Campbell: Time is running out for Dutton to make his pitch to Middle Australia

Peter Dutton needs to hurry up and make his pitch to Middle Australia if he plans to convince them he’s going to make their lives better than Albo could.

It can’t be much fun at the moment being a Liberal hopeful at a candidate forum.

To be fair, it wouldn’t all be awful – the audience would be nodding their heads during your rousing medley of the shortcomings of Albanese Government, while your Labor opponent stared at the floor.

But when it was their turn to speak they’d spruik Albo’s Stage 3 tax cuts, cheaper childcare, cheaper medicines, power bill subsidies, increases to the minimum wage and cuts to HECS debts – basically all the stuff in the ALP’s TV ads at the moment – while pointing out the Coalition had opposed all of them.

Time is running out for Peter Dutton to make his pitch to Middle Australia. Picture: Glenn Campbell

Then when they’d finished doing that they’d get into all the good things Albo is going to do for us going forward – namely increasing the Medicare bulk-billing rate, even more cheaper medicines and, following Sunday’s announcement ahead of Tuesday’s budget, more energy bill subsidies.

After that would come the moment Liberal candidates must be dreading, when someone in the audience – probably a Labor plant – gets to her feet and asks “What is Peter Dutton going to do to help us with the cost-of-living?”

Because after reassuring the audience you are 100 per cent on board with Labor’s health spending and ‘will not stand in the way’ of the energy rebate, it’s not exactly clear to me what a Liberal candidate would say in answer to that question, aside that is from a general appeal to brand-Liberal’s historic claims to being ‘better economic managers’.

This is becoming a problem.

And, it has to be said, an entirely foreseeable one.

Because of the Prime Minister’s um … unique … political skills, until the day before yesterday Coalition frontbenchers have been able to make the political debate all about him.

But at some point – prompted by the government – people were going to start wondering what exactly the Coalition was going to offer that would make their lives better.

Or to put it another way, at the some point the framing of the election was going to change from the question ‘are you better than you were three years ago?’ which Labor would fail, to ‘who is going to make your life better over the next three years?’

And the problem for Team Dutton is that at the moment they don’t really have an answer to that question.

Anthony Albanese’s Labor candidates have plenty to spruik. Picture: Scott Powick

Back in January the Opposition Leader came to Melbourne and gave what was sort-of billed as a headland speech – a term for a speech containing ambitions but not much more – or a “Clayton’s” as I’ve always thought of them that is to say “the policy speech you give when you don’t want to release any policies.”

Under the slogan “Get Australia Back on Track” it included, in the precis of The Australian, “expediting gas development, cutting government spending, halving approval times for resources projects, making housing more affordable, cracking down on unions, backing traditional industries, cutting ­migration and giving more tax incentives for small business owners.

What is immediately obvious looking at this list is that leaving aside the traditional Liberal sports of union-busting, tax holidays for small business and cutting government spending – which in office always seems to morph into ‘cutting the growth in government spending’ – its benefits, while worthwhile, will only bear fruit over the medium term.

The exception is making housing more affordable where there are things the government could do immediately that would make a difference which is why I suspect it will be at the centre of Dutton’s pitch to Middle Australia.

But he needs to hurry up.

The billionaire backer of the Teals movement, Simon Holmes a Court, has worked out how to sway the public, but the Liberals have fallen behind. Picture: Martin Ollman

Once upon a time it might have made sense to hold your policies back for a campaign but that time has long passed, if for no other reason than the decline of the reach of traditional media means it takes much longer for an idea to permeate the public consciousness.

I’m not telling you anything new here, people have been boring on about this for ages.

But even so I’m not sure political people – entering the ad market intermittently as they do – quite grasp just how much broadcast TV’s audience has shrunk since the end of Covid – and – along with the rise of podcasting and decline of radio – what this means for their ability to get through to people.

Actually that’s not true, I’m pretty sure Simon Holmes a Court has worked it out which is why Climate 200 has for months been spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on online advertising.

Though they haven’t been as busy for as long as the Teals, in recent weeks Labor too has been up and about, dropping electoral bribes – sorry releasing policies – and sharpening their attacks on the Opposition leader, and the polls show this is working.

Meanwhile the Liberal Party has been becalmed.

Sure there have been promises of racketing laws, referendums on expelling wrong ‘uns and cunning tests to catch out anti-Semites – as well as a big increases in defence spending – but there’s no retail offering in sight

Which is why it can’t be much fun being a Liberal at a candidate forum at the moment.