Scott Morrison might be gone but Peter Dutton is still mired in the Teal trap | David Penberthy

It’s very hard to see a path to victory for an opposition leader who appears to have put his efforts into wooing the wrong voters, writes David Penberthy.

The last federal election campaign quickly degenerated into a strange exercise in which leader could remember the most stuff.

Anthony Albanese set the ball rolling on day one by failing to recall both the unemployment rate and official cash rate, while simultaneously spruiking his economic credentials.

Scott Morrison was unable even to hazard a guess as to how much a loaf of bread cost, a less grave economic offence, but one which his detractors used to paint him as an out-of-touch leader and unreconstructed bloke who obviously let his wife do the shopping.

I am sure all the TV journos are getting their gotcha questions ready again for the 2025 campaign, and that both leaders have a string of numbers written on their wrists in indelible ink.

The question of bread will no doubt emerge again. But in this campaign, what matters most is not the cost of the loaf, but the type of loaf we are talking about.

This election will be decided by people who think a loaf of bread comes in three types - artisanal sour dough, Italian ciabatta, and fig and walnut made with ancient grains best served with some taleggio and a glass of tokay.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton. Picture: NewsWire / Glenn Campbell

The people who will decide this election are the cashed-up Australian middle class.

These are the people who have heard about the cost of living crisis from their cleaners.

The cost-of-living crisis might have put a bit of a ding in things for the Australian bourgeoisie.

The reality though is that tightening your belt in Toorak means you might skip that trip to Provence this winter so you can keep paying private school fees for your three children and still send the oldest one away to Germany on a student exchange.

Here in the sourdough belt this election will be won and lost.

The catastrophic nature of the 2022 election result for Australian Liberal Party cannot be overstated.

It represented the near-complete hollowing out of the party’s moderate talent base as a raft of small-l liberal MPs - most notably former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg - were put to the sword by Teal candidates.

The Teals benefitted from two key factors at the last campaign - a deep dislike of Scott Morrison by middle class female voters over his clunky handling of gender issues, and the conviction that his conservative government did not believe in the reality of climate change.

The question now is to what extent have those two factors changed in the past three years.

Scott Morrison is clearly gone.

But as a longstanding party conservative who has also taken a hardline on immigration and race issues, there is a danger for Peter Dutton that middle class small-l liberals might hold him with similar disregard.

On the energy and climate question, there has undoubtedly been a massive shift in public sentiment over the past three years.

So many Australians are fed up with spiralling bills and the unreliability of the renewables crusade that they would happily source their power by burning old car tyres.

But in the cost of living context, how redolent is that sentiment in Teal-land?

Much less, for two reasons.

Spiralling power bills don’t hurt you that much when you and your partner earn more than $400,000, and many middle class people rarely get power bills anyway because they’re rich enough to afford solar with the bill-killing bonus of batteries.

This is why it is really hard to see Peter Dutton finding any path to victory on May 3.

The messages Dutton is pushing resonate most strongly in traditional Labor held seats where people were genuinely belted by interest rates, power prices and insurance premium hikes.

The danger for Dutton is that this result could resemble the 1998 GST election, where Kim Beazley won the popular vote but Labor still lost anyway, as it received big increases in its base vote in seats it already held over cost of living concerns through the introduction of a scary new tax.

The risk for Dutton is that he enjoys the hollow victory of registering sizeable swings in Labor-held seats where blue collar voters respond positively to his cost of living/energy message, and like his non-wokeness on issues such as the Voice, the flag, and the rightness of having January 26 as our day of celebration.

But how does all that stuff go down when you’re discussing at the end of a dinner party in Toorak with that aforementioned fig and walnut bread and the glass of tokay?

These are the people who talk about dog-whistling and race cards and bemoan a lack of vision and ambition in public policy.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Picture: Mike Bowers/AFP

They don’t get politically excited by handouts like $5 a week tax cuts or $750 fuel excise discounts because they don’t need them anyway.

And if you asked them what a loaf of bread cost at their local boulangerie, they probably couldn’t tell you anyway, as they find themselves in the happy position of never having to stop and think what anything costs when they do the shopping.

This is the logical, tactical problem at the centre of Dutton’s challenge.

How to energise blue collar Australia and regional Australia and suburban Australia, while also winning back beachside, harbourside, uni-educated, high-income Australia with a fondness for really good bread.

Peter Dutton faces the Herculean task of winning 22 seats to form government in their own right.

Sure, the Libs can pick some less-safe marginal seats off Labor amid cost of living/energy concerns and a hostility to political correctness.

Beyond that they risk securing sizeable swings in Labor seats that are so safe the Liberals can never win them anyway.

Which leaves him stuck negotiating with a handful of MPs from Australia’s sourdough belt, hard-wired in their hostility towards the Liberals, detached by their affluence from every key issue Dutton is running on.

Originally published as Scott Morrison might be gone but Peter Dutton is still mired in the Teal trap | David Penberthy