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DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Daniel James. This is 7am.

Get a bunch of people into a room and ask them what they think of the prime minister.

That’s what pollsters have been doing all year. In hundreds of groups, they’ve spoken to thousands of people.

And the picture that has emerged this year of what the public thinks of Anthony Albanese isn’t pretty, with approval ratings approaching the lows Scott Morrison had before being voted out of office in 2022.

Perceptions around the mansion Albanese bought, the freebies he’s accepted, have hurt him.

And with an election looming, this spells trouble for the PM.

Today, special correspondent for The Saturday Paper Jason Koutsoukis on the public's dislike of Anthony Albanese and whether he can turn it around.

It’s Friday, December 20.

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DANIEL:

Jase, thanks for joining us.

JASON:

Daniel, it's great to be with you.

DANIEL:

So Anthony Albanese has been relentlessly focus grouped this year. What's been the top line assessment?

JASON:

So right throughout this year, we've seen the government's numbers in the published opinion polls follow a steady decline. And that's also something that's being reflected in the qualitative research that polling companies do, these so-called focus groups. And Kos Samaras, who's the director of strategy for RedBridge, I spoke to him this week and he told me that his company had done about 450 focus groups this year.

DANIEL:

Wow.

JASON:

And the key message coming out of those focus groups, according to Kos, is that Anthony Albanese is now where Scott Morrison was as he was approaching what turned out to be a pretty significant defeat in May 2022.

Audio excerpt — Sky News Host:

“Voters consider Anthony Albanese to be the weakest prime minister in decades, according to the latest Newspoll out today.”

DANIEL:

So there’s the numbers. What have people been saying about him in these focus groups?

JASON:

I think the message that Kos has been hearing is that the prime minister is, you know, constantly having to explain himself for things that, you know, are slightly difficult for him to explain.

Things like buying the $4.3 million house…

Audio excerpt — 9 News Host:

“Anthony Albanese is the proud new owner of a Central Coast beach house worth more than $4 million. But political rivals have hit out at the prime minister's purchase in the middle of a housing crisis.”

JASON:

…having to explain his relationship with Alan Joyce.

Audio excerpt — Prime Minister Albanese:

“I recall direct discussions with Alan Joyce over, over the flights, the Emirates, ah the Qantas flight…”

JASON:

Anthony Albanese is seen to have a close relationship with him and have to have accepted upgrades to Qantas flights over all the years that he's been in parliament. He's had to explain why his son, Nathan, has been made a member of the Chairman's Lounge.

Audio excerpt — Sky News Host Sharri Markson:

“Aston broke the stories about the Qantas Chairman’s Club membership for Albanese’s son. ‘The sweetheart deal’, as Dutton calls it, with Qantas over Qatar…”

JASON:

These are things that Anthony Albanese would rather not be talking about. This is gradually sort of dragged down his kind of popularity with voters and people are saying that perhaps this prime minister is not really focussed on solving the problems that really matter to us, where the main problem is housing affordability. So I think that's the main take out from Kos’ focus groups.

DANIEL:

And it sounds like some of the criticism has been quite personal as well.

JASON:

That's right. People are you know, they came to see Scott Morrison as too tricky a politician, a politician they couldn't really trust. But there was still this kind of residual respect for the personal side of Scott Morrison. There was nothing about Scott Morrison's personal life that voters really sort of disagreed with. They thought he was an honourable dad.

Audio excerpt — Scott Morrison:

“Hello, I'm here with Lily…”

Audio excerpt — Lily Morrison:

“Hi.”

Audio excerpt — Scott Morrison:

“…and we are here to build a cubby house today. And here we go, we've been to Bunnings.”

JASON:

But perhaps, you know, that's not the case with Anthony Albanese. That they see him as someone who's buying mansions, getting freebies and I think that's starting to affect people's voting intentions.

DANIEL:

So how does the perception of Anthony Albanese now compare to when he won the 2022 election?

JASON:

Well, if you look at the averages of all the published opinion polls, what we say now is that there's quite a big gap in the two party preferred vote. The Guardian runs a poll average and they've got the current two party preferred vote for the coalition at around 52.5 points, compared to 47.5 points for Labor. So that's quite a big gap, five points and if that's how people actually voted in the next federal election, then, you know, that would be a landslide victory for Peter Dutton. Now, I don't think things are really that bad for Labor and for the prime minister yet, but things are at a very dangerous inflection point for the prime minister right now.

DANIEL:

How did it go so wrong?

JASON:

Well, one of the people that I spoke to for this story was Paul Strangio, the Emeritus Professor of Politics at Monash University. And according to Paul, there's an entrenched view now of Anthony Albanese as a well intentioned politician, but someone who's also insipid and weak and more a hostage to events rather than a shaper of them. And now as we approach the end of this current three year term of government, because you know of Albanese's leadership style, the government is finishing its term without a signature landmark reform. And, you know, there's this kind of impression of a government that's engaged in a maintenance project rather than a government that's embarked on an out of field mission, an issue that really is bedevilling social democratic parties worldwide. And even though we had a deluge of legislation in the final week of the parliamentary year, that's really done nothing to fundamentally alter the picture that voters have of Albanese.

DANIEL:

And he's been in Parliament for a long time. He was elected in 1996. Does that play into his image problems in terms of being seen as part of the political class that has caused a lot of these structural issues for the Australian economy?

JASON:

I think that's absolutely right. He's been in Parliament so long that it becomes very difficult, I think, to really stay in touch with the needs of ordinary people.

