• How would you like your steak, sir?
• Like a construction suggestion from the Dutton Opposition
• Rare, it is, sir.

Headline from the future: “ALBANESE HONEYMOON OVER. LIBS WIN ASTON!”

While most of the commentary seems to be suggesting that Labor is in with a strong chance to win the Aston by-election, it seems to be overlooking a few key points.

The first is that no government has won a seat off the Opposition in a by-election for over a hundred years and, while once-in-a-hundred-year floods are happening quite frequently these days, it’s always dangerous to ignore history when making predictions. If you cast your mind back to that “super Saturday” when all those Labor seats were up for grabs after the High Court ruled that the MPs dual citizenship made them ineligible, you’ll remember how all the commentators suddenly remembered this fact AFTER the Coalition failed to take a single seat off Labor.

The second point is that Aston was considered a safe Liberal seat until the most recent election. While it’s possible that Alan Tudge’s personal following might have been what got him over the line last time, it’s also just as possible that Tudge’s personal disapproval rating is what people were objecting to.

And the final point is that this is the sort of area where Dutton’s: “Why does everything cost more under Labor?” whinge is likely to resonate. This is the sort of electorate that believes that the Liberals are better economic managers no matter what evidence is placed before them. I remember a small business owner telling me that things were improving under Kennett and that conditions for people like him were improving. Of course, I should qualify that when I refer to him as a “small business owner”, I mean someone who was a small business owner under Labor but had been unable to keep his business going after a few years of Jeff.

I know it may seem to be rash to be declaring the Liberals over the line when we don’t even know who their candidate is and surely the good people of Aston would think twice if the candidate wasn’t the right fit, but that’s not what makes me less than one hundred percent confident with my prediction.

And it’s not that I don’t think that Labor doesn’t deserve some criticism for a few things, such as the refusal to look at raising the rate of the dole, but I’d suggest that those saying that they’re no better than the other side haven’t had a good look at the other side lately. Even though there are areas where Labor haven’t lived up to people’s hopes, there are definitely individuals who are thankful that Labor won the last election. And I don’t just mean that family from Biloela…

When it comes to action on climate change, The Greens are critical because Labor aren’t doing enough, but the Liberals come to Labor’s rescue by telling us that they’re doing too much. This seems a great way for Dutton to win back the seats lost to the Independents because of the frustration with the climate wars.

The main problem that the Opposition have is their lack of a clear strategy beyond the Let’s Oppose Everything that Tony Abbott successfully used. While it worked for Abbott and he eventually managed to stand up in Parliament and tell everyone that the adulterers were back in charge, we’ve since had ten years of the Coalition telling us that they’re better than Labor and now that they’re in charge everything is just fine and we’ve got an energy policy plan which we’re working on and we should have it ready any day now. Abbott was also challenging a government that had been in power for a couple of years and could be considered responsible for what was happening. While commentators say that Labor can’t get away with blaming the Liberals forever, it does seem reasonable to at least wait and see if Labor’s proposal to fix a problem works.

Which is where the Opposition’s cantankerous behaviour starts to frustrate most sensible people. It’s not enough to stand in the way of possible solutions because you don’t believe that they’ll work, particularly when you rarely suggest an alternative that you think would work. Maybe Sussan Ley can suggest adding an extra “l” in “Australlia” because numerology has worked so well for her, but I can’t recall hearing any proposals for reducing energy prices beyond opening up more gas because more supply will drive the price down. And no, if we open up more gas fields we’re not going to reserve any for our own country because that would discourage exploration and the way to drive down prices is to sell enough overseas because if we were government then we’d have plenty and what do you mean we were government until recently?

The rising cost of living, growing homelessness, health, climate action and a host of other things are now Labor’s problem to deal with because they are the government. In many cases, action was demanded before Labor came to office and it’s reasonable to be frustrated and impatient because these things should have happened yesterday. But it must be nice for Labor when the can simply say, “Look, we wanted to do something, but Peter Dutton wouldn’t let us.”

It seems to me that the electorate is a bit sick of this boasting that we’re better than the other side and that they want some sort of attempt at fixing things from both sides. They don’t want their steak rare, they’d rather something that was well done.