Only a few more days to go.

And it's staggering what the media finds staggering.

This time next week, Australians could be suffering a bad case of buyer's remorse. Maybe the Coalition could still win and miracles do happen. In 2019, Scott Morrison said on election night he had 'always believed in miracles'. But two miracle wins for the Coalition in three elections might be asking a bit much.

I got quite a few comments about my Financial Review column last week. Most of the feedback was about the headline - which I didn't choose (columnists don't decide the title of their pieces) - but it summed up my views on the Coalition's campaign. 'Is the Liberal Party even trying to win this election?' was certainly a strong headline - but it accurately reflected what I wrote.

The meek may well inherit the earth, but if the polls are right, being meek doesn't win elections.

So far, the Coalition's election campaign has been meek, mild, and almost apologetic in tone. While Anthony Albanese practises the mantra of "never apologise, never explain", Peter Dutton does the honourable thing and admits when he's made a mistake. Only one of those two strategies appears to be working.

Dutton has said John Howard is one of his political role models. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Howard spent so much time fighting his own side that when the time came, he knew how to fight the Labor Party. Howard's four election victories were not an accident. His most effective ministers emerged from the Liberal Party's conflicts between the 'wets' and the 'dries'.

Dutton's shadow ministry isn't battle-hardened – and it shows. Few of his shadow ministers have ever had to carry an argument either inside the party or outside in the media. An exception is the Coalition's energy spokesperson, Ted O'Brien. Only a small handful of shadow ministers engaged in the public debate on the Indigenous Voice to parliament. Most of the shadow ministry was happy to sit on the sidelines and let others do the work…

The fundamental issue with its [the Coalition's] campaign strategy is the disconnect between what the Coalition claims is the scale of the problem facing the country and the solutions that it's offering. A cost-of-living crisis, falling living standards, and a trillion dollars of gross debt would normally prompt, from an opposition, not a tinkering at the edges but an ambitious reform agenda.

The average voter could reasonably conclude that the country's problems can't be as big as the Coalition says they are if it is promising not to change things too much. Dutton has said if his side wins the election, there will be no overhaul of industrial relations, no changes to the NDIS, and no shifting from the Coalition's commitment to net zero.

The Coalition's campaign slogan, 'Get Australia back on track', is problematic. Very few voters will think the era of Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison is anything to hark back to. Some voters will not unreasonably believe Australia hasn't been 'on track' since the heyday of the 1980s and 1990s. They look back fondly to a time when the leaders of the nation's two major political parties were Howard and Kim Beazley.

Meek describes Peter Dutton's initial reaction to what happened at the Dawn Service at Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance on ANZAC Day last Friday. Some in the crowd (including a known right-wing extremist) booed at the Welcome to Country. Labor premier Jacinta Allan claimed the protest was a demonstration of 'disrespect and dishonour to every man and woman who has served our nation'. Anthony Albanese said the protesters' must face the full force of the law'. [Under Victoria's recently passed 'hate speech' legislation, heckling at a Welcome to Country could be unlawful.]

Dutton's response was, 'Welcome to Country is an important part of official ceremonies and it should be respected and I don't agree with the booing and I don't agree in our democracy that people can't accept the views of others.' Which earned the applause of The Age in Melbourne. 'The Age disagreed with Dutton's previous opposition to the Voice to parliament and intention not to stand beside the Aboriginal flag at press conferences, but commends his swift defence of Welcome to County ceremonies today.'

More than 149,000 people have now voted on the issue in a News Limited poll. Maybe there've been bigger polls than this one, but I can't think of one. The headline to the story is 'AUSSIES OVERWHELMINGLY REJECT WELCOME TO COUNTRY IN STAGGERING POLL'. I don't think there's anything staggering at all about the poll. The only thing staggering is that anyone could be staggered by its results.

Tens of thousands of Aussies have made their opinion clear on Welcome to Country ceremonies following the ANZAC Day booing controversy.

How do you feel about Welcome to Country ceremonies?

There should be more - 3%

There is the right amount - 7%

There should be less - 23%

They should stop completely - 67%

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has described the tradition as 'divisive'. 'There is no problem with acknowledging our history, but rolling out these performances before every sporting event or public gathering is definitely divisive,' she said. 'It's not welcoming, it's telling non-Indigenous Australians' this isn't your country' and that's wrong. We are all Australians and we share this great land.'

From those numbers it's obvious why on the ABC's 7.30 tonight the PM was eager to avoid talking about the Welcome to Country ceremony (just like he's avoided talking about so many other issues during the campaign). Albanese said questions about the ceremony were 'a distraction' and he did 'not want to engage in culture wars', and it was up to the organisers of events to decide whether there should be a Welcome to Country ceremony.

