“The perception battle is already on for the next federal election. Strong, decisive, conservative Dutton from outer Brisbane, versus the intellectual, low-wage warrior from inner Sydney,” writes columnist ANDREW HUGHES.

Perception is so often everything in politics. It is the key to making people believe you are something you are likely not, even if for just a short period of time. 

Like how real estate agents turn up in the latest, expensive car to make you think they are successful. 

This helps guide narratives around which is essential for us as the electorate to believe that the politician believes in. A commonality. A touch point. It is these narratives that campaigns are won, and lost, around. 

For the prime minister, the narrative that he is a Labor leader from a working-class background, all true, and can therefore understand what those on low wages are going through is being diluted right now. 

The house purchase is one thing, after all being in NSW you would need a lazy seven figures to buy anything with off-street parking and three bedrooms, but the requests for flight upgrades are not saying you understand the struggle. 

Sure the politics of envy, the evil sibling of the politics of perception, is also intertwined in this. I’ll admit, yes, please, to the upgrades and the Chairman’s Lounge. 

I’m guessing most of us would also be unlikely to say no, especially if you’ve done long haul in row 80 of a packed A380 or done the struggle for space in the overhead lockers (yes, to both). 

The big difference though is if you are the federal minister responsible for transport in a Western democracy, then allegedly asking for flight upgrades, sometimes each worth thousands, is not a good look if you want to be seen as “one of the people” and above stakeholder influence from big players who could easily be extras on Billions on Netflix. 

ACT senator David Pocock was smart enough to realise how issues like this can potentially play out in the dynamic media landscape of 2024, and after accepting his Chairman’s Lounge pass then handed it back. One of the very few, as more than 200 politicians and their plus ones have not. 

Once perception works against you then that aspect of the narrative of your story needs to change. The thing is, replacing it is hard. 

Julia Gillard tried to do this, being so bold to even tell us so by declaring we’d see the real Julia Gillard. Yet the real Julia Gillard, one of the most effective Prime Ministers in Australian history in getting legislation passed, was already there but lost in Labor’s 2010 campaign narrative fire. 

Switch to the US where Kamala Harris did a miraculous job in perception by moving from a vice president who had been far from outstanding to being a contender to be the most powerful person on earth. 

The Republicans cleverly played on her perception that maybe she can’t stand up to the bullies of the world and that she’s all image and no substance, as when pressed to name what she would do differently to her current boss, nada. 

She should probably have looked at Labor’s campaign with Steven Miles in Queensland. Knowing he was facing a similar perception battle, he realised the way to prevent political oblivion was relatively simple. 

Change perception by controlling the narrative, creating policies which were only his, associated with his own personal attributes, using the media as the messenger. 

Have policies which would dominate the discussion for a few days, usually announced on a Thursday so we would talk about them over a weekend with our networks, and then repeat. 

The gift on the perception front was the LNP’s folly to do a preference deal with KAP, which likely involved allowing them to introduce legislation to change abortion laws. All of a sudden Crisafulli was fighting his own perception battle. 

Combined with Labor’s strategy, the LNP watched five per cent primary vote move away from them in two weeks, said goodbye to a likely two-seat election buffer, and now have to work hard to keep government in the most politically dynamic electorate (at state level) in Australia. 

The perception battle is already on for the next federal election. Strong, decisive, conservative Dutton from the outer areas of Brisbane, versus the intellectual, low-wage warrior from inner Sydney. 

Yet the perception of both to the voters they’ll need to win at the next election, those in the middle to outer suburbs currently being economically tortured, is that both are too far out on their respective ideological spectrums. 

Neither has the aspiration and positive policies which connect with the narratives of those in the outer. Or Howard’s Battlers. Or Latham’s Ladder of Opportunity. With so many of us now making our minds up earlier, and voting early, time is fast running out for them to change that perception. 

Dr Andrew Hughes is a lecturer in marketing with the Research School of Management at ANU where he specialises in political marketing and advertising.