Dutton’s campaign is a mirror of ALP’s Voice

Peter Dutton and the Coalition went into this campaign with all the momentum and money and popular opinion on their side, but now it feels like the Voice campaign all over again, writes Joe Hildebrand.

There is something eerily familiar about the Coalition’s election campaign.

The proposals that appear to have originated in an echo chamber with no dissenting voices.

The policies that seem to rely more on a vibe than any clear framework.

And the positions that collapse as soon as they collide with people’s priorities in the real world.

Yes. It’s the Voice campaign all over again.

In fact the similarities are so uncanny that Yes voters in the failed referendum could be forgiven for thinking it’s karma.

Peter Dutton and the Coalition went into this campaign with all the momentum and money and popular opinion on their side.

Australian Liberal Party and opposition leader Peter Dutton gestures as he speaks at his party's coalition campaign launch in western Sydney. Picture: AP Photo/Mark Baker

Likewise the Voice enjoyed around 60 per cent support and a war chest of tens of millions of dollars – until the campaign for it officially started.

But it quickly became clear that what Coalition leaders and those around them assumed were mainstream values – like cutting public servants or making people go back to the office – were in fact deeply unpopular.

Likewise, the very premise of the Voice – that there needed to be a special body to represent and advocate for Indigenous people – was assumed to be a concept that most Australians accepted.

In fact, the idea of representing citizens differently on the basis of race made most very uncomfortable.

And it is self-evident that these same two Coalition policies were never adequately stress-tested.

If forcing public servants back to the office was so devastatingly toxic that the LNP had to go through the humiliation of publicly dumping and apologising for it in the middle of an election campaign, how on earth was this not picked up by the party’s own research beforehand?

In the same fashion, the Voice proposition disintegrated when public scrutiny was applied and questions asked about what how it would actually function.

And finally there was clearly no war-gaming for these policies which they assumed would meet little resistance.

Members of the YES campaign gather at the Richmond Union Bowling club to listen to the outcome of the referendum on the Voice to Parliament. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Peter Dutton has complained that Labor ran a scare campaign over the working-from-home edict, but what on earth did he expect it to do in the middle of an election?

Likewise, Voice proponents thought that anyone who opposed the idea must be a hard right-winger or racist and even branded them as such.

They clearly didn’t expect to face a scare campaign of their own run by, you guessed it, Peter Dutton.

This is in no way to criticise Dutton or blame him for the result. That is the same kind of lazy attitude that lost the referendum in the first place, and I say that as a Yes supporter.

On the contrary, the No movement was a brilliantly-orchestrated campaign that was against all the odds and managed to deliver a humiliating defeat to a much-better resourced opponent.

And this is what is so Shakespearean about Dutton’s faltering campaign.

The attacks that are bringing it to its knees are exactly of the same style that he deployed with such brutal effect less than two years ago.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese addresses the Nation after the Voice Referendum was defeated. Picture: SKY TV

Indeed, there was an assumption among many of the right that Dutton’s Voice campaign would be a kind of dress rehearsal for his election campaign and the same “anti-woke” sentiment would sweep him to victory.

In fact, as the Coalition has had to present itself as an alternative government and offer its vision for Australia, it has made that offering a giant target that was full of holes long before the arrows started flying.

Dutton’s latest big announcement – $10bn in cashback for taxpayers – is, more than anything, an effort to reset the Coalition’s agenda in the wake of these early policy failures. Indeed, you have to wonder if it would have even been on the table had the Coalition not been in such a hole.

And it also raises the question of what the Coalition stands for.

Such shameless splashing of cash when there are budget deficits as far as the eye can see is the sort of thing it usually excoriates Labor for.

Likewise the fact that Dutton was boxed into a corner by me-too politics until he cracked and vowed to repeal Labor’s tax cuts is just bizarre. Since when was the Liberal Party the party of higher taxes?

The opposition has had three years to prepare a clear narrative with a coherent and detailed policy strategy to support it but it appears to have instead relied upon assumptions about a public sentiment that simply isn’t there.

Reminds me of another campaign I used to know.

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Originally published as Dutton’s campaign is a mirror of ALP’s Voice