Rising Tide, the leaders debate, and ‘uncertain times’: Inside Anthony Albanese’s second week of the election campaign

There’s no doubting the Prime Minister started the week strong. The Coalition’s spectacular backflip on its promises to cut work from home for the public service and slash up to 41,000 bureaucrats gave the Prime Minister an easy win. Instead, the Coalition would pursue job-cutting of public servants through natural attrition and other means, and not through forced redundancies. WFH changes, widely panned by female voters, were also getting a rethink. “Today, we have the extraordinary position of Peter Dutton, having defended his attack on working from home, now pretending that program won’t proceed,” Mr Albanese said in Melbourne on Monday. “He said very clearly that women should just go and job share, that they shouldn’t worry about working full time … This is a ‘new’ Peter Dutton who has discovered work rights.” When it came to his own plans for tackling US President Donald Trump – whose administration members of the Labor government have accused the Coalition of drawing inspiration from – and his trade tariffs, the Prime Minister was far less certain. Day after day, the Prime Minister was asked about whether he had requested to speak to Donald Trump directly, what the plan of attack would be if Labor is re-elected next month, and who, alongside Treasurer Jim Chalmers, would lead it. For Mr Albanese, there’s unlikely to have been a more heavily relied upon phrase in week two of the election campaign than this: “these are uncertain times”. In fact, he said it at least 13 times this week as of Thursday evening. A further five times, the Prime Minister referred to the “uncertain world” we live in. He’s not exactly wrong. These are “uncertain times”: a seemingly endless land war in Europe, another in the Middle East, and trade tensions teetering to tip the world markets into a global depression. At each turn, the Prime Minister pulled out the “uncertain times” card, and repeated claims that Australia had got the “best deal”, even when Donald Trump also backflipped on many of the tariffs he’d slapped on countries like Cambodia – well, for the next 90 days at least. “We’re not getting ahead of ourselves,” the Prime Minister said on The Great Barrier Reef on Thursday. May 3 is still a few weeks away. ‘DOGE-y sycophants’, Medicare, and Rising Tide In some ways, the Prime Minister was less certain on week two of the campaign. He had clear answers about policy announcements of course, including a bridge in Far North Queensland, money for education at The Great Barrier Reef, and funding for Victoria’s massive train infrastructure projects – but, in the margins there was uncertainty. He cleared the first leaders debate in western Sydney with some zingers and came home the victor - despite the Liberal National Party of Queensland and the Nationals Party of Australia claiming otherwise on Twitter - but didn’t quite have the answers on tariffs and the Port of Darwin. He beat Mr Dutton to the punch on announcing the port’s return to Australian-approved hands, but couldn’t say whether he’d match the Opposition Leader’s pledge to have it dealt with in just six months. Mr Albanese defended his opaque response on Friday, telling reporters in the Northern Territory that it could jeopardise commercial bargaining if he put a deadline on the sale, and said that there were interested buyers. He also faced off with another security breach. A Rising Tide protester was able to bust into a press conference about mental health in Ashfield, screaming at a visibly shocked Prime Minister – and an equally taken aback press pack – that he was “condemning young people like me to a lifetime of climate disaster”. “Of course we have poor mental health issues. Where are you listening to young people?” the climate change protester from Rising Tide, 21-year-old Alexa Stuart yelled. “When will your government stop approving new coal-fired gas projects?” Of course, the whole incident took place in front of a large Medicare banner. The green and gold Medicare card has come out again and again during the second week of the campaign, as it did the first. The Prime Minister has pitched the election as make or break for the country’s health care system, claiming Mr Dutton will strip it despite pledges to match many of Labor’s funding announcements. “This election is a clear choice between Labor building Australia’s future, investing and strengthening Medicare, and Peter Dutton, who has to find $600bn of cuts for his nuclear plan,” he said in Palmerston in the Northern Territory on Friday. Those sentiments were mirrored by Treasurer Jim Chalmers who blasted the Opposition as “DOGE-y sycophants” during Wednesday night’s treasurer’s debate. In any case, the Prime Minister still seems to have the advantage. The about-face on WFH was bruising for the Opposition, and questions remain about costings for Mr Dutton’s nuclear plan – which Mr Albanese seized upon on the campaign trail and in election ads. Mr Dutton failed to secure the breakthrough moment he needed during the first leaders debate, and Donald Trump continues to be a disruptive presence over the campaign that, whether there is a Labor or Coalition-led government next month, will invariably continue to stoke the uncertainty the Prime Minister has warned about.