 G'day and welcome to Off the Hill, the Australian National University's look at the 2016 Australian Federal election. Join us each week as we look at the highs and the lows for the politics, the policies and the key players in this two-month long carnival of democracy. My name is Ryan Goss. I'll be joined each week by Andrew Hughes from the Australian National University. Our regular host Jill Shepherd is off this week, but we're lucky to have in her place Maria Tufflager from the ANU School of Politics and International Relations. This week, we'll be looking at the teething problems in the early part of the campaign, questions of campaign strategy and asking whether we're in for two months of debate about big ideas. So let's start with the teething problems. To set the scene, we know that on Sunday afternoon, Prime Minister Turnbull made the short drive to the Governor-General's residence to advise him under Section 57 of the Constitution to dissolve both houses of Parliament. Since that time, we've seen a bit of uncertainty and instability on both sides of politics with the Liberal Party yet to finalise some pre-selections in key seats and Labor looking like it's lost two candidates in the first week already. Caroline Boothman in Gippsland and Chris Brown over in Fremantle. So there's a lot going on. Andrew, I was in the rain at Yarra Lumler on Sunday afternoon, so I missed a lot of the media coverage. What have you made of the Prime Minister's start to the campaign? Missed opportunity number one. I mean really, the Prime Minister, you set the narrative, you get the opportunity to call the election when you want to. You can really set the scene, as it were, for that first week of campaign. You can have the first opportunity to give the first presser. All the cameras are on you. If you don't hit the ground running with a good advantage over the opposition, it is a missed opportunity and indeed it has been for the government. You think he didn't make the most of that, of the Sunday afternoon of the first number days. And look, I think it came out because the campaign didn't seem organized from day one. We've had issues all the way through the campaign. He's had to fight off issues over the leadership ballot with Tony Abbott already. He had to fight off issues on how the state teams have been run, how they've been organized. He's had all these issues bubbling away in the background. He hasn't been really able to build up that momentum, that key to any campaign is that sense that this is the guy to get behind now early on in the campaign to make him a winner all the way through the campaign. We haven't had that clear sense of message either coming out from the government either. And there's been some instability on the later side of politics, of course, in Fremantle and in Gippsland. But it seems as though there are some difficulties, particularly in New South Wales, Maria, is that right? Yeah. And I mean, I guess this is Turnbull's problem is that he doesn't have the same kind of capacity to control the party centrally as the Labour Party does. And New South Wales is the division that just keeps on giving in the sense that it cost them the election in 2010, caused all sorts of teething problems in 2013 with the famous Jamie Diaz and his inability to name six points. And it seems that the concentration of Turnbull and Abba in the same division is already causing problems. We've seen people in marginal seats like Lindsay and Edamonero. So yeah. And how will the central Liberal Party, how will Malcolm Turnbull and his office deal with this instability in New South Wales or if it breaks out elsewhere? They'll ask very nicely for them to get their house in order. And what allies will Malcolm Turnbull have in that regard, do you think? Well, I mean, everyone wants to win the election. So we can only hope that Discipline will prevail and Tony's already sort of come in behind the team and sort of said he supports the super changes. So hopefully they'll behave. Although we did see today that Tony Abbott's former Chief of Staff making some remarks about Malcolm Turnbull's current waterside mansion. Wasn't that helpful? Well, and I think that leads us to sort of a bigger picture question. Based on the first week, what can we discern about the party's strategies? What can we expect over the eight long weeks ahead? Andrew, what's your sense of the strategies at this stage? Early on, it's been bland, to be honest with you, Ryan. I mean, we had the budget of the bland, as I called it, where it was very much nothing happening, nothing in it. And we've moved on to the campaign of the bland now, where it's a lot of talking about ideas and about their policy perspectives and where they stand, all this type of thing. But, you know, we're lacking the details and specifics. So what they've gone to early on is to get that engagement and that awareness high because they know it's a long campaign. Maybe they want to hold off on the policy talking to the very end anyway when the undecided voters are thinking about who they should vote for. So the meet and greets have been very popular this week, we've noticed. And what are we seeing in terms of the there are some ads beginning to come out. That's right, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. And look, and this is the start of the messaging. And it's interesting that nowadays in modern politics, where you start your messaging off, it's always positive because you need to give people a reason to vote for you, not vote against you. So this is where the positive messaging comes into it. But at the same time, the government's already gone negative. To me, that's a flaw in their campaign early on, because what you should be doing is hitting that positive messaging. Not to mention, negative does not work. Negative campaigning is being seen now more and more through research coming out of America and my own research. But it does not work at all because people tune out to