Campbell: Dutton takes a punt on gambling advertising and nuclear energy

Does the Coalition really think it will win the next election if it is a referendum on nuclear energy or sports betting advertising?, asks James Campbell.

On Thursday I asked a minister what he would do if it was him giving the Opposition leader’s budget-in-reply speech that evening.

“Three things,” he shot back. “First I’d go low on immigration, then I’d point out that while there’s money for people on welfare in this budget, I’d ask what there is for working people? Then I’d offer a tax cut.”

This guru’s crystal ball wasn’t perfect, but as Meatloaf once observed, two out of three ain’t bad.

Actually, that’s not quite not true – immigration did feature heavily in Peter Dutton’s speech on Thursday night in which he tied it to the growing housing shortage and pointed out “cities, towns and suburbs are already choked with congestion”.

But it would be unfair to say he went low as this is no more than to state the obvious.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

If he’d really wanted to hit Labor where it would hurt, he would have said to Australians, “not only are these people going to make it harder and more expensive for you to rent somewhere to live, and to find a park at the supermarket, you’re going to be competing with them for jobs which, because of that competition, are now going to pay less”.

And instead of offering nothing statements like “a Coalition Government will sensibly manage migration – as we have done in the past – in conjunction with proper infrastructure planning”, he’d have come straight out and said “nah, we’re not having it”.

Peter Dutton said the cost-of-living relief in the budget “is targeted at Australians on welfare but at the expense of the many, including Labor’s working poor”. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Emma Brasier

My Labor source was bang-on, however, about the increases to JobSeeker and the like, with Dutton pointing out the cost-of-living relief in the budget “is targeted at Australians on welfare but at the expense of the many, including Labor’s working poor”.

Sadly there were no concrete offers of tax relief, aside from the very non-specific promise that “under a Coalition Government I lead, your taxes will always be lower”.

Opposition leaders delivering budget-in-reply speeches are not upon oath, but even so, claiming, as Dutton did, that at “Easter, Labor axed the former Coalition’s low-and-middle income tax offset” is stretching it.

Because as the ATO points out on a web page that was last updated before the change of government, in March last year the government “confirmed that 2021–22 income year will be the last year that LMITO is available”.

What about the rest of it?

To me, the most interesting bit was the stuff about the gambling, which came out of nowhere.

Everyone my age and older will agree with Dutton, I suspect, when he says “the bombardment of betting ads takes the joy out of televised sports”.

He’s right, too, when he says “they are changing the culture of our country in a bad way and normalising gambling at a young age.”

A few months ago a teacher told me he was deeply worried by the number of teenage boys at his school with gambling apps on their phones.

Betting ads on television and gambling apps are sources of concern.

If his experience is widely shared then I suspect Dutton is right when he says “many Australian families have had enough” and his promise to ban sports betting advertising during the broadcasting of games and for an hour each side of them will be popular.

Whether this was the right occasion to introduce is debatable.

Because however eye-catching it is, it was inevitable it would be overshadowed by the stuff about nuclear power.

To be clear, Dutton hasn’t actually formally declared we’ll be getting this exciting form of energy if he is elected, but he never seems to miss an opportunity to spruik “next generation, small modular nuclear technologies” which he says are “safe, reliable, cost effective, can be plugged into existing grids where we have turned-off coal” and need to be considered by any “sensible” government.

One of the two nuclear reactors being build in southwest England. Picture: Daniel Leal/AFP

Though personally I have my – very uninformed – doubts about their cost-effectiveness, let’s for argument’s sake accept that these things are what he says they are, the question the Liberal Party needs to answer for itself is whether after 50 years of demonisation the public can be brought to that point of view.

Or to put it more crudely, is Peter Dutton the guy to sell small modular nuclear reactors to Australia?

If his colleagues think his powers of persuasion are up to that task, then Thursday night’s speech deserved two thumbs up.

But if in their heart-of-hearts they know that this is just going to be too hard a sell, then they need to tell him to put a sock in it and quickly.

Or again, to put it crudely, does the Coalition really think it will win the next election if it is a referendum on nuclear energy?

Again, I’m not qualified to comment on the merits of the technical arguments.

What I have noticed, however, is that many of the people who seem keenest on nuclear energy as a solution to our climate change problems tend in many cases to be exactly the same people who up until five minutes ago were confidently telling us we didn’t need to worry about climate change at all.

I assume I’m not the only person to have noticed this either.