How Albo blew Dutton away with this stealth persuasion technique (that anyone can use)

When talking elections recently, a colleague noted that in 2019, his pensioner mother voted Coalition for the first time.

Why?

Because Labor was ‘punishing pensioners’ with their crackdown on franking credit refunds.

“She didn’t even own any shares!” he noted, laughing.

The policy only affected retirees with shares and didn’t apply to pensioners.

But his mother’s mind – fuelled by a campaign led by investor Geoff Wilson – had made several leaps of logic to link Labor’s franking credit proposal to hurting all retirees and pensioners.

The anecdote highlights that when it comes to the art of persuasion, the facts matter less than the perception of truth.

While the Libs used this principle to help defeat Bill Shorten in 2019, it was Labor that weaponised it to great effect in 2025.

MAGA magic

Make America Great Again.

Whether you support Trump or not, it’s one of the great political slogans.

What is the MAGA slogan really communicating?

1. America was once great

2. America is no longer great

3. We therefore need to make America great again and vote for Trump.

In one neat slogan, MAGA communicates an awful lot … but most of it is unsaid.

It never mentions that America was once great and is no longer great. It just assumes the audience knows.

The technical rhetorical term for slogans like MAGA is an ‘enthymeme’. It’s an argument where a premise (America is no longer great) is not stated, but implied.

Here’s what’s also important: that premise does not have to be literally true or based on fact. It can simply be what the audience already believes or thinks is true (the commonplace). In other words, it has the perception of truth.

Trump could spell out that America is no longer great; he could rally facts to support that. But he knows that is what many Americans believe, so he focuses on the solution: vote for Trump to make America great again.

An enthymeme – or logical leaps – enables you to simplify your argument.

By not stating the obvious (America is no longer great), by allowing your audience to fill in the missing premise/belief that ‘you and I know, wink wink’, it also builds trust and connection. And it allows you to skip over inconvenient facts.

All this makes your argument much, much more powerful.

How Labor harnessed logical leaps in 2025

That’s exactly what Labor did so well during this election.

They didn’t argue about facts.

They simply tapped into voters’ existing assumptions and framed them in such ways that voters could make ‘logical leaps’ that were negative for Dutton and positive for Albanese.

Let’s look at a few examples.

1. Mediscare 2

The truth is that Labor hasn’t performed that well in health during Albanese’s first term. As the AFR noted, bulk billing has fallen from 88% to 77% since Albanese was elected Prime Minister.

But that didn’t stop Labor fighting on health and Medicare, as it did in 2016 with its infamous ‘Mediscare’ campaign.

Because it knows that, in voters’ minds, Labor is viewed as being great for Medicare whereas the Coalition is a threat.

That voter belief – not actual performance or facts – is all that matters.

That allowed Labor to run this argument:

1. Labor is great for Medicare

2. Coalition is bad for Medicare

3. Therefore, you should vote Labor if you care about health/Medicare

Of course, Labor didn’t spell this out or provide evidence. Labor didn’t even really attack the Coalition (it was assumed they were bad for Medicare).

They simply made Medicare an election issue to fight on this ground, mainly by announcing an $8 billion scheme to increase bulk billing.

The Coalition matched the policy but that was irrelevant because, after all, in voters’ minds, they are bad for Medicare.

2. Dutton = Trump

Another example was Labor’s linking Dutton with Trump, particularly in the wake of Trump’s tariff hikes chaos.

Again, Labor didn’t do it openly.

Their underlying argument was

1. Donald Trump is disruptive and dangerous

2. Peter Dutton is like Donald Trump

3. Therefore, if you don’t like Trump, don’t vote for Dutton

Did Labor come out and argue this directly, or present facts to show how similar Dutton was to Trump? Or suggest that Dutton was going to raise tariffs too?

No, they just implied that Dutton was like Trump (“not the Australian way”, “we don’t want American-style …”).

3. Dutton’s ‘Work from home’ policy doesn’t work for women

But perhaps the biggest and most devastating ‘logical leap’ that Labor created in voters’ minds was around working from home.

Dutton announced the Coalition would end public servants working from home.

That allowed Labor to run a hidden argument:

1. Peter Dutton wants public servants to stop working from home

2. Women work from home (because they need the flexibility to raise kids, etc)

3. Therefore, Peter Dutton is punishing women/anti-women

Factually, you could tear this apart. Dutton’s mandate applied only to public servants, and applied to all public servants regardless of gender.

But the facts didn’t matter.

What mattered was that Labor harnessed – but never overtly started – the widely held assumption that women work from home.

That allowed them to simply communicate that because Peter Dutton is cracking down on working from home … Peter Dutton is anti-women (who make up 50% of voters and were already suspicious of him!).

There were many other examples: linking Nuclear to Medicare cuts, etc.

Smashing the Coalition

As you can see, none of Labor’s arguments were based on facts, they were based on existing beliefs:

· Dutton is a hard man and populist

· Trump is toxic and un-Australian

· Labor is pro-Medicare

· Women work from home

By tapping into these voter beliefs and employing logical leaps, Labor smashed the Coalition in all three areas.

Now I’m not saying the Coalition hasn’t used these principles before. They have in the past successfully, most recently with the anti-franking credits campaign we started the article with.

What is striking about the 2025 election was how Labor successfully employed the principles and how the Coalition completely forgot them.

The Coalition is belatedly realising this.

One MP argued off the record that they should have attacked Labor harder on the $3 million super tax. “They [the Coalition] should have called it a retirement tax.”

A big logical leap, but it would have been effective.

(Update: the super tax is now being labelled a retirement tax by some opponents.)

Galvanising economic reform

When it comes to persuasion, there are a few lessons:

1. In persuasion, truth isn’t necessarily facts; it is what your audience believes to be true.

2. To persuade well, you need to understand your audience’s deeply held views and beliefs (Trump is bad, women work from home, Labor is good for Medicare).

3. Good persuasion then implies these beliefs (enthymemes) to allow your audience to make ‘logical leaps’, which strengthens your conclusion/argument.

Many people, for example, are trying to galvanise economic reform in Australia, particularly around tax and productivity.

But many efforts fail to gain traction because they don’t tap into the public’s existing beliefs, and they are too literal.

Talking about productivity is too abstract.

Indeed, I suspect many overburdened and burnt-out voters equate productivity with having to work even harder.  

But off the top of my head, productivity can allow Australians to “work smarter [not harder] and earn more” … “have more time with the family” … and provide “genuine cost-of-living relief”. And even, to reprise an old Keating classic, help Australia avoid becoming a “banana republic”.

For good or ill

These tools are available to all leaders, marketers and communicators and can be used for good or ill.

Obviously, there is a whole ethical debate around the use and abuse of rhetoric, which extends back to Ancient Greece when the Sophists – masters of rhetoric – were blamed for causing the destruction of Athenian democracy at the hands of the Spartans.

Critics like Plato argued that the Sophists cared about persuasive language, not truth, which led to disastrous outcomes for society. (We use the term sophistry now to describe people who use slippery language and false arguments.)

Personally, I think that this election was symptomatic of a long-term weakening of fact-seeking and truth-seeking institutions in Australia, particularly the media.

But if we want to understand how the world works – that persuasion is not necessarily about truth – it is important to know what is really happening and its real-world consequences.

After all, Labor is in power. The Coalition is not.

Now that is a fact!