Voters walk the tightrope as the circus hits town

Welcome to five weeks of the election roadshow. Here’s how it will play. 

The Murdoch media will back in their man Peter Dutton with gushing praise for every insane policy pronouncement he utters while savaging the teal independents for trivial missteps and praying for daily pics of Anthony Albanese making a funny face or looking like a bit of a dick.  

The television news will hope the PM trips over something (like a child) or stands in something (like dogshit) or that an angry pensioner with a limp chases him through a shopping centre while hurling angry expletives. If that doesn’t happen, they can always try to film him in front of a funny sign that says “Exit” or “Everything must go!” with an arrow pointing at his head. 

Mind your step

The media minders will carefully curate their leaders’ days to appear at events where they look assiduously at pieces of large machinery that will save the economy or be swamped by adoring schoolchildren. Gaffe-watch will be dialled up to nuclear. Scott Morrison washing some poor girl’s hair will never happen again and no prime ministerial hopeful will aggressively tackle a young boy who didn’t get the memo about always letting ScoMo have the ball. 

Some reporters will lob gotcha bombs to spark things along. Think “What’s the price of milk, prime minister? How much is a loaf of bread? What’s the cash rate?” Or as one reporter shot at Greens leader Adam Bandt in 2022, “What’s the current WPI?” (prompting the famous retort: “Google it, mate”). 

And in 2025, social media influencers will appear in the hallowed budget lock-up ritual alongside policy wonks and political journalists and secure looooooong interviews that the mainstream media can only dream about. 

If truth be told …

The headlines and the promises will be more remarkable for what they don’t tell you than for what they do. Take Monday’s Herald Sun. Artfully burying the news that Labor was ahead in the polls, the Murdoch tabloid screamed on page one: “Albo’s kiss of debt”. For those adventurous enough to read on, it then informed us that: 

“The nation’s debt bomb is forecast to hit such extreme levels should the Albanese government be returned to office that debt and interest payments would equate to more than $125,000 per household by 2028-29.” 

But shock horror! That’s not the full story. If you pressed on past the Albanese nightmare scenario on the front page, you’d have found buried on page seven a quote from Treasurer Jim Chalmers where he correctly stated that it was the Liberal Coalition government that had left behind most of the debt you’ll be paying off for years come — $888 billion to be precise. 

The trick is that you’d have been so blindsided by the financial bloodbath depicted on page one that salient fact will never sink in. 

The Murdoch machine knows that many readers will skip on. They won’t get to Chalmers at the bottom of page seven. They won’t absorb that the “opposition analysis” the paper attributed its “exclusive” story to was just the latest tranche of propaganda dropped to News Corp by Dutton’s media team and faked up as news. 

Promises, promises

Now, if you’ve dusted off your bullshit radar, please don’t stop at news outlets. The Liberal candidate in my electorate shovels social media ads my way proclaiming cheerily that a Dutton Coalition government will deliver: 

• Lower Inflation! (Inflation was 6%-plus when the LNP was in government. It’s now 2.8%.)
• Cheaper energy! (Dutton wants to build seven nuclear reactors around Australia, even though they are illegal, and force the taxpayer to pick up the bill of hundreds of billions of dollars — despite the CSIRO finding that nuclear would cost twice as much as renewables.)
• Affordable homes! (The LNP government deliberately drove down wages, meaning young people in particular could no longer afford to buy homes. Researchers at the Per Capita think-tank have released a study that reveals Australians are still living with the consequences of severe wage stagnation from 2012 to 2022 with the wage suppression “so severe” young people can no longer afford home ownership.)
• Safer communities! (Ahh the good old days when Dutton claimed Victorians were scared to go out to dinner in case they were beaten up by African gangs. Good times.)

The question arises: if Dutton and his mates didn’t deliver all those miracles when they were in office for 10 years, why believe he has any intention of pulling that rabbit out of a hat now? 

Right blight

Don’t get me wrong. The ALP is guilty of running a misleading slogan or two. But it’s far right parties that have globally weaponised disinformation so completely while managing to delude voters that’s good for them. And remember, Michaelia Cash unequivocally declared that Dutton will be an “action man” just “like President Trump”. There’s that chill down my spine again. 

So brace yourself for the distant sound of switches flicking to vaudeville: for Dutton presented daily in hero pose pictures as action man; repeated images of Albanese with mussed-up hair with tomato sauce on his face at a barbecue while being savaged for having a game of tennis; the Greens being portrayed as the devil, and the teals being excoriated for someone stealing a sign. 

And quietly but determinedly, on May 3 buy your democracy sausage and vote for a better world based on climate, social and economic justice … while the circus passes by.   

You can hear more on the media circus and its election tricks on Nicole Chvastek and Denis Muller’s podcast Truth, Lies and Media. Click here to listen.