The pre-campaign campaign: Albanese parks the bus while Dutton prepares to climb a mountain

The reopening of parliament for 2025 will drag Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton back to Canberra for the next two weeks. But their travel schedules during a faux-campaign in January show both leaders are likely much keener shaking hands and rattling tins anywhere but the nation’s capital.

The official starter’s gun hasn’t yet been fired on the election campaign, but you wouldn’t know it from the leaders’ schedules. Crisscrossing the country with splashy announcements and jovial visits to marginal seats, Albanese and Dutton are in the media almost daily. The brushstrokes of a campaign strategy are already evident.

So far Albanese is focusing on sandbagging seats. Dutton, with a mountain to climb, needs to win a lot.

First the numbers. After the next election, when the House of Representatives will shrink to 150 seats again from its current 151, a government needs 76 seats to claim victory outright. Labor currently holds 78, the Liberal-National coalition has 55, and there are 18 crossbenchers.

To govern in majority, Labor can afford to lose just two seats, and the Coalition would need to pick up 21.

To be fair, Dutton’s numbers look worse than they might be. Calare and Monash, which voted Coalition at the last election, have seen their members defect to the crossbench, so notionally one could say the opposition leader is on 57. Labor-held Higgins and independent North Sydney are being abolished, and a new Western Australian seat of Bullwinkel is regarded as notionally Liberal, so things may be a little less steep for Dutton.

But even on the rosiest projections, the Coalition still needs to pick up about 20 seats just to scrape a majority.

Of course, Labor losing its majority looks more likely – at this stage – than the Coalition winning a majority of its own, so the crossbench comes into play. Getting to the high 60s or low 70s in a seat tally might be enough for either leader to cobble together a clutch of crossbenchers to support them.

But to borrow a sporting analogy, when you’re in the lead and your opponent is hunting points, it sometimes pays to play defence. So far, Albanese seems to be focusing on “parking the bus”.

Polling shows Dutton ascendant and Labor losing ground. But while the momentum might favour Dutton, Albanese has a healthy lead on the scoreboard that matters. Despite growing commentary that the election is now Dutton’s to lose, momentum counts for less when you’re facing a large deficit and a ticking clock.