What actually happens on the campaign bus

Week one of the election campaign is done. Albanese has been hammering his Medicare message. Dutton has sought to broaden his image but is still playing to type, telling Sky News that he is ready to “fight” Donald Trump on Australia’s behalf, if necessary. So who won the week? And what is it like to be on the campaign trail with the leaders as a journalist, catching mystery flights to places unknown and travelling with your colleagues on an actual bus?

Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

S1 (00:00):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley, it's Friday, April 4th.
Week one of the election campaign is done. Albanese has
been hammering his Medicare message. Dutton has sought to broaden
his image but is still playing to type, telling Sky
news that he is ready to fight Donald Trump on

(00:23):
Australia's behalf if necessary. So who won the week and
what is it like to be on the campaign trail
with the leaders? As a journalist catching mystery flights to
places unknown and travelling with your colleagues on an actual bus?
Joining us now to tell us all about it. We
have Paul Satchell, who I believe is in Melbourne, and Matthew,
not all the way from Perth, where he has just

(00:44):
hopped off a plane. Welcome to the podcast, gentlemen.

S2 (00:47):
Great to be with you. Hi Jackie and Paul.

S1 (00:49):
Now, guys, you have been following the leaders all around
our country for the first week of the campaign. Paul,
you've been with the Prime Minister, and Matt, you've been
with Peter Dutton. I want to start by asking both
of you what the standout moment of the week has
been for each leader. Paul, what has been Albo's best, worst,
most interesting moment?

S2 (01:07):
Good question. And you're putting me on the spot. I mean,
my standout moment from the week was catching up with
Knotty on Tuesday night.

S3 (01:14):
Oh, did you guys do a high five across the
airport tarmac or something?

S2 (01:17):
We both were in we're in Melbourne because, um, Peter
Dutton and Anthony Albanese were both there on Tuesday, and
we had a lovely, quite fancy dinner. Um, so that
was that was my personal highlight. But on the political highlight,
it's a good question on the Prime Minister. I think
the moment where it became clear to me that he
was in a really positive, confident frame of mind and

(01:41):
that the electorate was shifting towards him, and you could
see it in his demeanour and his rhetoric was on.
I think it was the Saturday morning. His first campaign
stop was to the seat of Dickson, which is Peter
Dutton's seat. Labor's tried really hard to win this seat
over several elections and they've got close, but he's always
held on, despite the demographics not being fantastic for him.
Albanese chose to go there first up, playing a little

(02:03):
bit of mind games with with his with the opposition
leader on his way to an urgent care clinic, which
he's very keen to spruik. He made an impromptu trip
into a gym on a Saturday morning in suburban Brisbane,
which was full of kind of 30 to 40 year
old women, their partners, and I'm not sure why. That
was the demographic. And there and there were a lot
of children and he walked in and he didn't. He

(02:25):
wasn't kind of fearful of any blowback despite, you know,
the outer suburbs of Brisbane maybe not being the best
place for labor. He walked in, he kissed babies. The
cameras followed him in.

S4 (02:36):
An hour or an hour, and.

S2 (02:38):
He showed no signs of nerves. And he walked out
and he was saying privately to some of the journalists
on the way out, and also afterwards that he felt
that that was where the nation's mood was shifting, that
they acknowledged that the government had had a tough few
years because there was an inflation crisis, but on the whole,

(02:58):
most people felt relatively positive towards him when he randomly
interacted with them, and he was comfortable being in an
unscripted scenario in a liberal held seat without being abused,
which is quite a confident thing to do. And he
wasn't abused. It was all positive and that was a
big moment in his mind, I think.

S1 (03:17):
Yeah, I did see that footage and it was very
I mean, I assumed that it was kind of a
set up scenario as so many of these campaign events are.
But you're saying it was kind of just off the cuff.
It was completely unscripted.

S2 (03:26):
I thought it was set up as well. But I
asked members of the gym who were doing, I think,
like hit workouts, whether they knew he was coming and
they didn't. And I said, did you enjoy him coming in?
How did you feel about your baby, baby being kissed?
And they were all like, yeah, it was all right.
He's the Prime Minister. And they were kind of very
lackadaisical about it. It was very Australian.

S5 (03:46):
There you go.

S1 (03:47):
I remember when Scott Morrison went to a bar class,
which he famously labelled a barre class and, um, you know,
he really lost, um, a lot of Pilates moms, including myself,
at that moment. Noni, you're with Peter Dutton. What's been
his kind of standout moment? Or, you know, some sort
of pivotal, interesting moment for you and Dutton on the
on the campaign trail?

