Albanese’s ‘great’ call with Trump turned out to be a dud, so why can’t Dutton capitalise?

The Prime Minister’s failure to get an Australian exemption from American steel and aluminium tariffs is emblematic of his all talk, no action style, writes James Morrow.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s “great” phone call with Donald Trump.

Various reports suggest that the whole thing was full of good times, happy chats and bonhomie.

The pair covered topics like football and aeroplanes and golf, though no word whether Albo tried to relate to Trump’s various assassination attempts by retelling his story of the horror Marrickville fender bender that sent him to hospital for observation.

Yet despite the brief and chummy interlude, and a giddy press conference in the PM’s Parliament House courtyard that suggested steel and aluminium tariffs were on hold for the foreseeable, it was all for naught.

A few hours later the White House announcement dropped.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had a reportedly positive chat with the US President but a few hours later Mr Trump accused Australia of breaking its word on exports.

“Imports of aluminium articles and derivative aluminium articles from … Australia … shall be subject to the revised tariff rate of 25 per cent ad valorem established in clause 2 of this proclamation, commensurate with the tariff rate imposed on such articles imported from most other countries.”

As the game show sound effect puts it, womp womp.

A 25 per cent tariff on US steel imports will hurt the Australian industry. Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg

But a retreat from the tariffs is still, apparently, “under consideration.”

Australians should just hope Trump doesn’t find out what Albanese’s NSW Labor counterparts are doing to Moore Park Golf Course or he’ll put the tariffs up to 100 per cent and Americans will never chomp another Aussie lamb chop again.

In the meantime, while the tariffs are not catastrophic – the US doesn’t make the list of Australia’s top five steel customers – as a metaphor for the Albanese premiership it’s hard to beat.

Happy talk, “we’re all in this together,” and then a failure to launch.

Whether it is relations between business and labour, or Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, or community harmony in general, seemingly good intentions have left us all more divided and annoyed with each other and the government.

Which is why, when coupled with a generally sour economy, declining living standards, and a million other troubles it is a bit of a surprise that while he has more than levelled up in most polls, opposition leader Peter Dutton is not streets ahead.

Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton has focused on cost of living issues but he needs to broaden his focus. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Dutton’s critics, both inside and outside the Coalition, claim Dutton has not put enough out in the way of policies (though those outside the Coalition are more apt to scream this through a loudhailer).

But this is a little unfair.

The problem for Dutton is not so much that he doesn’t have policies.

Instead, it is that he is caught in a dangerous middle ground where the Coalition’s most prominent policies are either big and bold and far away (nuclear) or good ideas that are too small bore to really make a big difference ($50,000 super dips for first homebuyers, FBT fiddles).

And the danger for Dutton is that by fighting entirely on the cost of living front – which remains the main game, and which he has reminded his party room to stay laser-focused on – is two-fold.

One, in narrowing his campaign, Dutton risks ceding cultural ground that is indeed popular and where Labor is weak.

While Labor shrieks “culture war!” at every opportunity to try and shut down conservative arguments, this is a telltale sign that these are precisely the fights they don’t want to have.

But the so-called “vibe shift” we saw around Australia Day is just part of a broader indication that the spell of woke religion is broken, and the days of going along with patent nonsense to avoid being called a heretic is over.

This is why solid ideas around maintaining one flag policies or banning biological men from women and girls’ sport have not been challenged by Labor: They know that middle Australia agrees with them, and they’ll wind up looking like loony left radicals if they have the fight.

The other reason is that by making everything about the economy and cost of living, the moment things look like they start to turn around – and even if they don’t Labor is happy to shake the money tree to win votes – Labor looks like heroes.

If the RBA cuts rates next week the next six or eight or 12 weeks will be wall to wall messaging about Labor’s “superior economic management”.

The way out of this trap is to find issues that hit both culture and cost of living.

Dutton scored an own goal on this front when he ruled out taking Australia out of the Paris Agreement, which with everything it represents about renewables and the city versus the bush is as much about culture as anything else.

He has a chance to go harder on migration, which is the “everything issue” that takes in the economy, culture, community, housing, infrastructure – the lot.

And of course, he should not let Australians forget Albo’s chat with Trump and remind them that it is not as easy as just picking up a phone.

Originally published as Albanese’s ‘great’ call with Trump turned out to be a dud, so why can’t Dutton capitalise?