advice as well,” Mr Dutton said, as he agreed to give it a go.

The Opposition Leader has also sharpened his attacks.

On Friday, he said the question Australians needed to ask themselves was whether they were better off today than they were three years ago.

This won’t be a contest fought on big visions, let’s face it. This election will be a duel between two men whose best hope is each other.

It’s a battle of the least worst. No wonder they both think they can win.