S6 (04:06):
Well, I think the big cut-through moment was one that
happened on the campaign trail, but the traveling pack wasn't
really with him there. It was when, uh, Peter Dutton
went for, uh, pretty relaxed, uh, interview with Kyle and
Jackie O on Kiss-fm and spoke about this issue of
where he would live as prime minister and said he

(04:28):
and his wife would love to live in Sydney. They
don't want to live in Canberra. Uh, Sydney would be
the choice for them.

S7 (04:35):
We would live in Kirribilli. It's a you know, we love,
love Sydney and love the harbour. It's a great city.

S6 (04:40):
And now other prime ministers have lived in Sydney. Uh,
most of them have come from Sydney, unlike Peter Dutton
who comes from Queensland. Uh, but I think this did
cut through in a way because and labor really leapt
upon it. And Paul will tell you that Anthony Albanese
was very happy to talk about it, that it was
a distraction from everything he was trying to talk about
this week, which is about energy prices, which is about

(05:03):
cost of living, which is about national security. This was
suggesting that he was thinking about the trappings of office,
rather than thinking about what ordinary Australians are going through.
He did it the day before he was about to
land in Melbourne, where the Liberal Party wants to pick up.
A significant number of seats, are praising Sydney as not

(05:25):
really a vote winner in Melbourne. And I think it
just went to this point that perhaps Peter Dutton hasn't
been as match fit as Anthony Albanese. He doesn't do
that many press conferences in Canberra with the press gallery.
He does a lot of friendly media, uh, with outlets
that he sees as on his ideological side. And there's

(05:48):
been a lot of questions about a lack of detail
on coalition policy and a few distractions, the most noteworthy
being that issue of where he would live. I don't
think it's so much the substance of Sydney versus Canberra,
but it's a question of what are your priorities and why.
And week one, is this what you're talking about? I

(06:08):
think that this is something we've seen a lot with
many politicians is they go into a joking, softer, more
relaxed interview on FM radio and they speak about something
like this. That's probably fine to joke about. At the time,
he wouldn't have done something like this with Sarah Ferguson
on the 730 report.

S1 (06:29):
The headlines that come out of it are very straight.
I mean, it's reported in a straight way. Um, and,
you know, we remember very well how much Malcolm Turnbull
suffered from being Mr. Harbourside Mansion, and he was at
least staying in his own harbourside mansion, not bothering the
taxpayer for it.

S2 (06:46):
And the other stand out moment on on Dutton side,
I thought not Ian. Jackie was talking about cuts to
potentially the ABC and schools if they don't stop teaching
woke curriculum and they were made on also I think
just to chatty Sky news interview. So he's doing these
set these bits of media that are not kind of
razor sharp, focused bits of media, which you might do

(07:09):
during the term, but in a campaign they just get
brought to life. I'm really not sure why he keeps
doing them.

S1 (07:13):
It is interesting and I want to get into this
because I want to talk first of all about what
it's like to be on a campaign bus. What's the
sort of scenario and the setup for the journalists? I've
been on them not for a few years now, and
I know what it looks like, but our listeners won't. So, Paul,
what are you doing day to day?

S2 (07:29):
So the pack travelling with the Prime Minister is about
30 journalists and camera people, usually one from each outlet.
Some outlets have two. Very few of them do. It's
about probably half TV, half print journalists or digital. Hello,
we're in the northern Canberra suburb of downer. That's the
Prime Minister just walking into the home of rancour. A

(07:49):
single mum, for example, on. I'll give you Wednesday's rundown.
We got out of our Melbourne hotel at about seven.
Got on a bus to the outer suburbs of Melbourne
to the Liberal seat of Deakin. You're only told where
you're heading at the moment you step foot on the
bus or plane because the party doesn't want the opposition

(08:10):
knowing what they're up to, and they don't want their
strategy being laid out in the press either. You head
to an event, you usually see the Prime Minister shake
some hands and do some light hearted stuff. Prime Minister,
you can see a lone protester here from the Keep
the Sheep movement, which is a big campaign in WA
to keep live sheep exports going internationally. It's a big
industry here. Then there's a press conference, an all in

(08:32):
press conference where most people will get a question. The
Prime Minister has this way of letting everyone get a question,
but you only get one. It's quite a controlled and
sometimes frustrating approach. That event ended, we got on a
bus to Avalon Airport at Avalon Airport. We flew to
Tasmania to the Liberal seat of Braddon.

S1 (08:52):
At what point were you told you were going to Tasmania?

