In the first session of question time this term, Anthony Albanese was asked whether the government was considering certain taxes. A small smile appeared briefly on the prime minister’s face as he stepped up to deliver his answer. Then it vanished and he delivered his line, quiet and clear: “I’ll give a big tip to the member for Fairfax: the time to run a scare campaign is just before an election, not after one.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese looks confident in the Parliament on Thursday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

It was a good line. The quiet confidence with which it was delivered left no doubt as to the government’s ascendancy. It helped that, as others have noted, Albanese was right. The opposition’s attempts to warn of new taxes fell flat. Most voters have just made their decision – based in part on what the government said it would do – and they aren’t yet interested in speculations as to what it might do.

But Albanese’s words contain a lesson for the government too. The prime minister was talking about a specific type of scare campaign – the rule-in-rule-out kind – where the subject is imagined dangers. But the lesson applies to scare campaigns of any stripe, including those about the impact of actual policies. A scare campaign won’t work for a while now. This raises a question: what is the optimal timing in which the government might announce significant reform and make the case for it, safe in the knowledge that........

© The Sydney Morning Herald