it straight away. They want to hear positive. And one of the things that has been sort of shaping the strategy, I think, even at this early stage is the role, particularly of the Greens. We've seen that there are minor parties playing different roles all throughout the country, the Palmer Party collapse or parent collapse in Queensland, Xenophon in South Australia. But the Greens and their role, particularly in in Melbourne and in Sydney, seems to be causing all sorts of interesting permutations and combinations. The Daily Telegraph endorsing Albo on the front page this week, after a couple of years ago depicting him as one of Hogan's heroes, I think. The possibility of some form of informal preference deals with the Liberal Party or at least some sort of detente with the Liberal Party in terms of referencing. So the role of the Greens, particularly in those inner city seats, is seeming to be shaking up the strategy a little bit. But I think it also ties into the fear of a hung parliament or minority government. Is that something that we're still really afraid of? Oh, I think so. It suits the Liberal Party every time that we're reminded of the Greens-Labor Coalition. And we can see Labour running a mile from it. Though interestingly, they haven't actually ruled out the fact that they might govern in minority, just like virtually every government in New Zealand has, since they changed the voting system there. So just because they say they won't come to a coalition agreement doesn't mean that we won't see different types of government permutations in this country. And these are the sorts of things that they are talking about. But Maria, if we move on to the question, we've got eight weeks ahead. Are we going to see a debate about big ideas in the future of the country, do you think, in the next eight weeks? What's going to be the nature of the debate? Well, I guess I'm more cynical about this. I think there's no money in the budget for them to dole out a nice little campaign announcement every day and keep the message nice and disciplined and focused. So they're doing this thing where they go out and they're sort of saying, yeah, you know, we've got these new ideas for the future, which for Labour sort of draws attention to their costing problems. And for the coalition, it really underlines the fact that they're the incumbent government and it's been three years and their policy agenda is still underdeveloped. And that's risky for them. And it's that strange combination, isn't it, of incumbency and also a fresh new prime minister and trying to convey both of those messages at the same time? Yeah, I guess we're seeing echoes of the real Julia and the 2010 campaign. It's really difficult, particularly when there is a difference, a policy difference between Malcolm and Turnbull, but that's not been clearly articulated. Right. And Andrew, what do you think the length of the campaign, which we're talking about here, will do in terms of the media strategy and the messaging? Yeah, this is where it's going to be hard for them because they only get limited funds, so they're going to have to draw the message out. So early on we're going to see the use of the media really be used to deliver a lot of the messaging. It's an excellent way also to get credibility up early in the campaign and also keep those funds in reserve for the last part of the campaign. At the same time, the government's already made some errors early on. We go back to the advertising, the ad campaign up from Malcolm Turnbull, the first positive ad, very similar logo-wise to what Tony Abbott ran in 2013. So you're trying to make that nexus between, hey, I'm the new guy and this is the other guy we don't talk about anymore. Yet the first thing you do is recall those images in people's heads between that campaign, that era of government and uncertainty as well, to what you're trying to build up as a message. So I think this is where they're going to have to get it ironed out. Maybe it's teething issues because it's a long campaign. They had nowhere to go or they're a little lacking. And I think there it's important to remember that there's no reason to think that Malcolm Turnbull necessarily wanted a long campaign. He wanted a double dissolution. And the way that Section 57 works is that the price you pay for having a double dissolution at the time that Malcolm Turnbull could do it was a long campaign. And that's the reality. I mean, I think my great fear is that we could have a big debate about great ideas, but I hope that the press gallery is up to covering that. Not up to covering, as I see the Brisbane papers did today, Bill Shorten's choice of jogging gear. So that leads us to final thoughts. Our final thoughts for the week ahead. Maria, what's your final thought? The coalition really needs to sort out the superannuation problems. Every day it spends debating the semantic argument about whether or not these changes are retrospective is a day that they're not getting credit for a bold nation-building national interest reform. Okay, Andrew. Just really quickly, I hope that Tony Abbott and Peter Creadland aren't doing the numbers for our Eurovision Contest. That could be a disaster there. But look on the more serious side. I think this week we'll see the start of the big announcements on that $1.6 billion war chest the coalition put aside in the budget. So maybe some exciting times ahead. Very good. And my final word is to say that moments ago the High Court seems to have upheld the government's changes to the Senate voting laws. So that's bad news for Bob Day. It's probably, I think, good news for the Australian Electoral Commission and it can start getting into the process of preparing and designing its ballot papers. That's it for us this week. Enjoy the first leaders debate of the campaign if you're watching that on Friday night or the football or Eurovision, as I suspect many Australians will be watching. We'll see you next week off the hill.