Bruce Hawker: Australian Political Correspondent ahead of Election Day

One day out from the Australian Election and Labor seems to have it in the bag. 

If the polling stacks up, Anthony Albanese will remain Prime Minister and Peter Dutton will once again be relegated to opposition.  

There’s been criticism across the ditch that the coalition’s campaign has been full of U-turns and back tracks – undermining their credibility. 

Australian Political Commentator Bruce Hawker told Mike Hosking Dutton presented a risky persona, with many of his policies and comments quite Trumpish in their attitude. 

He says people likely started to think they’d prefer having the devil they know.  

The state of Dutton’s policies were also a concern, Hawker says, with many feeling underdone. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Election day tomorrow in Australia. A lot have already voted,
of course, so Elbow and Dutton have been chasing diminishing
returns for well over a week now. I gave you
the latest polling earlier on the program that shows potentially
a route and Labor returned with the majority. But what
does Bruce Hawker think? He's a political commentator? Of course,
former advisor to Kevin Rudd, and Bruce is with us
in the early hours of an Australian morning. Bruce, morning

(00:20):
to you, Good morning mate, appreciate you time very much.
The U GUB numbers I refer to suggest not just
a win for Albanezy, but a significant one that he'll
get about eighty four seats out of the one hundred
and fifty you need seventy six for a majority. Do
you believe it?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I think it's a bit high. That's my gut feeling
about it. I think a majority victory for Labor, which
would be more than seventy five seats out of one
hundred and fifty, is a possibility, but I think it
would be a bear majority that they would win if
they do get across the line. But that would be

(00:55):
a remarkable result, given what the polls were saying just
a few months ago.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
How do you explain? And once again I'm looking from
the outside. But for a while the had done looked
like a genuine contender. A spill looked potentially on Albanezy
calls the election. The polls shift, they keep shifting, and
the whole thing's changed.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Why Look, there are a few things that happened. One
was that interest rates came down. That allowed labor to
change their narrative to say, look, it's the worst of
it's over. Now we can start planning for the future.
And Dutton presented something of a risky sort of a persona,

(01:36):
particularly in light of what was happening in the US
with Trump. A lot of his comments, a lot of
his policies were really Trumpish in their attitude, and he
presented himself very much in that mold, and I think
people started to think, oh, we'd rather have the devil
we know.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
So the same Canadian thing that worked against Polyev's working again.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yes, except not as extremely but and we'll have to
wait and see, of course how it goes. But I
think that as a major factor in the election, we
had a cyclone that never really developed into being the
threat that it was going to be, which allowed the
Prime Minister to be very prime ministerial. And as you know, Mike,

(02:23):
you know, once she rot in that role as sort
of the protector in chief, then that changes people's attitude
somewhat as well. But I think it was more the
risk they felt that Dutton presented. A lot of his
policies were underdone. He's gone for a nuclear policy which
a lot of people just thought, well, why do we

(02:43):
need that? And a lot of his costings were pretty rubbery.
So all those things combined to come together at exactly
the right time. I think for.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Labor, what's your sense of what, let's say Elbow wins,
what's your sense of a second term is a term
of regret from an Australian voter who didn't have a
real choice, or has Elbow got the means to do
something spectacular for Australia and go on to be a
John Howard Esk type figure.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Well, that's a really interesting question. And I normally, you know,
if you're in a minority is they may well be
that's a bad place for governments to be. But I
suspect there'll be so many people on the cross benches
that they'll be able to govern without too much difficulty.
If interest rates continue to drop as they look like
they're going to, largely because of problems on the international front.

(03:34):
I think that will be good for Labor. They've got
a pretty good team in place there that are quite experienced.
They did get diverted by the Voice, which is the
referendum mission about giving Aboriginal representation of kind, and I
don't think they're going to be going down that path again.
So I think they've learnt a lot. There's a really

(03:55):
good chance. I think that we could be in for
a pretty solid second term by Labor. Not to say
that that's a foregone conclusion, of course, but I think
they're probably if they get across the line here, particularly
if they have a majority, then that places them in
a good position to look pretty solid in their second term.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
One of the arguments was that Hans's going to preference
the coalition, She's surging that helps the coalition. Do you
give that any weight?

Speaker 2 (04:24):
I do. I give that some weight because with our
preferential system of voting, most of those votes are going
to come back to the opposition. So I suspect that
their two party preferred vote, not their primary vote, will
actually be a bit better than it looks like it's
going to be at the moment. Pardon me, because a

(04:46):
lot of the polling just goes on the basis of
what happened in the last election how preferences were distributed,
so that may artificially reduce the opposition's votes, but I
don't think it's going to be enough for them to
be in a position in the former government because essentially
we have these Teal seats in Australia, in these more
wealthy beachside suburbs which are socially progressive fiscally conservative. They're

(05:13):
going to re elect pretty much all of those Teal candidates.
That sort of represents something of a split in the
Liberal Party that I don't think somebody with the policies
that Peter Dutton has is going to be able to mend.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
If Dutton gets done, is he done for or not?

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Well, that's another really good question. I suspect that he
probably is done for and it'll be interesting to see
on the night if Labor wins, and clearly in wins,
whether Dutton are one holds his seat of Dixon in Brisbane,
which is marginal He's always seems to be going to
lose his seat, but he always manages to hold on

(05:50):
to it. He's a pretty good local campaigner, whether he
taps the mat or says I'm going to throw my
hat in the ring for another go as opposition leader.
I think his planned, definitely that was to try to
win as many seats as he could in the outer
suburban seats of Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, and that may still

(06:15):
help him, but I think it's going to be much
harder for him and I wouldn't be surprised if he
doesn't continue in the role of opposition leader if they
get badly defeated.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Appreciate your expertise very much, Bruce goo Oldemorrow. Appreciate it.
Bruce Hawker, who is the well former advisor to Keivin
Rudd political commentator these days, just quickly on that pole
that you go poll. Eighty four seats is what they're projecting.
It's an outlying pole. They argue that it's a big poll,
it's a pole of polls. Or are thirty five one
hundred and eighty five people interviewed for it. It's done

(06:48):
over an entire month between one April and twenty nine April,
hence the weight it's given to it. But they are
claiming labor eighty four seats. They need seventy six for
a majority. Most likely outcome for the coalition reduced to
forty seven seats, lowest percentage since nineteen forty six. As
Bruce said, all sitting independents are expected to retain their seats,

(07:10):
some liberals from heavyweight liberals, including shadow ministers, are expected
to lose. As many as three are expected to lose
their seats, so it's going to be an interesting night tomorrows.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
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