Campbell: Dutton knows Liberals’ problem but hasn’t got solution
Peter Dutton wants to return to Liberal Party values – but speaking to said values is easier said than done, writes James Campbell.
Opinion
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Things being how they are for the Liberal Party, I’d thought that this week I’d join everyone else who’s given us their two cents on what’s gone wrong for the party of Menzies.
The penetrating insight I was preparing to offer was that, given the party had been re-elected in 2019 on a platform not much bigger than not being Bill Shorten, it was unsurprising it had been belted hard when it tried to repeat the trick in May last year.
In other words, having had the good fortune to have won one election without an agenda for the term ahead, it was pushing things to have asked us to give them another.
Top shelf analysis, which, I’m sure you’ll agree would have really got you thinking.
Imagine then my surprise – and irritation – to wake up on Saturday to find a Liberal quoted saying the following in the Weekend Australian: “We need to understand how we’ve ended up in this position. It’s important to be honest with ourselves. From the time that Tony Abbott was deposed by Malcolm Turnbull the Liberal Party hasn’t stood for any substantive policy formulation.”
The last term, the speaker explained, had been defined by the response to Covid and by AUKUS and, while it “did a sterling job” with both, “there was no major policy offering at the 2022 election. So over the period from Abbott losing the prime ministership we allowed ourselves to be defined by our opponents. We’ve done that because we haven’t been speaking to policies that reflect our values.”
Who, you might ask, was this candid commentator unburdening themselves to Paul Kelly?
Why it was none other than the leader of the Liberal Party, Peter Dutton himself.
My initial reaction on reading was points for: it takes real bravery to admit you were a senior minister of a government that had no real idea why it was there.
But what appeared to be admirable self-criticism, on closer inspection, turned out to be factional score-settling.
An alternative view to Dutton’s when-we-lost-Tony-we-lost-our-way narrative would go something like this.
The Abbott Government was elected in 2013 without any real program aside from promises to stop the boats and repeal Gillard’s mining tax.
Having achieved these, it then went looking for an agenda.
Unfortunately it found one in the 2014 budget, a giant political own-goal that included: charges to Australians visiting the doctor; a freeze on family tax benefits; making people under 30 wait six months before they could get the dole; lower thresholds at which university graduates were to start repaying their student debts; an effective cut in the indexation of the aged pension; a gradual increase of the retirement age to 70 and, finally, a 2 per cent income tax levy on everyone earning more than $100,000.
It goes without saying that if by reviving policies “that reflect our values” Dutton means revisiting any of this stuff, he won’t get any complaint from Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers.
He won’t, of course.
The Liberal Party is no more likely to go to the next election vowing to cut spending and increase taxes than the Labor Party was last year, for the very good reason that nobody thinks the public would cop it.
Dutton says the lack of a substantial policy offering at the last election is something he intends to address “in a very determined way”, though just how determined you have to wonder, given he’s given the job of managing it to Marise Payne, a senator most of whose colleagues think is already in the departure lounge.
Leaving aside Dutton’s evident interest in small modular nuclear reactors, we haven’t had much of a hint so far as to what these policies might look like, aside from an admirable offer to work with the government on a bipartisan basis in all important task of reining in the NDIS.
The reason for that is, I suspect, the same reason that the last government often looked so directionless, namely, that coming up with modern policies which reflect the values of much of the Liberal Party isn’t hard, it’s just that those policies would render it unelectable.
That sounds catty, but it’s sort of true – the social issues that fry the burgers of a lot of Liberals these days just aren’t really that popular with the general population, especially the young.
There’s always industrial relations, of course. There’s something everyone agrees on.
But though it’s now more than 15 years since WorkChoices caused the electorate to send John Howard packing, that stove is still too hot for most Liberals.
Maybe housing. Perhaps the Liberals will go to the next election with a meaningful policy to help boost homeownership rates among the young.
No doubt there are things here that governments could do to help the kids, starting with allowing them to access their superannuation for deposits.
The trouble is the serious ones, starting with getting rid of negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount for investment properties, would involve hurting people who are more likely to vote Liberal, without any guarantee they would attract younger voters.
I suspect that speaking to their values is easier said than done.
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