An early election is on the cards and there’s two scare campaigns underway that will affect every Aussie. Here’s what you need to know, writes PETER VAN ONSELEN

A new election campaign, fueled by scare campaigns, threatens to be big, but how different will it be from the previous ones?

Cost of living challenges are currently the dominant focus for most Australians and this is unlikely to change before election day. The coalition’s attacks will blame the Albanian government for making the bad situation worse. It will aim to scare voters into not risking another three years of Labour.

If history is any guide, this will be a hard sell. No first-term government has lost a re-election candidate since 1931, although some have come close in more recent times.

For example, the Labor government elected in 2007 under Kevin Rudd almost lost the 2010 election under Prime Minister Julia Gillard. They only won by forming a government as a minority with the support of the crossbench.

Some Liberal strategists don’t think opposition leader Peter Dutton can win the next election, but they are confident they can chip away at Labour’s narrow majority. It currently holds 78 of the 151 seats in the House of Representatives.

Peter Dutton (left) and Anthony Albanese (right) are both conducting a scare campaign in the yet-to-be-announced federal elections

Dutton’s strategy of promising to build nuclear power stations while questioning the realism of meeting 2030 emissions reduction targets could make it harder for Liberals to win back Teal seats such as Wentworth and Kooyong.

But he hopes Australians in general will no longer be ideologically opposed to nuclear power. He calls Labor’s reliance on acting on its own on renewable energy a risky business: an energy source that is both unreliable and expensive.

Anthony Albaneseon the other hand, thinks he is targeting an electoral winner Dutton‘s plans for nuclear energy. Labor is preparing the mother of all scare campaigns in an attempt to cast doubt on Dutton’s election as prime minister.

Meanwhile, Greens leader Adam Bandt said today that neither major party’s plan is unable to achieve the emissions reduction targets Australia has committed to.

This could cause political problems for Labour, with some voters concerned about the deal with the Greens if the country formed a minority government with their support after the election.

Labor strategists point to Bill Shorten’s success with his Medicare campaign in the 2016 election.

It was widely expected that then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull would score a handsome victory in 2016, but when the gun was officially fired for the formal election campaign, Team Shorten ruthlessly targeted the coalition that planned to ‘abolish’ Medicare if it would win a second term.

The political advertisements were numerous and the references to Turnbull’s so-called ‘plans’ were endless whenever opposition MPs faced the media.

It almost worked. Turnbull’s government was returned with the smallest majority, 76 seats in the 150-seat chamber. It took a week of math in the Queensland seat of Capricornia before the coalition could be confident of forming a majority government.

“If you thought the Medicare campaign was going to be tough, wait until you see what we do with nuclear,” a Labor MP who asked not to be named told Daily Mail Australia.

Qualitative research has revealed to Albanians that doubts arise when Australians are questioned about their concerns about nuclear energy

Labour’s plans include flooding the Dutton campaign with protesters in hazmat suits and reminding voters in key marginal seats that a nuclear power station will soon be built there if the coalition wins.

While the debates surrounding nuclear energy have done that has changed globally in the decades since the heady days of the 1970s and 1980sAustralia is an untested market.

Recently published opinion polls have shown that voters are not as opposed to nuclear power as they used to be, but Labour’s internal focus groups delve deeper into voters’ feelings than headlines ever can.

This qualitative research has made it clear to Albanians that when Australians are questioned about their concerns about nuclear energy, doubts arise.

This is exactly what a Labor election campaign is planning, and some Liberals are so concerned about the possibility that they are privately suggesting to Dutton that he dump the policy now and suffer the political humiliation, rather than risk an electoral backlash later.

But given that the 2016 Medicare campaign was largely based on the false premise that the coalition wanted to abolish Medicare, it is doubtful that Dutton could reverse his nuclear intentions even if he ruled them out. Labour’s anti-nuclear message appears set in stone.

In the early years of the Howard government, a moratorium on the use of nuclear energy was declared. It has remained in place ever since, even though in the final years of Howard’s leadership he commissioned an independent inquiry into the viability of nuclear power in Australia.

We have the world’s second largest reserves of Yellowcake, the key ingredient for nuclear energy production, and are one of the largest exporters. Yet “going nuclear” has never been a serious proposal until now.

If Dutton sticks to his guns and announces the details of his planned nuclear policy – he promised more than six weeks ago – it will be the first election campaign in which voters can choose to accept or reject ‘going nuclear’.

Team Dutton knows that cost-of-living pressures are at the forefront of voters’ minds

The independent inquiry, commissioned by the Howard government almost two decades ago, concluded that ‘going nuclear’ was economically viable but needed to be embraced urgently. That never happened, and since then nuclear technology has been refined, as have safety standards. Renewable energy technologies have also advanced significantly.

This is where the dividing lines in this debate are likely to emerge. But with a twist.

Team Dutton knows that cost-of-living pressures are at the forefront of voters’ minds. For the Coalition, the challenge is to reduce all political issues to the dire state of the economy, and blame Labor’s mismanagement for conditions becoming as bad as they already are.

It is at this point that the timing of the elections comes into view again.

The Albanian wants to go to the polls early – at the end of this year – if he thinks he can win. The prime minister previously promised to serve a full term, which would mean elections would take place sometime before May in 2025.

But with expected rate cuts later this year looking less likely, any delay risks enraging voters by the time the first half of next year arrives, and no such cuts have yet materialized. Especially if unemployment rises, as predicted in the budget, and the economy continues to stagnate.

Some economists even think that interest rate hikes are in the offing if ‘sticky’ inflation does not fall further.

The income tax cuts coming into effect on July 1 will give many Australians more money help with the pressure on living costs when they receive their pay package.

But that extra money circulating in the economy could be inflationary, and will voters give Labor credit for the tax cuts when they were initially delivered under the Coalition’s watch?

A Liberal strategist Daily Mail Australia spoke to stated that headlines about the so-called ‘climate wars’ are nonsense.

“This election will be about people’s material concerns, not a light-hearted target that does not affect their daily lives,” he argued.

We may finally find out whether the Coalition’s failure to embrace action on climate change, framed as an ideological battle, is hurting it. Or if Australians are prepared to give the green light to nuclear energy in these difficult livelihood times, writes Peter van Onselen

When economic times are tough, voters return to the “core issues” when deciding who to vote for. For the political left and the younger generations, action on climate change is defined as a core issue because it is presented as an issue about the survival of the planet.

The 2024 (or 2025) elections will test this proposition. We certainly live in tough economic times as the per capita recession continues.

We may finally find out whether the Coalition’s failure to embrace action on climate change, framed as an ideological battle, is hurting it.

Or if Australians are willing to do so in these difficult times of life give the green light for nuclear energyconvinced by arguments that renewable energy sources alone are too expensive.