Maybe if Dutton had his time again he might have said something like this on Friday morning. 'The Shrine of Remembrance is sacred and not the place for politics. I don't believe a Welcome to Country is appropriate at the Dawn Service, and heckling at the Dawn Service is not appropriate either.' Last night in the final leaders debate Dutton changed his tone. He said the ceremony was 'overdone' and should be limited to major events such as the opening of parliament. All too predictably, The Guardian claimed Dutton was 'stoking a culture war'. (It's funny how in the world of The Guardian and Anthony Albanese it's only ever conservatives who are accused of starting a 'culture war'.) When asked about it today Senator Price said 'she keeps her earphone in' when Qantas planes land and the captain gives the obligatory acknowledgment of country over the loudspeaker.

The Welcome to Country controversy is one of the few interesting things of the 2025 election campaign. If the Labor Party has dreamed of how it would have liked the campaign to have gone, then things have gone for Labor nearly exactly as hoped. And most of the media has cooperated with the plan. Not necessarily deliberately, but in the sense that the media's lack of curiosity about anything other than what occurred five minutes ago helps the ALP, hurts the Coalition, and does a disservice to voters.

In The Australian this morning, its former editor Chris Mitchell pointed out that because the media had months ago decided this was a 'cost of living' election, anything else wasn't going to get much attention - and so it's proved.

Prestigious defence journal Jane's reveals Russia is asking Indonesia for military access to launch planes in the country's east, just north of Australia. Not an issue for the election campaign here, according to most journalists.

Three Chinese naval ships conduct live-fire exercises off the coast between Australia and New Zealand, forcing commercial airlines to change course. One ship then circumnavigates the country, probably mapping the seabed. Journalists hardly raise the issue when questioning party leaders: this election is about cost of living…

The Labor government blows out federal spending to the highest levels since the Whitlam administration 50 years ago. It forecasts budget deficits for a decade. No side of politics promises budget repair. Why would they in a cost of living campaign?

Australia languishes in a per capita recession for seven quarters before the last anaemic quarterly growth number. Productivity growth sits at its lowest in a decade. Journalists ignore both issues. It's all about cost of living, after all.

What Mitchell says next is important.

But what if a politician had decided to break free of such thinking with bold ideas for a more prosperous and safe future? Could a leader with the advocacy skills of Paul Keating, Bob Hawke, or John Howard have broken free from this retail-focused campaign?

It would have been in Peter Dutton's interest to try, given the electorate already associates Labor governments with giving money away.

Dutton has been playing on Labor's turf by surrendering to the free-money mentality. This raises another question. Had Dutton tried serious policy, would there be enough journalists and media organisations around to report and analyse it?

The other thing about the media's coverage of the election is that as the media continues to fragment, news outlets increasingly play to the political tendencies of their audiences. Opinion and barracking have replaced analysis. Once upon a time, publications like The Economist magazine could be relied upon to provide some measure of dispassionate consideration of the issues (even if in decades past The Economist was right-leaning). These days The Economist is not dispassionate and it's the opposite of right-leaning. A few weeks ago Dr Scott Prasser on his excellent Substack, 'Policy Insights' had a great piece - 'Beware of comments about Australian politics by the UK Economist magazine'. He quoted The Economist's article on the Australian election from its 5 April edition and then explained why the author had absolutely no idea about Australian politics.

This is what The Economist said:

…Labor strategists are hoping the opposition will continue to do some of their work for them. By 2022 the Liberal Party had lurched so far to the right, including with a raucous scepticism over climate change, that it lost seats to moderates who ran and independent candidates. So-called 'teals' - economic conservatives but social and climate progressives for whom the Liberal Party was once a natural home - chalked up victories in prosperous, inner-suburban areas.

That's 'misinformation' - pure and simple. Anyone reading that anywhere else in the world who doesn't know Australian politics will be seriously misled. The Economist makes no mention of the fact that just like the Labor Party, the Coalition is committed to Net Zero.

Scott Prasser said this about The Economist's description of the 'far right' Morrison government.

If anyone could call the Morrison Coalition Government' so far to the right' they must have their ideological labels very mixed up and be completely ignorant of just how non-right or even 'conservative' (that is taken to be 'right' these days) the Morrison Government was seen by most commentators and its own supporters.

According to The Economist:

It is true that high power costs bother voters. But Australia has vast quantities of gas already, while abundant wind and sun go untapped. Wind, solar power and battery storage should be the priorities; ideology and interests forbid Mr Dutton from acknowledging them.

That could have been written by Simon Holmes a Court. Maybe it was. It's quite a concession of The Economist to acknowledge high power costs' bother' voters. Unfortunately high power costs do more than that. This is from Nine News last month.

Everyday Australians are being forced to choose between putting food on the table and paying their power bills, new research has found. Half of the 1011 people surveyed by the Australian Council of Social Service said they were skipping meals and going without medication to keep their air conditioning or heating on. Some said they were selling their belongings or using buy now, pay later products to afford their skyrocketing energy bills.

Recommended Reading

One of the outcomes of the weekend's vote will almost certainly be a record-low primary vote for the two major parties. I hesitate to suggest anything from the ABC as recommended reading, but this article is very good. It's what $1.2 billion of your money buys. If you scroll down through the article you'll see a graphic demonstrating the change in the vote for the ALP and the Coalition from 1975 right up to what could happen on Saturday.

kind regards John