As the world moved towards the first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks and the Middle East spiralled toward ever greater conflict this week, federal Labor tried desperately to keep the focus on domestic issues. It knows voters care deeply about the high cost of living and it had the perfect symbols to tackle: allegedly overpriced Oreos and half-empty chip packets.
But with the year-long conflict in Gaza expanding to Lebanon, Labor’s hopes of a ceasefire taking the heat out of the issue in Australia before next year’s election withered. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton instead managed to force Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to take what he framed as moral values tests.
Peter Dutton laid a political trap that Anthony Albanese walked right into this week.Credit:
Will you expel the Hezbollah-supporting Iranian ambassador? Should a Hamas sympathiser be denied a visa as a matter of course? Will parliament be recalled to pass even tougher laws against hate speech, even before the current ones have been tested?
As with other issues such as social media controls, Dutton is setting the terms for Australia’s national discussion.
Keeping discussion on the Middle East suits the Coalition because Albanese is walking a very difficult road as he tries to satisfy members of the public who support Israel’s actions as well as those wholly against them. September data from this masthead’s Reserve Political Monitor shows Albanese’s personal popularity is slipping, putting him level with Dutton. The many Australians who do not prioritise issues in the Middle East are still left watching Labor ministers duck and weave.
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On Monday, Albanese briefly addressed the Middle East in generic terms without mentioning Hezbollah before moving on the next day to the kind of “announceable” this government likes to use set the agenda. In the past, it has been childcare worker wage hikes and housing equity schemes. This week it was more money for the consumer watchdog to take on supermarkets’ unit pricing strategies, tying the government to the regulator’s popular lawsuit over allegedly fake discounts on things like Oreos.
But Albanese and his office seemed unaware he already had one foot laid in the Coalition’s trap. Debate on local support for Hezbollah was already two days old. While the Palestinian question is totemic for many Muslim voters, Israel moving into Lebanon, where tens of thousands of Australians have relatives, has made the politics even more diabolical for the government.
In the Tuesday press conference in Melbourne, Albanese’s preamble was devoted to “shrinkflation”. He addressed the protests and widening Middle East war only when asked. In the prime minister’s answer, he said terror symbols were unacceptable and leant on Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s threat to cancel visas of any protester spreading “hate”.