S2 (08:55):
We had a little bit of an idea simply because
of the flight time, which we were told earlier, how
long the flight would be to give journalists ability to
know how long when they can fly. But you're not.
You don't get confirmation until very close. If you if
you ask needling questions of media advisers and you're a
bit cheeky, you can find out. And if they give
you a little wink or something, you might learn, but
you're not officially.

S1 (09:15):
If you say, can you give me a hint? Is
it an island to the south of Australia?

S2 (09:19):
Something like.

S1 (09:20):
That. And they'll wink. Yeah. Okay. Now I remember this.
I remember it's like getting on a mystery flight kind
of thing. Yeah, there's a level of excitement to it.
Even if you're going to like a salmon farm in
Launceston or something. Yeah. Nancy Dutton has not done this before.
And as you were just saying, he's not perhaps match fit.
And it is actually quite an intimidating situation to go

(09:43):
into several different scenarios every day. Even though they've been
set up by your media minders and whatever, where anything
could happen, there's an element of unpredictability there, and then
you're faced with a phalanx of media like 30, 30
or so media, right? If you're not used to that,
it is quite intimidating. Dutton doesn't ever look like he's
easily intimidated. But how do you think he's going as
a as a campaigner? Because this is his first election campaign.

S6 (10:05):
Yes. And I was very intrigued before coming on the
campaign bus about what Peter Dutton would do, because we
don't see a lot of him doing the retail politics
that we'd associate with Tony Abbott or Scott Morrison, who
were famous for, uh, being masters at, uh, images that

(10:27):
would resonate on the nightly news. Uh, going through shopping
centre walkabouts, uh, really, really doing those, those graphic things.
And that traditionally has been the idea of the campaign
is who wins the battle for the pictures on the
6:00 PM news, that's been the pretty clear criteria, and

(10:47):
Peter Dutton hasn't done much of that. As opposition leader,
he's been very serious, giving press conferences in a suit,
usually in suburban Brisbane. So it has been interesting on
this campaign. A big discussion, for example, among the travelling
journalists is Peter Dutton's centrepiece policy in his budget reply
speech was about cutting the fuel excise and making petrol

(11:10):
cheaper for Australians. Now this, as far as we can tell,
is an extremely popular policy with most people to cut
their petrol bills. But he hasn't been anywhere near a
petrol station. A bowser talking to people about petrol prices
that absolutely hasn't featured at all. Instead, we've been at
quite a few manufacturing facilities talking about energy prices, and

(11:32):
they're still detailed to come on that policy. So he's
been batting away questions on that. The big announcement when
we arrived in Melbourne was about funding for a rail
link to get from Melbourne Airport to the city.

S7 (11:49):
To the airport, get to work and try and relieve
some of that, that absolute congestion off the off the
Tullamarine as well.

S6 (11:55):
A popular policy many people have long spoken about why
you're reliant on the bus to get in from the airport.
And then we arrived in Melbourne and we landed at
a winery for the announcement about the rail, and everyone
was very confused. Hello from the Meinong Estate winery in
the northern suburbs of Melbourne. As you can see behind me,
this is a pretty picturesque location for opposition leader Peter Dutton,

(12:19):
and it seemed this was cobbled together quite at last minute.
They said you can usually see the planes going overhead,
but we were nowhere near the airport, nowhere near the
rail line, looking at a map, and we were nowhere
near the bat. There are some questions though, here amongst
the travelling media contingent, about why exactly we're here, and
not perhaps in a location more connected to the rail announcement.

(12:41):
So it was all a bit discordant. Nice pictures, but
nothing to do with the story. What you really want
are captivating images that go together with the policy that
you're trying to sell. So on Wednesday, I think there
was a much more successful visit. We went to the
outer suburbs of Melbourne, went directly into the home of

(13:01):
a family that only moved a few years ago from India,
has struggled to afford a home, is struggling to pay
their bills that very much. Aussie migrant battler story of
who Dutton's trying to appeal to.

S7 (13:14):
Yeah, it's good, it's good, it's good, it's good. Coming
this way. Yeah it was it was packed going.

S6 (13:23):
We had a cup of tea with them and spoke
to them about their cost of living struggles, and we
did a press conference from their backyard in the outer
suburbs of Melbourne that went really well. That's a classic
example of the setting, chiming really well with the story
that Dutton wants to project.

S1 (13:41):
Yeah, so much of the election campaign stuff is about
getting that footage for the nightly news. And sometimes I
know as a print journalist, it's not necessarily a situation
that's built for you and your needs. Do you think
that there's any possibility to actually scrutinize the politicians and
particularly their policies in this environment?

