Anthony Albanese has made Peter Dutton’s home seat of Dickson his first stop on the first day of the campaign trail marking the launch of what is shaping up to be an intensely personal federal election.
The Prime Minister appeared at an urgent care clinic in Murrumba Downs, within the opposition leader’s Queensland electorate of Dickson, on Saturday morning.
He talked up his government’s plan to open an additional 50 urgent care clinics across the country on top of the 87 it has already delivered.
As one of Labor’s few health commitments the LNP has yet to embrace, the proposal is a key sticking point for the election campaign.
The Coalition has already promised to match Labor’s $8.5billion bulk-billing investment as well as its $573million investment in women’s health and a $690million investment to lower the maximum cost of certain pharmaceuticals.
With so many new health clinics to choose from, however, it’s likely more than a coincidence the prime minister chose Dickson.
Joining Albanese was third-time Labor hopeful for Dickson, Ali France, who pressed the opposition leader to a 1.7 per cent margin in 2022.
Albanese has pledged to back a ‘very serious’ campaign to dethrone the opposition leader in ‘Queensland’s most marginal seat’.
While the margin is tight, pundits are not seriously anticipating a Labor victory, suggesting the stop may have been more personal than political.
Fronting the media between stops on Saturday, Mr Dutton slammed the PM’s ‘personal attacks’ in likening him to a homegrown stand-in for Donald Trump.
‘I think ns should see through it,’ he told reporters.
‘Every time you hear the personal attack coming from the PM or one of those nasty, negative ads from Labor, know that it’s because they don’t have a positive story to tell.
‘If the PM had done a good job over the last three years, if families were better off, if our economy was better off, if our country was better off the PM would be telling you about that story, but instead it’s just all negative.’
Trump has coloured the n election campaign from the first, with Mr Albanese drawing a clear comparison between the policies of Mr Dutton and those of the US President on Friday.
‘We live in the greatest country on earth, and we do not need to copy from any other nation to make even better and stronger,’ he told reporters in Canberra.
Asked whether he was likening the opposition leader to Trump, Mr Albanese said: ‘Other people will make their own judgments’.
Shortly after, he went on to criticise Mr Dutton’s plans to cut the headcount of the federal public service – an often observed point of similarity with the US president’s agenda.
Mr Albanese may have good reasons for wanting to make this election a personal one, given the latest Freshwater polling put him ahead as the preferred PM for the first time since October.
The poll, published less than two weeks ago, also put Mr Dutton’s approval rating below Albanese’s for the first time since May.
Meanwhile, the Freshwater poll had the Coalition ahead of Labor on a two-party preferred basis at 51-49 while data from the Lighthouse Consumer Sentiment Tracker suggests only 26 per cent of ns consider themselves ‘better off’ than they were three years ago.
About 45 per cent of people said they felt they had gone backwards under the Albanese Government while 30 per cent said they were ‘about the same’.
While it is unlikely Queensland will decide who gets the keys to the Lodge, conventional political wisdom would suggest Labor will be looking to the sunshine state to offset any losses elsewhere across the country.
Labor currently holds five seats across the state against the Coalition’s 21. Nine seats across Queensland are considered marginal.
While Labor will attempt to seal victory in a number of closely-held LNP seats across the state, including Leichhardt and Dickson, it is expected to pressure key inner-Brisbane seats won in a historic Greens sweep at the last election.
Brisbane, Ryan and Griffith are all held by Greens candidates with the first two resting on a 3.73 and 2.65 per cent margin over the ALP, respectively.
Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather holds the seat of Griffith on a 10.46 per cent margin over the LNP but the seat was previously Labor-held meaning its future could hang in the balance depending on which parties make the final two.
If last year’s state elections are anything to go by, Queensland will prove an uphill battle for federal Labor, having lost a number of heartland seats across the state’s central and northern reaches.
The Greens too were left wanting after the October state elections after losing South Brisbane to Labor and having their margins pressed in a number of key seats.
The minor party had been hoping for a repeat of the ‘Green Machine’ wave across inner-Brisbane it achieved at the federal level in 2022.
Mr Chandler-Mather said the state elections which saw the first LNP majority in almost a decade demonstrated Labor’s need to overcome its ‘deep hostility’ to the minor party.
Given the ALP is showing all signs of throwing its weight behind key Greens seats, it appears Chandler-Mather’s message hasn’t been heeded.
Asked whether he would consider doing a deal with the Greens and teal independents to overcome a hung parliament on Friday, Albanese simply said: ‘I intend to lead a majority government’.