NICOLA SMITH: Election’s deficit of honest answers, while campaign spin remains in surplus

When Andrew Faulkner drove up randomly to the Rockbank service station in Melbourne to fill up his family car on Tuesday, he had no idea he was about to achieve what the rest of the nation has been unable to do — ask Peter Dutton a straight question.

As the election campaign accelerates towards the opening of pre-polls next week, both the Opposition Leader and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have become masters at ducking, avoiding and deflecting questions fundamental to the nation’s future.

Mr Faulkner was initially shy to unburden to Mr Dutton as he peered bemused between the bowsers watching the commotion of the Coalition leader posing with a fuel hose.

When he did, it was raw and personal — “I have a disabled child, we’ve spent $18,000 on doing reports and then the NDIS don’t read the reports,” he said.

Mr Dutton showed a moment of empathy, promising to chase it up for him, before springing immediately back to his machine-like political spiel.

“We’re trying to give you 25 cents a litre off your diesel,” he said.

Mr Faulkner laughed and said he would take it.

But the nation’s leaders are sticking to the answers that suit them and it’s not the ones Australians want to hear.

The interaction was mundane but newsworthy precisely because genuine conversations are so rare in Australia’s astonishingly sterile campaign environment.

While security concerns can’t be dismissed, they exist and are even heightened in Australia’s neighbouring countries where top politicians engage more freely with the people they’re asking to trust them to lead.

Here, panic crosses aides’ eyes in uncontrolled environments where regular voters may throw curveball remarks.

While daily press conferences can be spontaneous and combative, a curt dismissal of a member of the public could derail a leader’s bid for power.

But in sticking to their set-piece lines and predictable mud-slinging, they are ignoring the public’s thirst for authenticity, honesty and accountability.

It’s no wonder Australian voters are wavering in unprecedented numbers and the risk of a hung parliament is still lingering over poll after poll.

As the wheels threaten to come off his campaign bus, Mr Dutton, especially, is clinging to his mantras like a life-vest, refusing to deviate from well-rehearsed lines.

His stiff response to every uncomfortable question has been “what this country doesn’t need is three more years of Labor” before accusing the Government of “lies” then “lies” and more “lies!”

If his team are in the doldrums about his plunging ratings, they’re not visibly showing it.

But after being pushed for clarity on his policies at a press conference at a construction site in Maddingley, a peri-urban town near Melbourne, on Tuesday morning there was a palpable shift in eagerness to respond on Russia’s request for access to an Indonesian military base later that afternoon.

It would a “catastrophic failure of diplomatic relations” if the Government did not have forewarning about a “very troubling development,” he thundered outside the Newearth construction company in Romsey, after driving a massive truck.

It was another handy club to cudgel the Government with, and then everyone got back on the bus.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday was at an urgent care clinic in Tasmania, joking in his own press conference about watching Star Wars on May fourth and taking a segway into golf and Louis the caboodle.

Mr Albanese has had a better start to his campaign and appears relaxed and jovial, but with almost three weeks to go, over-confidence and hubris are bubbling to the surface as he floats the idea of preparing not only a second, but even a third term.

Both leaders, like many politicians, are prone to avoiding questions they don’t like.

After three years in office, Mr Albanese has become more skilled at distracting and deflecting than the less experienced Mr Dutton who shuts down every unwelcome query with a blunt: “I’ve dealt with that; next question; you only get one.”

But if both leaders are so confident of their election offers to voters, they owe it to them to address their concerns and treat them like adults.

Housing, one of the nation’s toughest challenges, is a case in point.

In the bidding war for votes, Labor and Coalition on Sunday raced to out-do each other with big-bang solutions for a young Australians desperate to get on the housing ladder — alarming seasoned economists along the way.

Mr Albanese’s offer of five per cent deposits for all first home buyers and a $10 billion pledge towards building them 100,000 new homes was matched by Mr Dutton’s plan to allow first-time buyers of newly built homes to be able to deduct mortgage payments from income taxes.

Economic experts threw their hands up in horror, warning against quick fixes on taxes and housing that risk inflating house prices and setting future generations up for hardship with a Federal Budget already heading for $1 trillion in the red.

But asked repeatedly for honest answers about their calculations on Tuesday, neither leader was willing to step up.

Pressed for clarity, Mr Albanese refused to release “cabinet documents” revealing how much house prices would increase under his Government’s expanded first-home buyer Commonwealth guarantee scheme.

His frontbench have downplayed the impact of the policy on house prices, but the Prime Minister batted away requests to release the basis of their assurances.

“We don’t release Treasury documentation. You have the figure. The idea that they put a precise dollar value on something is not right,” he said.

Mr Dutton was equally evasive at his construction site stand-up.

Asked multiple times to reveal the costing impact of his own policies and whether he wanted to see wages rise faster than house prices, he refused to engage.

“I want to make sure that we have a market which is accessible for young Australians now,” he said, diverting quickly to slam the Prime Minister’s “joke of a policy.”

Asked again, he shut down the questioning, saying the journalist only got one shot.

Politicians can engage how they wish with the media, but they can’t have it both ways with the public.

They can’t say “trust me” without saying exactly why.

They can turn their back on questions but not on the polls, which show savvy voters see through the spin and politicking, and they’re just not buying it.