Peta Credlin: Being the campaign underdog should give Peter Dutton the licence to go for broke
With polls roughly 50-50, and betting markets favouring Labor, Peter Dutton is once more the campaign underdog and that should give him the licence to go for broke, writes Peta Credlin.
Federal Election
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The Coalition has copped some friendly fire in recent weeks, mostly because its key supporters are desperate for a change of government and worry that it might not happen.
There are few tougher judges than the fans in the stand when they fear that their own team could let the premiership slip away. And that frustration has been compounded by a poor start to the year from the Liberals, perhaps because they sensed an improbable win against a first-term government and started to play safe.
But with the polls now roughly 50-50, and the betting markets favouring Labor, Dutton is once more the campaign underdog and that should give him the licence to go for broke.
Last week, at precisely the right time, the Opposition started to hit its straps.
Just when people are finally starting to switch on to the election, in the leaders’ debate and again in the treasurers’ and energy ministers’ debates that followed, the Opposition managed to make the election what it always should have been: A referendum on the performance of a bad government.
With real disposable incomes down 8 per cent over the past three years (the worst result anywhere in the developed world), and two back-to-back years of negative growth per person, which is a household recession, the Albanese government has failed the key test of making Australians better off.
The election could still go either way, because many people who’ve decided that the government definitely does not deserve to be re-elected are yet to be convinced that the Opposition would do significantly better; but at least the Opposition is now back in the hunt thanks to a relentless focus on the government’s key broken promises.
Deep down, the Prime Minister and his senior colleagues know they’ve failed – they’re especially exposed over their epic failure to deliver on the promise made on 97 separate occasions to cut your household power bills by $275 a year – which is why most of their campaign is focused on demonising Dutton, endlessly repeating that the Coalition will cut everything but your tax.
The danger for the Coalition is that they’ve left it too late to start releasing policy detail. The danger for Labor is that their anti-Dutton rhetoric is an admission that the government has no record to run on and no plan for the future except doubling down on past failure.
At last Tuesday night’s Sky News/Daily Telegraph’s People’s Forum; Peter Dutton well and truly nailed the Prime Minister over his broken promise to cut power prices.
After beginning the week apologising for allowing the Opposition’s plan to get public servants back into the office to be twisted into an attack on private sector working from home, Dutton recovered and his strong debate performance, especially on Medicare, put a confidence back into his delivery that was evident as the week wore on.
Contrast that with the Prime Minister’s truculent inability to even admit to breaking his power bill promise, let alone to apologise for it; a refusal echoed by his treasurer and energy minister on subsequent days.
All three engaged in sustained verbal gymnastics, blaming everything and everyone but themselves for making a false promise that they always should have known they could never keep. And haven’t we been proven right here by the fact that Labor has now disowned the very modelling that this $275 cut was based on.
Sadly though, while the modelling has been junked, not so that policies that commit Australia to 82 per cent renewables by 2030. How on earth we can still be going down this path when most comparable nations are changing course is staggering?
On Medicare, after weeks of watching Albanese use his green plastic card as a prop in press conferences, finally the Coalition tackled Labor’s lies head-on. And the statistics don’t lie. Under the Albanese government, bulk-billing rates have fallen some 10 percentage points from levels that Labor inherited from Scott Morrison.
Given this slam-dunk, I suspect the PM will now keep his Medicare card in his pocket (although why it took the Liberals so long to counter his lie is beyond me).
Also last week, finally, more policy detail from the Coalition to get the economy back on track and fix the budget with the announcement that it would invest future revenue windfalls in two new future funds: One, to pay down debt and the other to boost regional infrastructure.
It’s the polar opposite to what Labor has been doing: Blowing temporary revenue windfalls from high commodity prices (the coal and gas that Labor and the Greens ultimately want banned) on new and permanent extra spending.
In the treasurers’ debate, Angus Taylor deftly pointed out that not spending all of a temporary revenue windfall was hardly a credible “saving”, especially from a government that’s raised spending to 27 per cent of GDP and that wants to scrap the fossil fuel exports on which our prosperity is largely based.
With the recent budget revealing that debt is about to exceed $1 trillion for the first time in Australia’s history, it was way past time for credible deficit and debt reduction strategy. Note, though, that the Coalition is not proposing to cut spending, just not to increase it every time there’s a revenue windfall.
As well as releasing the modelling to underpin its plan to keep more Australian gas for Australians, Peter Dutton put a stake in the heart of Labor’s “Big Australia” agenda which, since the pandemic, has seen close to 500,000 a year arrive in this country.
The Albanese government’s record high migration has put downward pressure on wages, upward pressure on housing costs and massive pressure on our infrastructure.
If elected, the Coalition will cut back Net Overseas Migration to just 160,000 a year, at least until housing supply can catch up. Back in the Howard era, immigration averaged 110,000 a year. Then it bumped up to an average of 220,000 a year under Kevin Rudd; and that’s been turbocharged under Albanese.
Voters must understand that sky-high immigration has become a Ponzi-scheme allowing reform-shy governments (state and federal) to mask their economic cowardice by keeping up headline economic growth, even as growth per person has fallen.
As well, the presence of large numbers of recent migrants in anti-Semitic protests suggests that not nearly enough is being done to ensure that new citizens take seriously their pledge to respect Australian values.
This election is harder to predict than usual because of the high uncommitted soft vote and fierce local campaigns, especially in outer-metro and regional seats.
Indeed, some key Labor ministers are at risk of losing their seats because of strong local opponents, including – it’s reported – Labor’s biggest political liability, Chris Bowen.
Then there’s the Teals who try and pretend they’re “Liberal-lite” but vote 70% of the time with the Greens.
What we do know is that this election will go down to the wire.
THUMBS UP
New QLD LNP government: For dumping all state-based renewable-energy targets to protect its power supply.
THUMBS DOWN
Greens leader Adam Bandt: To save Labor, he’s demanding an end to negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount plus rents frozen for two years.
Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm
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Originally published as Peta Credlin: Being the campaign underdog should give Peter Dutton the licence to go for broke
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