Overall, a bit of a struggle, really. Albo was focused on defence as he worked hard at proving his government had actually done things, while Dutton had to be restrained from turning every answer into a political attack on what Labour had done, didn’t do, or would probably do if elected.
Sadly for the rest of us, it was no surprise that neither of them came across as particularly interesting or inspiring men.
Dutton’s political reflexes are predominantly pugilistic, quick to produce what Penny Wong has called ‘aggro’. Obviously, the aggression is aimed at projecting strength, but it also risks projecting a degree of instability. Albanese was comparatively calm and considered in his answers, most of the time, but revealed a slightly weird ‘resting face’ — which occasionally popped up on the screen when Dutton was talking. Hard to describe, but it reminded me of that look men can wear while waiting for their partner outside a shop they don’t want to go into.
One commentator suggested that the real hero of the show was David Speers, who did a creditable job of pulling each of the two candidates back to the questions, and to the task of explaining what it was their governments would do if elected. Good, too, that his focus was on extracting the details of policy — not always successful, but pursued with some determination nevertheless. But, as always with ‘Speersy’, one suspected that he might have felt that he was the hero, too.
The debate did have some interest, though, in watching how it played into what have become the defining discursive frames for this election — pitting the ‘strong’ against the ‘weak’, and the ‘reckless’ against the ‘sensible/responsible’ (that part of the pairing hasn’t quite settled down yet).
The Trump effect
Dutton, of course, has gone boots and all into the ‘strong leader’ narrative, the ‘strongman’ the country needs, since the failure of the Voice referendum. That seemed to be working pretty well for a time, tapping into the frustration of an electorate hungry for change but without any faith in their current leadership to take them anywhere they wanted to go.
But, then, of course, along come Trump.
The ferocity of Trump’s attack on democratic process and rational government demonstrated that there can be a downside to the ‘strongman’. Strength is not such a desirable attribute if it is purely focused on the aggregation of power. And Dutton’s initial me-too approval of a number of Trump’s targets — immigrants, government ‘inefficiency’, and ‘wokeness’ in education — meant that the public had been invited to regard Dutton as cut from the same cloth.
But since the authoritarian character of the Trump administration has revealed itself, the backlash in Australia has been significant. Consequently, spooked by the shifting polls, and probably stung by the ‘Temu-Trump’ memes, subsequent campaigning for the Coalition has tried to create distance between Dutton and Trump.
This background created a difficult problem for Dutton’s performance in the leaders’ debate. He had to put some policy meat on the bones of his ‘strong leader’ persona, but there were major issues where he didn’t really have much detail to offer — such as climate change and cuts to the public service. He couldn’t come up with a ‘strong’ position without seeming to be just lining up alongside Trump.
Albanese, on the other hand, had a different set of problems. He clearly was not going to benefit from attempting to match Dutton’s aggression, so there had to be another way of dealing with the ‘weak and incompetent’ label that has been so damaging over the last year. He appears to have chosen to go for something like ‘sensible and effective’.
Albanese had already clawed back some respect from the public with his response to Trump’s tariffs simply by explicitly defending Australia’s national interests and independence. (Tellingly, we have reached a point where that is regarded as a positive, rather than a given.) In this debate, he took the opportunity of reminding the viewers of what his government had achieved. The lists were quite long, and designed to capitalize on the advantages of incumbency. He could focus on what his government had actually done, while Dutton had to depend on vague promises on what his might do.
On Trump, Albo presented a different version of strength — maintaining a diplomatic distance while reaffirming the principle of national independence. Holding the line in this way may well be an effective strategy for reassuring a population increasingly concerned about the ripple effects of the political and economic chaos emanating from Trump’s America. We’ll see.
No winners in the battle of the duds
While the television pundits and the newspaper columnists argued over their pick for ‘the winner’, it really wasn’t that kind of a contest. Not so much a debate or a contest of ideas, it was more in the realm of an audition with each of them performing their prepared lines diligently in the hope that, this time, some of them might resonate and stick.
If there is a loser, then, it’s probably Australia, if this is all we can come up with: the stunted ambition, the limited horizons, and the lack of confidence in the courage of the electorate they each seek to represent.
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