Dutton has led one of the worst election campaigns in living memory

Labor began its tenure in government underestimating Peter Dutton. Victories in later byelections bred a dangerous complacency. By late last year, sentiment inside the government shifted from contemplating an increased majority to well-founded fears it could become the first one-term government in almost a century.

It was a timely awakening which forced campaign structures and strategy to be adjusted accordingly. Part of that was to prepare a brutal negative campaign against Dutton. Liberals branded it lies and smears. Labor says its claims were based on historical facts, which were indicators of future action.

Credit: Illustration: Dionne Gain

The other part was to make sure the prime minister got his head straight. He did over the summer, although signs of hubris have crept in again recently.

Dutton defeated the referendum then capitalised too well on Anthony Albanese’s meanderings and frequent stumbles. The opposition leader’s great miscalculation was to believe this would continue and he could skate to victory. He thought the campaign would be a doddle, much like his daily routine. Last year he repeatedly, confidently predicted: “We will win.”

Albanese’s folly in thinking Dutton was unelectable should have made Dutton wary of what happens to leaders who come to believe they are invincible and that their opponents are dopes. He convinced himself Albanese would be an easybeat.

How else to explain his abject failure to prepare credible policies, then to lead one of the worst campaigns in living memory. It is difficult to nominate a single day which he won clearly, emphatically and unequivocally.

If complacency wasn’t responsible, it had to be stubbornness or incompetence. Maybe a combination of the three. Dutton lacked the desire, the strength, the confidence and the judgment to forge a path back to the centre after the debacle of the 2022 election.

With every sign the economy was improving, that inflation was moderating and interest rates easing, he needed to do much more than recycle a Trumpism, asking people if they were better off now than three years ago.

Instead, Dutton prepared for the political equivalent of a pentathlon by lounging in the studios of his luvvy media, the Sky After Dark and conservative radio hosts who provided refuge as well as guidance. It was no help at all for what would follow.

In the final, critical days of the campaign, rather than zeroing in laser-like on cost of living, the economy or something remotely connected to a policy, Dutton ignited not one but two self-indulgent, whining culture wars – one against Indigenous people and the other against the “hate media” of the ABC and The Guardian.

These risky, Trumpian devices expose Indigenous people and journalists to abuse in an increasingly hostile environment. Both sides report a heightened level of aggro on the hustings.

It is a humdrum tradition for politicians to blame overly inquisitive media when things go wrong. However, Dutton should put a one-word note to self under his meditation pillow on the reason for his predicament: self.

On Friday, Dutton was appropriately outraged by the booing against the Welcome to Country at Melbourne’s Anzac Day ceremony.

On Sunday, he switched his outrage to the number of welcomes to Country. Come Monday he decided they should not even be part of ceremonies on Australia’s most sacred day because veterans didn’t want them. Never mind that this was not true, Dutton was busily filling his supermarket trolley with his deplorables. Indigenous, migrants, journos, EV drivers, greens, teals.

Then Labor and Liberal campaign workers revealed that dozens of volunteers from the religious group Exclusive Brethren – deliberately kept quietly on the periphery in previous campaigns – have been handing out for Liberals at polling booths in marginal seats in Victoria, NSW, Queensland and Tasmania.

Traditionally conservative and progressive liberals confronted a wicked dilemma. They were simultaneously anxious that using the Brethren would not work and also afraid it would work.

As the prime minister asked, what would be the quid pro quo for a group which opposes voting and abortion, condemns homosexuality and demeans women?

Liberal campaign strategists privy to private polling – who claimed the idea to deploy the Brethren sprang from inside Dutton’s office – had hoped the party could pick up enough undecideds to win a parcel of seats in NSW and Victoria. They worried that while all these tactics would resonate with the Trumpet of Patriots and One Nation voters in the outer suburbs, they would turn off more voters in Liberal heartland seats.

The number of undecideds makes it difficult to predict with precision the outcome on Saturday. At the time of writing, Albanese appears set to remain prime minister – for a time at least and most likely in minority. If Dutton does well enough, he should continue as opposition leader – also for a time at least.

Unless he loses Dickson, at 1.7 per cent the most marginal seat in Queensland. Labor strategists are adamant it is eminently gettable, insisting that this time it’s for real, not more of the same old recycled spin from elections past.

Removing Dutton would be a considerable coup. So would Labor winning Menzies in Victoria, held by Keith Wolahan on a margin of 0.4 per cent, where Labor reckons Dutton is even more unpopular than Scott Morrison was. Yes, that’s a big call, hotly disputed by Liberals on the ground who report a better response at pre-poll this time than in 2022.

Still, if Labor won both Dickson and Menzies it would, in one election, eliminate the Liberals’ present and potential future leadership. The best progressive Liberals could hope for in this scenario is that Monique Ryan holds Kooyong so that Josh Frydenberg (whose authorised biography will be published next year) can have another crack in 2028.

Neither Dutton nor Albanese should delude themselves about the reasons for the result, whatever it is.

Albanese has been helped considerably by his own improved performance, but equally by the strength of the Labor campaign machine, combined with his opponent’s inability to perform with distinction on the national frontline in the most critical battle of his political life.

Niki Savva is a regular columnist and author of The Road to Ruin, Plots and Prayers and Bulldozed, the trilogy chronicling nine years of Coalition rule.

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