And I think you come to believe that your judgement is better than everyone else's. And it becomes very difficult to take advice, to listen when people question your judgement. And I think it's almost certain that if he does hang on and remain prime minister after the election, it will be in a minority government that he forms with members of the crossbench. But it's also quite possible that he won't get enough seats to even form a minority government and that Peter Dutton ends up being the one most likely to be able to form a government after the election and become prime minister.

After the break, why Peter Dutton isn’t as unpopular as you might think

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DANIEL:

So Jason, we’ve been talking about how the public views Anthony Albanese at this moment. But let’s talk a bit more about how voters view Peter Dutton as the alternative prime minister.

JASON:

Well, I spoke to a senior Liberal Party official who has seen a lot of the research that the Liberal Party is doing. And one of the things that is really coming through in the Coalition's research is that this idea that Peter Dutton is unelectable is not true anymore, if it was ever true, and out of step with current voter sentiment.

And you know well Peter Dutton does have that kind of quite severe look, when you first look at Peter Dutton, you might think it's difficult to like this person. But people have started to certainly respect Peter Dutton for who he is, as someone that does have a stronger and clear idea of where he wants to take the country.

And when you look at the Freshwater poll that was published in the Financial Review earlier this month, we saw Anthony Albanese’s net approval is now at minus 17. That's a 34 point decline since 2022, while Peter Dutton's approval has improved by six points over the same period to minus three. So he's kind of a net 14 points ahead of Anthony Albanese when it comes to net approval.

DANIEL:

Okay, so we have these different perceptions of the Leader of the Opposition and the prime minister. Do you have any sense of how this might translate electorally?

JASON:

Look, I think it's really difficult to predict who's going to win the election because elections are always close. The polls always tighten as we get closer to polling day. And this is a government that is still in its first term and we've never had a one term government since James Scullin was prime minister in 1931. And it took the Great Depression to toss his government out after one term.

DANIEL:

I remember it well.

JASON:

And I don't think anyone thinks that the economy is as bad today as it was in the early 1930s. But we can't rely on historical precedent to say that, you know, that's going to guarantee Anthony Albanese a second term of government. The other thing to remember is that his majority in the House of Representatives is only two seats that when he won that May 2022 election, yes, he did win enough seats to to form a majority in his own right, but it was the slimmest majority that that we've seen for an incoming government in a very long time. And I think, you know, with that margin of only two seats, it's very difficult to see how he can hang on to majority government. It seems to me that minority government is the most likely outcome, but whether it's a minority government with Anthony Albanese at the top or Peter Dutton, it's probably too difficult to tell at this point.

DANIEL:

So it seems so much is actually hanging on the type of campaign Albanese will run. What can we expect from the campaign and Albanese's ability to cut through?

JASON:

Well, I think that's one of the things that Anthony Albanese has on his side. Paul Erickson, who is the National Secretary of the ALP, and that the campaign team that he has built around him are very good campaigners. Anthony Albanese himself is not a great campaigner. We saw that in 2022 when perhaps the best moment of the campaign for Labor was when Anthony Albanese had to take himself off the field because he got Covid.

Audio excerpt — Minister Jason Clare:

“We ready to rock and roll? Alright, well, the boss has got the bug, so you’ve got me. I just spoke to Albo and he's doing okay…”

JASON:

“He's also got a pretty strong frontbench when you look at some of the people who are in the ministry now and you compare that to Peter Dutton's frontbench, then you'd probably say that Peter Dutton's team is not quite ready for government yet. So that's another advantage I think that the PM has.”

DANIEL:

And finally, Jason, when it comes to turning that negative approval around, what's Anthony Albanese's biggest challenge now? How can he start to change people's minds?

JASON:

I think one thing that the government would be hoping for between now and polling day is that the Reserve Bank will cut interest rates. But in terms of what Albanese can do to change voters' perceptions of him, I don't think there really is much that he can do. As we said before, he's been in parliament for nearly 30 years. You know, people know who he is. They know what he stands for. Anthony Albanese has really got to try and and hope that he can offer a set of policies that offers more hope and more optimism than what Peter Dutton's going to come up with.

Albanese can say that he is genuinely trying to tackle the climate crisis. He did get a lot of legislation through last year, which he's going to hope will start to make a difference when it comes to things like the housing crisis. There are other things that the Government has done on things like Medicare. So I think the key thing for Albanese and his Government is to be able to offer a vision that is more optimistic, more positive than what Peter Dutton will be offering during the election campaign.

DANIEL:

Well, let's just watch this space. Jason, thank you so much for your time.

JASON:

Thank you, Daniel. Always great to talk to you.

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DANIEL:

Also in the news today

The federal government has announced it’s offering low interest loans on electric vehicles valued at up to $55 thousand dollars.

Loans will be offered at interest rates up to 5 percentage points lower than standard, for workers earning less than $100 thousand dollars a year, as well as essential workers such as teachers, nurses and emergency workers, regardless of income.

Commonwealth Bank is currently offering the loan through their EV Access Program.

And

Australia’s embassy in Kyiv will reopen in the new year.

Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong made the announcement during a trip to Ukraine where she also visited the site of the embassy that was closed in 2022, following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

7am is a daily show from Schwartz Media and The Saturday Paper.

It’s made by Atticus Bastow, Cheyne Anderson, Chris Dengate, Erik Jensen, Ruby Jones, Sarah McVeigh, Travis Evans and Zoltan Fecso and myself, Daniel James.

This is our final regular episode of the year. Over the next three weeks we will be bringing you our summer series.

Next week, you’ll hear critics from The Saturday Paper and The Monthly, sharing their favourite content from 2024. From books to music to film.

We’ll see you then.

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