So an election that should be about the future is going to be fought with the slogans of the past.
Voters have heard it all before. John Howard spent the 2004 campaign promising lower interest rates under a Coalition government,a promise that was impossible to test because it was based on so many hypotheticals.
It was a transparent move but it worked. The Labor leader in that campaign,Mark Latham,felt the need to sign agiant pledge to keep interest rates down,dragging him into arguments about the economic issues Howard wanted voters to think about.
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Morrison is being just as obvious. He is even copying Howard’s opening line from the 2004 campaign:Who do you trust? Morrison used it in one of the leaders’ debates in the 2019 election and brought it back last month.
Like Howard,who posed the question to voters to shift the subject from his personal honesty to his reliability on the economy and national security,Morrison can use the line after French PresidentEmmanuel Macron branded him a liar two weeks ago.
The Coalition has no substance to its claims about petrol prices and electricity bills. Labor canvassed the idea of consulting on fuel emission standards at the last election,but the government has consulted on the same subject for years. With a scare campaign ahead,Albanese might want to drop that policy.