S2 (14:01):
Paul, I think the press conferences are the best opportunity
we have for that. The Prime Minister has this style
of press conference, which he instituted, I think, during the
last campaign when he had a really difficult press pack,
which he viewed as feral, which caught him up on
day one, because there was that question about the cash rate,
which he forgot. This prompted days of really, really intense questioning.

(14:23):
So in his term of Parliament, he's developed this strategy
of picking the journalists kind of one by one, pointing
at them and saying, your question now. It means there's
no shouting, but it also means that unless you really,
really bark your second follow up question at him, you
rarely get a second question, which means he can deflect,
give a non-answer, move on to the next topic, and
often the next question is not on the same issue.

(14:44):
So press conferences are our opportunity as print reporters to
needle into a question of policy, put some scrutiny on
an issue that they may not have got much heat
on during the term, because there hasn't been as much
attention as there is during an election campaign when you're
trying to investigate a manifesto. So it is a great
opportunity to put a really big audience and national spotlight

(15:06):
on a leader. But their media training and their ability
to control a press conference through political management means that
sometimes that scrutiny only goes so far.

S1 (15:17):
And how do you think Abo is going with that?
You mentioned before that he's quite ebullient. You know, he's
quite energetic. He's been in quite a good mood. But
there was an incident on Wednesday when I think he
sort of shut you down or snapped at you. Did
you read that as him? Just. It's almost like crowd control.
Like it's almost like a psychological thing. I think sometimes
if the lead is like, they want to assert their

(15:38):
control over the press pack because they know that if
they if the press pack sense any weakness, it will
go in for the kill. Is that what he was
doing when he shut you down on Wednesday, do you think?

S2 (15:49):
Yeah. To give people a bit of context on that,
the press conference was wrapping up in suburban Melbourne. Penny Wong,
the foreign minister, was standing by his side. She'd only
had one short answer during the press conference proper. And
I thought, given the tariff debate this week and the
the kind of dominance of that news story in the
latter half of the week inevitably would be good to

(16:10):
get her on record and ask her some questions. The
press conference was wrapping up. I said, Prime Minister, can
we get the foreign minister? And he very quickly snapped
back when I asked for her to come to the
lectern and he said, no, she can't. No. And there
were a couple of laughs. And I said, why? And
he said, because it's my press conference.

S8 (16:29):
Because it's my press conference.

S2 (16:32):
A lot of people were kind of snickering and a
bit taken aback by that. I'd already asked a series
of questions that he was a bit grumpy at earlier on,
so he might have just been not in a great
mood because of that. We are without the Premier of
Victoria by his side. I know you might see her
later today, but you've had two premiers in the last
couple of days by your side early in the day, um,
Parliament sitting.

S8 (16:49):
It's this little thing called Parliament fall out.

S2 (16:53):
Should that be taken as a sign of. And he
usually wraps up the press conference by saying, thanks very much.
And he usually kind of delivers a powerful political argument
to end. He didn't do that this time. He just
walked off a bit quickly, and he made some comments
to afterwards, to some others about about how that ended.
And I think he might have felt slightly uncomfortable. Or

(17:13):
maybe I'm reading a bit too much into that. But yeah,
I think his authority over the press conference is a
reflection of how he feels about his management of the
political situation. If he's dominating a press conference, if he's
controlling the the tempo and the tone. That kind of
imbue him with a sense of control over the political

(17:35):
situation at the time.

S6 (17:36):
From the perspective of travelling with Peter Dutton, I think
to use an overused term, you really could feel the
vibe shift from Peter Dutton being the opposition leader to
Peter Dutton being the alternative prime minister, and you can
see this in the questions he's getting every day. There's
quite a bit of follow up from the travelling media about, well,

(17:56):
what would you do if you're elected in just a
few weeks? It's not. You can't just get away with
now criticising the Prime minister, for example, saying he's weak,
saying he's out of his depth, saying that cost of
living is too high. There's a lot of questions now
about what are you going to do? So there's a
Chinese research vessel travelling in the waters near Australia. What

(18:17):
would you actually do about it other than just say
that the Prime Minister doesn't know what he's doing? So
he's facing quite a lot of tough questions, and it
is showing that we don't have a lot of policy
from the opposition. There's still a lot that they're saying
is to come during the campaign. But so questions are
coming up about, oh, well, what is the coalition's policy

(18:39):
on ABC funding? Are they going to keep it the same?
Are they going to cut it? What about health and
education funding? Some of these pretty central issues, of course,
that really played out with Tony Abbott after the promises
he made in his election campaign. So I think that's
the noticeable thing for me is that there has been
a change of tone from the media in terms of

(19:02):
scrutinising Peter Dutton as a possible prime minister.

