Anthony Albanese is looking towards a historic third term as he rides high in the polls, while the coalition has been warned to quickly find another gear to win over voters.
The prime minister has denied his team are getting ahead of themselves as Labor widens the gap in two-party preferred polling, putting majority government within reach.
“I’m trying to climb a mountain”, Mr Albanese said in Tasmania on Tuesday, pointing to John Howard being the last prime minister to win after serving a full term in 2004.
“We’ve had a revolving door, I don’t think, objectively, that’s in the interests of Australia.”
Labor is ahead 54.5 to 45.5 per cent according to Roy Morgan polling and 53.5 per cent to 46.5 per cent in a separate Resolve poll published by the Nine newspapers.
Questions about potential hubris arose after Mr Albanese gave comments to The Nightly about seeking a third term following questions about his political future.
He said context was needed for his answer, saying he was asked about whether he would serve a full second term and what he would do at the end of that.
“I think that’s what the Australian people would expect of me,” Mr Albanese said.
“I don’t take anything for granted on May 3.”
The prime minister said if he won and fought on for a third term, he did not expect to be later knifed by an ambitious lieutenant, a fate that befell a series of predecessors in The Lodge.
“I’m not looking over my back, I’m looking forward and we have an incredibly united caucus,” he said.
“We went through the revolving door where you had people who won elections in ’07, 2010, 2013 and 2016 removed by their own party.
“I reckon the Australian people had a gutful of that.”
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton squarely positioned himself as the underdog as he pointed to Mr Albanese’s third-term comments.
“A first-term government hasn’t lost since 1931 … it’s hard to win after one term,” he told reporters in Melbourne.
Liberal insiders concede comparisons with Donald Trump have stalked the opposition leader at a time when the US president’s moves are increasingly unpopular in Australia.
Mr Dutton denied a Trumpian influence in his politics.
Pollster Kos Samaras said he did not believe voters were abandoning the coalition due to the Trump factor, rather young people were moving to minor parties because of a lack of economic and housing policies.
“His problems already started well before this, these younger voters don’t think he has an economic plan,” he told AAP, although he added that recent housing announcements might resonate with the younger cohort.
“They will need to commit all their messaging on one or two policies, particularly their housing policy, and laser focus it on the group they have problems with and they need to do it quickly.”
It is not too late for the coalition to turn dire polls around with an unprecedented 40 per cent of Australians remaining undecided, said Scott Morrison’s former media chief turned consultant Andrew Carswell.
“It’s gigantic, the biggest I’ve ever seen in an election context,” he said.
Pre-polling starts in a week’s time but people who voted early had already made up their mind, he said, meaning others could still be convinced to vote for the coalition.
“Everything that we see on the ground in those key electorates, people want to be convinced, they haven’t closed themselves to the coalition like they may have done in previous elections,” he said.
“What will convince them is the coalition hitting that economic message every single day of the last three weeks.”
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