Bolt: Peter Dutton needs to promote Jacinta Price ahead of 2025 election
Peter Dutton needs one more push to become Prime Minister in the election early next year. And it’s surprising he hasn’t used this one secret weapon yet.
Andrew Bolt
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Peter Dutton has had a great 2024, making himself look like the strong leader we need to replace hapless Anthony Albanese.
But the Opposition leader needs one more push to become Prime Minister in the election early next year – starting with reshuffling his leadership team in the next week or two to promote his secret weapon and replace some passengers.
True, Albanese may already seem finished. He started the year still reeling from losing the referendum for his racist Voice, and has looked out of ideas and energy ever since.
No one issue suddenly sank Labor. Rather, Albanese and his government have been steadily ground down by relentless underperformance as inflation bit, debt soared and immigrants flooded in.
Result: Labor now finishes the year behind Dutton’s Coalition, 49.7 per cent to 50.3, according to pollster Kevin Bonham’s aggregate of national polls, and Albanese is today one of our most disliked politicians with a negative-17 net approval rating, says a Resolve poll this week.
The disciplined Dutton is ahead of him, rising to net-zero approval. Once derided for seeming too hard, Dutton now looks like the tough man for our troubled times.
And yet, and yet … Australian voters are so keen to give even failed prime ministers a second chance that it’s 93 years since a first-term government got the boot. Albanese may yet cling to power with the help of the Greens and the climate-obsessed Teal MPs.
Which brings us to this reshuffle, thankfully forced on Dutton by the retirement of shadow ministers Simon Birmingham and Paul Fletcher, both of the Liberal Left.
This is Dutton’s new big test. Most obviously, he must now give Jacinta Nampijinpa Price more work.
I’m stunned that the Opposition failed to exploit Price since she led the campaign which last year blew up Albanese’s Voice, and started the government’s long decline.
Price was rated by the Resolve poll as not just the Coalition’s most liked politician – with plus-8 net approval – but also one of its most recognised, behind only Dutton and Barnaby Joyce. She’s also proved to be brave and cut-through articulate.
Yet for the past year she’s been left to twiddle her thumbs as the Opposition’s spokesman on Indigenous Australians, not a portfolio in the front line come an election.
Why not also make her now, say, the Opposition’s spokesman for health, housing or social security, charged with merging Aboriginal welfare programs into mainstream ones, so Australians get welfare according to their need, not their race? That’s not just necessary but good politics, getting Price back on the big stage.
The Dutton-Price combination was so powerful during the Voice campaign, but what has Dutton had since to match it? Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley seems more an accessory than a partner, adding to an impression Dutton leads a team not ready to rule.
One Sydney Morning Herald commentator said “outside of Dutton, the party relies too heavily on too few”, which seems perhaps harsh. After all, compared to Labor’s frontbench, Dutton’s team is pound-for-pound more promising, and just needs some tweaks and a story to seem the reset the country needs.
Compare. Labor has Treasurer Jim Chalmers, a commentator rather than performer. Against him the Coalition has Angus Taylor, who used to look like a student terrified he’d flunk an exam, but now seems more assured and far clearer about the trouble we’re in.
Labor also has Energy Minister Chris Bowen, its most disliked politician in the Resolve survey – Albanese aside – as he destroys our electricity system with his global warming fanaticism. Against him, the Coalition has Ted O’Brien, having surprising success pushing nuclear power.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke is supposedly Labor’s Mr Fixit, despite his dangerous pandering to Muslim voters, but against him is James Paterson, the Coalition’s rising star who shamed Albanese into dumping his previous minister, Clare O’Neil.
That said, Dutton’s frontbench also includes people who’d starve if they were paid per headline they made or per votes they won.
Why is Perin Davey the Nationals’ deputy leader? And where are Dean Smith, Susan McDonald, Angie Bell, Michelle Landry or Rick Wilson hiding?
Which of them get the coverage of Coalition backbenchers such as Dave Sharma, Keith Wolahan, Garth Hamilton, Aaron Violi, Julian Leeser, Zoe McKenzie and Andrew Wallace?
No, it won’t take much for Dutton to announce that not only is Albanese finished, the Coalition is ready to take over. A clever reshuffle – one with a message – should do it.
Originally published as Bolt: Peter Dutton needs to promote Jacinta Price ahead of 2025 election
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