As Australians stagger towards the federal election campaign’s final days, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton must surely spend restless nights contemplating that old truism about luck being a fortune.

Albanese has been able to bank his luck during much of the campaign, and Dutton has been denied it at just about every turn.

Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese during their third debate.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Albanese should almost fall to his knees and, in a ghastly paradox, thank a natural disaster called Cyclone Alfred.

The memory of what happened to Scott Morrison when he was caught on holiday in Hawaii as Australia burnt in 2019 will forever smoulder in political minds.

And here was Cyclone Alfred approaching the south-east Queensland coast in early March, just as Albanese was preparing to visit the governor-general and announce an April 12 election.

Albanese had no choice but to stand by and offer all the assistance a prime minister could muster to alleviate whatever misery Alfred would inflict.

Cyclone Alfred meant Labor had to ditch its April 12 election plan.Credit: Dan Peled

To have barrelled into the naked point-scoring of an election campaign would have been considered political crassness of at least Morrisonian proportions.

It meant ditching Labor’s April 12 poll plan and stretching it out until May 3.

There was dread in Labor’s huddled ranks that the weeks of forced hesitation would erode Labor’s chances of gaining sorely needed lift-off from the interest-rate reduction announced by the Reserve Bank in mid-February.

Worse, the postponement meant the government would have to host a budget it did........

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