A friendly interview over a couple of beers turned into a social media success for Anthony Albanese when the prime minister walked into a pub during the election campaign to talk to Ozzy Man, a Perth comedian – real name Ethan Marrell – whose videos go nuts on YouTube. Over 45 minutes, he gave Albanese a chance to slip in some key talking points about tax cuts and two budget surpluses.

With the Coalition in disarray, Albanese’s on a collision course with the ‘real’ opposition

The interview has had 285,000 views since April 3 and is still turning up on mobile phone screens. It is easy to dismiss it as just another viral video, but it is part of a big shift in modern media. It is also a leading example of the way Labor demolished the Liberals in the contest to connect with ordinary Australians.

The media is changing, and Labor knows how to exploit that change. This will be a big factor in the way Albanese rules in the coming parliament – a place where the Liberals and Nationals are in civil war and the Greens are regrouping after losing their leader. There may not be a viable opposition for some time, so the media will be fundamental to holding the government to account. But the media is not what it used to be.

Thanks to the internet and the smartphone, the media is a landscape of earthquakes and eruptions – and Peter Dutton has shown everyone how to be engulfed in lava when you think you’re at the top of the mountain. The former Liberal leader is a case study in what not to do.

Dutton spent the past three years trying to dodge the major media, especially the press gallery in Parliament House, in order to avoid pesky questions about his economic policy vacuum. He avoided press conferences, dismissed print and online interview requests, ignored flagship ABC radio programs and ran away from the ABC’s 7.30 and Insiders. He launched a foolish attack on the ABC as the “hate media” and merely damaged himself. He junked the approach that had worked so well for Liberal prime minister John Howard: talk to the ABC, not to befriend the host, but to reach the audience.

Worse, Dutton had no viable strategy to use new media platforms to connect with voters. He simply wanted to talk to friends on old platforms who told him he deserved to win. One example is damning: in the final week of the election campaign, Dutton spent one hour talking to Sharri Markson on Sky News and another hour talking to Paul Murray on Sky News. There is no rational explanation for spending such valuable time on such a narrow media platform with such limited reach.

During the day, Sky News is a key part of the media landscape with sharp hosts and comprehensive political coverage. In the evening, Sky After Dark is an indulgence for conservative politicians talking to themselves. While Albanese was reaching hundreds of thousands of people on new media to win over Australians who were not engaged in politics, Dutton was reaching tens of thousands of people who were already voting conservative.

It was utter, humiliating madness. Was Dutton going on Sky After Dark to shore up his leadership by narrowcasting to Liberal Party branches, knowing he would lose the election but thinking he would keep his seat? Or was he doing it simply because it felt good? Either way, it sped him on the way to defeat.

The election outcome is a perfect moment to question this conservative media ecosystem. Lachlan Murdoch, the News Corp chairman, is waging a court battle against his siblings to keep control of the empire because his father, Rupert, believes his first-born son is the best choice to hold the editorial line. The central calculation is that future profits depend on a conservative audience.

There is no space here to consider the impact on America in the age of Donald Trump. But the impact in Australia is obvious: dividends for News Corp, disaster for the Liberal Party. By succumbing to Sky After Dark, the Liberals forgot how to appeal to the suburban voters they claimed they were winning. And they forgot that Murdoch’s interest is not their interest.

The television takeover of the Liberals is now complete with the rise of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, the Northern Territory senator who defected from the Nationals to the Liberals after the election. Price is championed by News Corp and is a star on Sky, following the Dutton playbook. She is, in a way, the senator for Sky. But she was a liability in the campaign with her Trumpian “Make Australia great again” echo, and her defection infuriated the Nationals and helped trigger this week’s Coalition split – proof again that the conservative media has an incredible talent for damaging the conservative cause.

Albanese will not want to stop Sky being Sky. Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake, as Napoleon may have said. Labor has proved it has a more effective media strategy. But Albanese did not appeal to Australians merely by talking to YouTubers like Ozzy Man or podcasters like Abbie Chatfield. The strategy was, and is, about making the most of a fragmenting media.

Albanese has done at least 20 podcasts since the start of this year. He agrees to countless interviews on AM and FM radio – sometimes inane, sometimes serious. He did a podcast with this masthead. But he is open to anyone outside the mainstream, as long as they have reach. Just look at the way Labor brought social media influencers to the federal budget to help spin the spending – raising the clear danger of “cash for comment” if all sides do not manage this well.

At the same time, Albanese spoke at the National Press Club, held regular press conferences and agreed to interviews with all the major media outlets. He did not bypass the traditional media – he talked to it as much as he could, and then went after the untraditional media as well.

Labor national secretary Paul Erickson studied the changes in the media. The prime minister’s communications director, Fiona Sugden, sharpened the message. The senior press secretary, Katharine Murphy, helped make sure the candidate was match fit. Murphy, remember, was derided by Dutton last year in a cheap tweet on social media. It turns out that advisers also have their victories.

All of this was brilliant work in the Labor campaign. But will it be so glittering in government? We do not know how the bruising experience of the last term may change the way Labor governs.

Although he tempers his remarks in public, Albanese has no illusions about the media dynamic of the past few years. He knows News Corp was out to get him, and he knows he won and Murdoch lost.

Consider the hyperventilating coverage of the caravan of explosives in January, when Dutton was aided and abetted when trying to make a criminal plot look like a national security crisis. Some of the coverage was egregiously overwrought. Albanese was vindicated. Dutton looked like a scaremonger.

There is no sign Albanese is exacting revenge on News Corp. He has appeared on Sky News – daytime edition – since election day. But his grievances might fester over time because he and his colleagues believe Labor won the election against the odds. They not only had to defeat Dutton, but they had to overcome a hostile media.

Labor may come to regard the hostile media as the real opposition when the Liberals and Nationals spend years in the wilderness. All prime ministers grow tired of the carping of the media, so Albanese may feel more inclined to talk to podcasters than reporters, now he knows how to work with new media. And he will be entitled to call out the blunders of poor journalism when they happen.

Even so, the podcasters are an addition to existing media, not a replacement. There is still a strong demand for newsrooms that hunt for news – and there are paying subscribers for major media companies that can fund investigations and defend them in court. There is still a place for good governance: accepting scrutiny, taking questions, accepting freedom-of-information requests and disclosing facts.

The principal risk is that the Labor grievances against the media become indiscriminate: that all media are branded as bad media, when the facts show that most outlets were balanced and fair during the past term. The media is not a monolith. Watch to see if Labor chooses to be specific with its complaints – and feels more confident in calling out media outlets and proprietors in the years ahead.

David Crowe is chief political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/with-the-coalition-in-disarray-albanese-s-on-a-collision-course-with-the-real-opposition-20250522-p5m19w.html

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