Joe Hildebrand: Team Dutton needs a Hail Mary

For Peter Dutton it is truly Hail Mary time. He needs nothing short of a miracle to get back in the hunt, writes Joe Hildebrand.

Easter Sunday is the day that Christians celebrate the resurrection and it’s fair to say that Peter Dutton needs one if he is to have a hope of becoming Prime Minister in two weeks’ time.

The latest numbers for the Opposition Leader are almost cruelly dire. The Redbridge/Accent tracking poll this masthead has been running has found that across 20 marginal seats the Coalition has gone from 52-48 ahead in February to now trailing Labor 45.5 to 54.5 per cent two-party preferred.

Mark Knight agrees with Joe Hildebrand – Peter Dutton’s only hope of becoming Prime Minister is a resurrection.

That is a gargantuan margin and way more than any margin of error. And so for Team Dutton it is truly Hail Mary time. He needs nothing short of a miracle to get back in the hunt.

Of course miracles are possible — Scott Morrison got his in 2019 — but divine intervention usually requires a lot of hard work. As the maxim goes, the Lord helps those who help themselves.

And the Morrison campaign of 2019 has more in common with Labor’s campaign today than it does with the Coalition’s.

Back then the government looked like it was on its last legs, having cycled through three prime ministers and with Morrison having emerged as leader thanks to an anyone-but-Dutton deal done by the left.

It didn’t have much to recommend itself and so the Coalition just piled the attack on Bill Shorten’s Labor, to the point where the ALP was literally being accused of killing the weekend.

Peter Dutton with the family dog Ralphie on the campaign trail on Easter Sunday. Picture: Richard Dobson

Yep, that happened. And given Labor’s infamous “Medi-scare” campaign of three years earlier there was not much sympathy when it cried foul.

This time around it is a Labor government that is doing the same to a Liberal opposition. Shorten’s vast uncosted climate change plan has become Dutton’s vast uncosted nuclear plan.

Whether it’s true or not hardly matters. All that matters is whether or not people believe it, and the polling shows the overwhelming majority of voters believe Labor’s claims about the cost of nuclear more than the Coalition’s.

Again, this comes down to clear and consistent messaging, which Labor has been brutally effective at. You make sure that you are the one defining your opponent’s image, not them.

And Dutton is wearing it, as a former PM once said of his opposition counterpart, like a crown of thorns.

Originally published as Joe Hildebrand: Team Dutton needs a Hail Mary