‘Already a nervous wreck’: What Peter Dutton’s inner circle didn’t tell him about Dickson

Election campaign staff deliberately shielded ousted Opposition Leader Peter Dutton from key intel because “he was already a nervous wreck”, writes James Campbell.

Some of Peter Dutton’s closest campaign staff knew how dire the polls were in his Queensland seat of Dickson but kept the results from the Opposition Leader during the campaign because they feared how he would react.

Coalition insiders say Dutton was at his best when he was confident and alerting him to the polls would have made him nervous.

“I think we didn’t want to make Dutton nervous and he was already a nervous wreck. We were trying to manage him,” the insider said.

“The nervousness internally was if we give him some bad news … Jamie Briggs used to say quite regularly ‘he’s a confidence player if you don’t tell him we can win he won’t perform”.

Instead of polling Dickson the decision was made to ‘go full tilt’ in the ultra-marginal seat as though Dutton was in trouble, which of course it turned out he was.

Peter Dutton concedes defeat at the official LNP Election night function. Picture: Adam Head / NewsWire

The insider also shone a light on the internal working of the campaign which many have said is the Coalition’s worst ever, saying the Opposition Leader wanted to control every aspect of it.

“He wanted to steer the ship. He wanted to design the ads. He wanted to set the agenda. He wanted to run the campaign. He basically steered the ship onto the rocks.”

The insider said he feared Dutton’s loss would let the campaign off the hook.

How the Liberals could have failed to see the full extent of the iceberg they were about to hit is a question that is certain to occupy the minds of whoever gets the job of the party’s post-election review.

Three weeks ago a Victorian Liberal state MP messaged: “So they’ve run a campaign bagging solar, women, migrants, proposed nuclear power and sacking 41,000 people then have followed it up with the laziest of lazy policies which is a fuel tax cut for 12 months. Could they go backward?”

Five days later he messaged again: “I reckon its shaping as a Labor landslide”.

The aftermath of an election defeat always going to be full of ‘what ifs’.

What if we had different policies? What if he had had a different leader? What if we had campaigned differently?

Peter Dutton casts his vote with his family at the Albany Creek State School in the seat of Dickson. Picture: Adam Head / NewsWire

In this case the recriminations are likely to focus on how they blindsided by the disaster that was about to unfold.

And the man most likely to wear that reputational damage is Freshwater’s Mike Turner.

“Fair to say his business has taken a pretty big setback in Australia,” one MP said.

“If we had just listened to the feedback we were getting,” a frustrated NSW MP said on Sunday.

But when concerns were raised, those raising them were told things were going fine.

“The polling kept them targeting the wrong seats,” he complains.

“If only we had pulled resources from places we had no chances in.”

As bizarre as it might sound the reason the people in Coalition Campaign Headquarters had no idea how much danger they were in in their own seats was not because their polling was wrong – though it was – but because they never polled them in the campaign.

And the reason according to campaign insiders was because Peter Dutton didn’t want them to.

They say the Liberal leader was concerned that taking the precaution of moving resources into seats they held would lower his chances of victory.

“Peter’s view was we should be trying to win this election,” a member of the leadership team says.

But, he said, that this seemed to be a reasonable decision based on what the group were being told.

“We were being told we were ahead in Hawke, and Werriwa and Whitlam,” he said.

Peter Dutton concedes defeat on election night, just hours after the polls closed. Dan Peled/Getty Images

In which case, he said, why should they be worrying about Hughes and Menzies?

It was a mistake they now realise turned, what should have been just a defeat into the conservatives’ worst result since WWII.

People from CCHQ respond that the question of ‘going defensive’ was complicated by concerns of Dutton’s staff about the seat tally he need would to achieve if he was to have any chance of staying on as leader.

“If we’d dropped this notion that we were solely looking at offensive because we were trying to get Dutton to stay on as leader – (with) 65, 66, 67 seats – if we’d just dropped that notion and said actually ‘we’re hearing these reports we should probably check them out’ we would have sandbagged a lot more,” an insider said.

“But he wanted the story to be ‘Labor are sandbagging.”

With hindsight it is clear that after the first week the campaign should have polled some more seats they held.

“If we’d had the courage to look again at Menzies, if we had only looked again in Sturt we would have pulled back and gone ‘we need to save the furniture’ and because we didn’t that is why some people have lost their seats.’’

Originally published as ‘Already a nervous wreck’: What Peter Dutton’s inner circle didn’t tell him about Dickson