James Morrow: Shy, apologetic Peter Dutton needs to take a page out of the Chris Minns playbook

Chris Minns and Peter Dutton are both vying to return to government but the differences between them are stark – and not just because they’re political opposites, writes James Morrow.

The two most prominent opposition leaders in the country today are Chris Minns and Peter Dutton but the difference between the two men could not be more stark.

One leads NSW Labor, the other is in charge of the federal Liberals.

One has a poll coming up in just a few months, the other has a couple of years to run before voters really dial in on their election. But the most important distinction is this.

One of them, Minns, has made his party brutally competitive against a generally popular government that both managed Covid better than anyone else in the country and has spent the past decade building infrastructure that will set NSW up for the next 50 years.

The other, Dutton, finds himself in a steep uphill battle against Labor’s Anthony Albanese, who finishes the year with the wind at his back despite a host of problems (power prices, power prices and, oh yeah, power prices). Why the difference?

Leader of the federal Opposition Peter Dutton has made no ground on the Albanese government in the latest Newspoll. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The answer is complicated but one sure difference has to be communication.

Since he became Labor leader 18 months ago, Minns has been running a long, forward-facing campaign designed to slowly chip away at Premier Dom Perrottet’s seemingly impregnable premiership.

While he’s gotten in trouble for some of his Instagram grandstanding about hospitals, even Minns’ social media has been a firehose of policy positions – with plenty of them (speed cameras, phones in schools) being the sort of common sense stuff not often associated with Labor.

At Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph Bradfield Oration, Minns opened up another challenge to the Perrottet government.

Essentially, he said that if elected he would ask the Greater Cities Commission to “rebalance population and housing growth”.

Translation: It’s not fair that western Sydney has to keep copping more and more density, how about Mosman and Vaucluse pick up some of the slack? Drill down into it and Minns’ speech was light on specifics, with a lot of questions left unanswered about exactly how that’s all supposed to work given the east is home to some of the highest density postcodes in the state.

NSW Opposition leader Chris Minns addressing the crowd at The Daily Telegraph’s Bradfield Oration on Tuesday, where he pitched affordable housing in wealthy suburbs. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

But, despite the gaps in detail, the announcement got to a fundamental fairness issue that gnaws at Sydneysiders of all parties.

Namely, why is it that those keenest for a “Big Australia” (to grow the economy) and a large refugee intake (to show their compassion) tend to live farthest from where large numbers of new migrants and humanitarian visa holders land?

Contrast this approach with Peter Dutton’s, who still at times seems apologetic for his party and rarely fronts the media. His shyness was picked up on by the prime minister in Question Time last Thursday, when he accused Dutton of being “in hiding” and of “having taken a vow of silence”, noting that his last media conference was back at the start of November.

This weekend past, it was reported that Dutton believes he can chip away at Labor over the next two-plus years to the point where he can topple Albanese or at least force a minority government.

If so, he had better get his skates on because having been battered by a string of state election drubbings (WA, South Australia, Victoria) it should be clear that the Liberals’ apologetic slump-shouldered embrace of everything from net zero to Covid paranoia is not working.

It’s not enough just to wait until things get lousy and people get sick of high prices and industrial relations disputes and look for an alternative.

At the same time demographic changes and a new generation of voters who have turned off the Liberals should be treated not as a threat but an opportunity.

Dutton and his team need to take a page out of the Minns’ playbook, develop ideas that are not simply ideological but remain true to Liberal values and, above all, start selling them. Housing is a key issue for young people that Labor will win if the Coalition does not offer an alternative.

Whether it’s shared equity or letting people invest their super not just in shares but the family home, there are plenty of ways for the Liberals to stay true to the values of Menzies while appealing to peoples’ fundamental sense of fairness.

Leading hard on this would also head off Labor’s attempt to turn Australia into a society of semi-subsidised renters and in doing so bedding down a generation of voters.

Housing policy is letting the Liberals down among young voters. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift

Energy and climate too: Labor is clearly split on the issue of nuclear, with South Australian premier Peter Malinausaks getting slapped down by the PM on Monday for asking why, if we are going to have atomic-powered subs, we can’t also have atomic-powered electricity grids?

Surely this would be the moment to press home the Coalition’s pro-nuclear position and run it from an environmental angle to appeal to younger voters.

After all, if climate trumps cost – no one believes that the “energy transition” will be anything but ruinously expensive, but apparently it will all be worth it in the end – then Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s disingenuous claims that nuclear is the priciest of all forms of power are meaningless.

The fact that even Finland’s Greens have embraced nuclear but Labor hasn’t should be a killer blow.

Finally, Dutton should hold his party to a positive view of race relations that rejects a constitutional “voice to parliament” as activist grandstanding and instead uses the parliament to encourage aspiration among all Australians.