When the press pack trailing Anthony Albanese’s election marketing campaign landed in Brisbane on Friday afternoon, conventional political logic instructed the subsequent day can be spent within the inner-city.
The Greens-held seats of Griffith and Brisbane seem Labor’s finest hopes of gaining floor in a state the place it holds simply 5 of 30 electorates.
However as Labor’s marketing campaign bus motored farther north out of the Brisbane CBD on Saturday morning, it grew to become clear Albanese’s goal was not Adam Bandt and his band of upstart Greens MPs.
It was Peter Dutton.
In contrast with the opening-day stumble of the 2022 election marketing campaign, the place he couldn’t identify the money charge or jobless determine, the Labor chief has began the 2025 race on the offensive, staging his first occasion in Dutton’s personal voters of Dickson in Brisbane’s northern suburbs.
“This is Queensland’s most marginal seat and a margin with a one in front of it. We intend to run a very serious campaign,” Albanese stated, standing alongside Labor’s candidate within the seat, Ali France.
Dickson sits on a margin of 1.7%, which implies it’s eminently winnable, at the least, on paper.
With Labor strategists anticipating losses in Melbourne and New South Wales, the federal government must win in different states if Albanese needs to retain majority authorities.
However the alternative of marketing campaign location on Saturday was much less about electoral arithmetic than about sending a message: Dutton, we’re coming for you.
Coalition weak spot
That Albanese selected a Medicare pressing care clinic was no coincidence.
Well being is a perceived energy for Labor and a perceived weak point for the Liberal chief, who was as soon as named Australia’s “worst health minister” by medical doctors after he tried to introduce a $7 GP co-payment beneath then prime minister Tony Abbott.
Dutton has tried to neutralise these assaults, matching Labor’s $8.5bn enhance to Medicare (and promising an additional $500m for psychological well being) and its funding to slash the worth of PBS-listed medicines.
However Labor nonetheless sees a vulnerability, one which Albanese, his well being minister, Mark Butler, and the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, sought to ruthlessly expose on Saturday morning.
This was a political equal of a full-court press; a first-rate minster and two of his strongest performers hammering their opponent on his dwelling turf.
“(In his budget reply speech) Peter Dutton tried a new version of the promise he made to Australians 10 years ago that there would be no cuts to health,” Butler stated, claiming – with out proof – that Dutton would introduce an American-style well being system.
“There might be some fancier words, but it’s just as hollow.”
Chalmers went private, calling out Dutton’s choices to sprint to Sydney for a harbourside fundraiser whereas each of their Brisbane communities braced for Cyclone Alfred.
“When five million homes in south-east Queensland and northern NSW were at risk and were in harm’s way … this prime minister came to Queensland to see how he could help,” Chalmers stated.
“Peter Dutton fled Queensland to see if he could raise money in a harbourside mansion in Sydney. Peter Dutton might be from here, but he is not as committed to the people and the local economies of Queensland as this prime minister.”
Chalmers, not surprisingly, omitted the truth that Albanese had attended a political fundraiser in Sydney himself earlier that day earlier than flying to Queensland.
At one level, a far-right agitator interrupted Saturday’s press convention to heckle Albanese about housing and immigration.
The person was peddling an agenda however the disruption drew consideration to a pair of politically delicate points for Labor.
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There was additionally scrutiny of vitality costs, with Albanese sidestepping the query of whether or not energy payments would fall after households had been handed one other $150 rebate.
These questions will maintain coming because the five-week marketing campaign unfolds.
However on day one, when the eyes of the political world and voting public had been on Albanese, there have been no stumbles.
After leaving a rain-soaked Brisbane, Albanese ventured north to hotter climes.
Trump’s affect
But it surely wasn’t to Cairns and the Labor goal seat of Leichhardt, however to Bundaberg and the voters of Hinkler.
That is thought of protected Nationals territory even after the departure of the Morrison-era sources minister Keith Pitt, making it curious vacation spot for an opening-day marketing campaign cease.
However Albanese needed to ship one other message – this time to Australian trade.
Sampling a ginger beer at Bundaberg Brewed Drinks, the prime minister launched a $20m Purchase Australia marketing campaign to assist native enterprise.
Albanese didn’t point out Donald Trump because the marketing campaign’s motivation. He didn’t have to, so clear and apparent is the spectre of Trump and his America-first agenda over the worldwide and home economies and Australia’s federal election.
Australia and the remainder of the world are bracing for “liberation Day” on 2 April, when Trump will unveil the targets for his retaliatory tariffs.
US drug corporations are stalking Australia’s PBS-scheme. Albanese had a message for them, too.
“We’ve put a very clear message to anyone who’s listening, wherever they are in the world. Our PBS is not up for negotiation,” he stated.
Labor received’t win Hinkler and – barring a significant upset – it received’t win Dickson both.
It’s within the field seat in Eden-Monaro in southern NSW the place Albanese made a pit cease on Saturday afternoon to vow $16m for a neighborhood pool.
However Albanese’s opening day wasn’t about profitable seats.
It was about sending messages.
