Cost of living should trump Labor’s robo-debt campaign in Fadden byelection: Dutton

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says the cost of living should be a bigger issue than Stuart Robert’s involvement in robo-debt when voters decide on the former Coalition minister’s successor in the Fadden byelection on Saturday.

The government’s campaign to snatch the Gold Coast seat, held with a sturdy 10.6 per cent margin by the Liberal National Party, has focused on Robert’s oversight of the unlawful welfare crackdown, which he shut down as government services minister in November 2019 following advice from the solicitor-general.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said Labor’s focus on robo-debt will affect the result in Fadden.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Dutton said during a press conference on Thursday morning that he expected Labor to continue its “negative campaign” in the hope of inflicting electoral damage in the seat and admitted Robert’s involvement in the scheme will affect the polls.

“Will it have an impact? Well, of course it does. They don’t spend the money they do with the negative ads if it doesn’t have an impact, but I just say to people of Fadden that there is a better way,” Dutton said.

Campaigning alongside LNP candidate Cameron Caldwell, a Gold Coast councillor, the Liberal leader concentrated his messaging on high costs for small businesses and households, accusing Labor of failing Australians in its two budgets, including over power bills.

“People are now starting to down trade, they’re buying cheaper cuts of meat, they’re buying meats or sausages instead of steak,” he said. “You’ve got a prime minister who has been obsessing over the last 15 months on the Voice [to parliament] that he’s taking his eye off the ball when it comes to economic management.”

Cameron Caldwell, left, is expected to keep Fadden in LNP hands.Credit: Paul Harris

Caldwell said he had visited a local business on Thursday that had suffered a 70 per cent power bill increase over the past year.

“They cannot bear all of the price rises, and unfortunately have to pass some of those on to their customers, making life much more difficult for families to put food on their tables. It is really quite sobering to see how the cost of living is impacting local residents,” Caldwell said.

Labor candidate Letitia Del Fabbro agreed that cost of living was “overwhelmingly” the biggest issue for voters, which she said the government had countered with cheaper childcare and medicines, among other measures.

She said while voters were interested in talking about the Indigenous Voice referendum, “we’ve been spending most of our time talking about cost of living” as well as constituents’ anger over having to return to the polls so soon after Robert was re-elected in the May 2022 federal election.

The Australian Electoral Commission has raised concerns over low voter turnout in pre-polling for Fadden, an electorate on the northern end of the Gold Coast, with a median age of 39, and above-average household income compared to the rest of Queensland and Australia.

Pollster Kos Samaras said Labor would be first to hurt from the low turnout because younger voters, who were more likely to vote progressively, were also generally less engaged. “On paper [the opposition] should hold. The question is, are they going to suffer a swing against them? And if they lose it, that’s catastrophic,” he said.

Del Fabbro, who achieved a 3.6 per cent swing to Labor in the federal election said, “any swing against the LNP would have to be considered a loss for them”.

Multiple Liberal MPs, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal party mood, said the feedback from the Fadden campaign was generally positive and there was no sense of the unease that preceded the disastrous Aston byelection loss earlier this year.

One MP said they anticipated there would be a small swing against the party, with fallout from the robo-debt scandal among the contributing factors.

If former prime minister Scott Morrison resigns, Fadden will be the second of potentially three byelections this year triggered by resignations of former Liberal ministers embroiled in previous and ongoing controversies.

Robert’s resignation followed that of former Liberal minister Alan Tudge – who had been involved in an affair with his former staffer – earlier this year, with a byelection in the suburban Melbourne seat of Aston delivering another seat for Labor.

Former Morrison government minister Stuart Robert has resigned from parliament.Credit: Rhett Wyman

Speculation is swirling about Morrison’s exit from parliament, with the robo-debt findings heaping further debate over his political future after royal commissioner Catherine Holmes SC said he had allowed cabinet to be misled over the scheme’s lawfulness, which Morrison denies.

Holmes also said the evidence suggested Robert, as government services minister in November 2019, did not immediately tell officials to stop the scheme when told of its unlawfulness.

Robert said on Friday that he welcomed the findings and he “worked hard” to shut down the program.

Robert also quit parliament amid controversy over a consulting firm, formerly owned by a friend of Robert’s, that he is alleged to have helped win government contracts. He has denied any wrongdoing.

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