Shownotes Transcript
What do you think about going to a federal election on the 31st of August this year? Bit of talk around about it. I noticed Peter Van Onselen reported this in the Daily Mail. So Anthony Albanese is thinking that he could call the election in the next couple of weeks and then take Australians to the polls at the end of August. Now a couple of things here. It would be a silly thing to do.
If Anthony Albanese decided to call an election for the 31st of August, it would be a silly thing to do. And I'll tell you why. So history has shown us that Australian prime ministers or leaders around the Western world, for that matter, who rush into elections before completing their full term in office, unless they've got a good excuse, they often face some pretty nasty repercussions at the ballot box. So take, for instance, Julia Gillard. Remember that in 2010?
So sure, she just took over from Kevin Rudd in some pretty drastic circumstances. But Julia Gillard announced in January of 2010 that the election would be in September. And she almost lost it. John Howard, he did it too in 1998. Again, it was a GST referendum, but he was taken to the wire, John Howard, in 1998. Again, two and a half years he was into his first term.
Rishi Sunak, just recently, he went early and we saw the Labour landslide, albeit that was probably fait accompli. Macron in France, he's just set a grenade under the French parliament by pulling on an early election. So you get what I'm saying. Why would Anthony Albanese do the same? Now, supposedly, part of the strategy is preemptively calling the election before potential interest rate rises, say in September.
So if the RBA was to raise rates in September, that would be diabolical for Labor's chances of re-election. So, oh, you know what we'll do? We'll go to the polls before the RBA has the chance to lift rates. We'll talk about an extremely transparent and somewhat patronising strategy towards the voters of this country.
It implies that Australians can be conned into voting Labor and ignoring the realities of their family budgets, i.e. you guys are stupid enough not to realise what's around the corner. As if. Now, voters are savvy enough to see through this sort of stuff, and Albo and Labor risk being punished for taking our intelligence for granted.
Now, here's another interesting thing to think about, though. So the current draft proposal by the Electoral Commission for redistribution of electorates. Now, this redistribution does not favour the ALP, especially in New South Wales. You've got seats like Bennelong that are pretty close to being nominally liberal seats on the new boundaries. But if Anthony Albanese called an early electorate,
that would mean that the existing Labor-friendly boundaries would stand. The changes wouldn't be enacted. The electoral law would mean that the two closest seats with the lowest populations in them would merge here in New South Wales. So if Albo decided to call an election for August 31, Wentworth and Warringah across the harbour would merge into one electorate. So Zali and Allegra would have to figure out who runs.
But going early would also mean that the ALP could be seen to be attempting to a sort of a quasi-gerrymander. And again, that wouldn't go down well with voters. You've also got elections in the Northern Territory on the 24th of August. Queensland and the ACT are at the end of October. So my sense is that an August federal election would be a disaster for Anthony Albanese and therefore pretty unlikely. If there is to be an election this year,
I reckon that you'll see the Prime Minister take a leaf out of Gough Whitlam's book and hold a Christmas election, one, say, end of November, early December. But surely he needs a reason to do that, right? Whether it's a recalcitrant Senate, a mandate for some big policy idea, be it the GST or tax reform, something. Something that Anthony Albanese would stand there in the courtyard of Parliament House needing the rubber stamp from the Australian people to implement it.
And I think with all of that to consider, and they're definitely considering it, I reckon the smart money is on a federal election being held early next year, not this year. So if you're desperate to kick Albo out of the lodge, you might have to wait a little while yet.