S1 (19:05):
And that's why election campaign, like the actual campaign period
of five weeks, is so important, because, as you say,
that vibe shift does happen and real scrutiny is, you know,
it's a blast of scrutiny on both leaders and they
it can make or break them and will do. I
want to ask about one more thing. It's fascinating, but
I've got to let you go soon. Albanese has really
sharpened his attack on Peter Dutton this week, and so

(19:28):
have other sort of frontbenchers in labor, and they're really
going hard on this Trump comparison thing. They are not
using the T word. They never mentioned Donald by name,
but we all know what they're trying to say. They're
basically saying that he is Trump lite and that he's
too aggressive and that he's copying policies from Trump. I
want to get both of your takes on whether or
not you think that that is a strategy that is

(19:51):
going to work for Albanese and against Dutton. Paul, I'll
go to you first.

S2 (19:54):
Yeah. The genesis of this was about I first learnt
that there was Labor Party internal research about two months ago,
showing just that the as Trump started to become a
bit more erratic in his administration and his language, but
labor started to pick up that there was growing unease
in the Australian community about what Trump meant for the

(20:15):
world when he was elected. I think there the vibe
of a mainstream voter was alright. This guy seems a
bit off, but let's see what he does. But as
his style became clearer and as he started to actually
institute policies which offended our sense of, uh, you know,
democratic norms in Europe and also, you know, our economic
system at home, labor started to pick up that people

(20:38):
were worried about his effect on their own lives and
the world. And people started to equate in focus groups,
Trump style, with Duttons. I don't think that's a a
perfect comparison in many ways. But Labour believe that equating
Trump to Dutton in a subtle way, which they started
to do about a month ago. Murray, what was the

(20:58):
first to do it on a breakfast television program? Jim
Chalmers then began to make some subtle hints, and in
more recent weeks, Albanese started to do it. They believe
that pinning Dutton to Trump subtly over time, building the
narrative that he presents the same sort of risk as
a populist right wing leader across the other side of
the world is a tactic that suits them nutty.

S1 (21:20):
Do you see any signs that this is bothering Dutton?
I mean, this week he did give an interview where
he said that he would fight Trump if he needed to.
Not literally, but on the issue of tariffs or Australia's interests. Um,
does that play against what Labor's trying to do or
does it play into it?

S6 (21:36):
Peter Dutton has been aware of this for a long time,
that he doesn't want to be seen as an Australian
version of Donald Trump. I do remember that he actually
went out and criticised Trump earlier than Albanese. He said
he disagreed with Trump's comments and the way he was
going about the Ukraine issue. He said, I think Donald
Trump is wrong. And Albanese had not at that stage

(21:58):
been brave enough to say something that direct. But coming
from the conservative side of politics, uh, he can be
branded as Trumpian. And that's what's interesting is to see
cutting the public service an issue like that, which is
long standing coalition policy and may even be popular in
and of itself. Labor is branding that as a Trumpian move.

(22:21):
That's to do with Doge, and putting the idea of
Elon Musk into people's heads. And he's a very unpopular figure. Uh,
similar to education policy. Dutton says he doesn't want teachers
indoctrinating students. I think that's a popular idea. That's pretty
traditional conservative, liberal liberal party policy. But now that's branded

(22:41):
as a Trumpian measure because Trump wants to gut the
the education department in the US. So I think labor
politically is using this quite effectively to turn what could
be coalition strengths into weaknesses by branding these policies as Trumpian.
And Dutton is aware that he has to be seen
as someone who can stand up to Trump.

S1 (23:03):
It's absolutely fascinating, though, because I think we've never had
an American president or any kind of international administration loom
over an election campaign quite like this one. It's so fascinating.
I wish we could keep talking, but you both are
probably quite tired. I think you've even got to go
off to another event. I hope that you have some
time to cross over again and have a drink together

(23:24):
in whatever city you end up in. If it's Sydney,
can you ask me along?

S2 (23:28):
We, of course will.

S6 (23:29):
Martini on me?

S1 (23:30):
Good. All right, fellas, we'll see you again soon.

S2 (23:32):
See you guys.

S1 (23:33):
Bye. Today's episode of Inside Politics was produced by Julia Katzel.
Our executive producer is Tammy Mills, and Tom McKendrick is
our head of audio. To listen to our podcasts episodes
as they drop, follow Inside Politics on Apple, Spotify or
anywhere else you listen to your podcasts and stay up

(23:53):
to date with all the election coverage and exclusives by
visiting The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald websites. Our
newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism,
visit The Age or smh.com.au. I'm Jacqueline Maley. Thank you
for listening.