As Dutton goes low, Albanese goes nowhere. We’re trapped in an era of one-and-done PMs

What a strange period of Australian politics the nation is experiencing. It really does look like politics is eating itself. A first-term government is in serious danger of being tossed out as it struggles to change trajectory. The last time a first-term government fell was in 1931, when the world was roiled by the Great Depression.

The Albanese government has its problems, for sure, and more about that later. But what about the opposition led by Peter Dutton, which has a decent chance of taking office either in minority or majority next year? Faced with the choice of Dutton or Scott Morrison as leader in 2018, more than a few Liberal MPs demurred at the Dutton option. They worried about his tendency to resort to extreme positions and rhetoric, as he had with his memorable assertion that Victorians were too scared to go out at night because of African gangs. As home affairs minister, he spoke enthusiastically about the prospect of deporting the miscreants.

Illustration by Dionne Gain

Since Dutton succeeded Morrison as Liberal leader in 2022, his modus operandi hasn’t changed. Dutton is a true one-off who’s determined to test the limits. It’s not true that there’s nowhere he won’t go – abortion is a no-go – but there are plenty of dark recesses he’ll willingly inhabit. He announces policies, then doesn’t even wait until after the election to go back on them. As he argued for the No case in the Voice referendum, he had no qualms in questioning the fairness of the Australian Electoral Commission. As he advocates for nuclear energy, he’s happy to undermine the integrity of the CSIRO.

The quantitative and qualitative polls suggest that Dutton’s support has grown because increasing numbers of voters see him as a man they might not like much but “at least you know what he stands for”. What complicates this perception is that a lot of the time he’s all announcement, no details. For example, we know he’ll use only one flag to decorate his press conferences because the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags are, to him, divisive. But his policies to address Indigenous disadvantage are far less clear.

Only weeks before the Voice referendum last year, Dutton promised to hold, as prime minister, a second referendum to enshrine recognition of Indigenous Australians in the constitution while also creating local and regional advisory bodies through legislation. And yet a mere two days after the defeat of the Voice proposal, he said all of his Indigenous policies would be reviewed and that he had effectively dumped the second referendum promise because “the Australian public is probably over the referendum process for some time”. A brazen effort.

This week he dropped his pledge to cut the net overseas migration intake to 160,000 per year, which he made in his nationally televised reply to the budget in May. That was the attention-grabbing announcement – the “this is who I am” statement – in his speech. Now he says he won’t have a net overseas migration target at all before the election. Similarly, he’s also walked back a promise of tax cuts, which require specifics and numbers that add up, and will instead fight inflation first, a vastly more nebulous promise.

This shifting and dodging looks to be working for Dutton politically, even if it foreshadows a Bizarro World election campaign and a dog’s breakfast of policies should the Coalition take the reins five months from now. But not everyone in Team Dutton has been aching to return to the treasury benches. In the past two weeks, the manager of opposition business in the lower house, Paul Fletcher, and the opposition Senate leader Simon Birmingham – both experienced former ministers and, notably, Liberal moderates – chose to leave politics rather than wait to see if they will serve in a Dutton cabinet.

Once upon a time, a Labor government would have made merry with a development like that. But not this government. Late last year, I suggested that Anthony Albanese was in danger of joining the ranks of the five prime ministers who followed John Howard – Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Morrison, who won just one election each – unless he changed the way he went about things.

Nothing much has changed. It was obvious a year ago that he needed to reshuffle his front bench to get Andrew Giles out of immigration and Julie Collins out of housing in favour of more effective ministers. He did that, but at the end of July. Why are he and his formal leadership group so low-octane? He is habitually late in responding to challenging issues – the controversy over his flight upgrades and the accusations of running dead on antisemitism being just a couple of examples. He’s the guy who makes it to the luncheon buffet to find the food’s been well and truly picked over and the kitchen’s run out of some of the offerings.

An egregious example of Albanese’s deep-seated communications problem came on Tuesday when he was asked about Dutton’s attack on Labor backbencher Josh Burns. Dutton essentially accused Burns, who is Jewish, of failing to properly represent his fellow Jews in Melbourne. Albanese said on the ABC yesterday that he found Dutton’s criticism “quite extraordinary and unfair”. He also threw in “astonishing”, another one of his go-to non-words from his opposition days. What happened to the words “disgusting”, “disreputable” and “disgraceful”? Or “cruel” or “disrespectful”? If his direct opponent implying that one of his MPs is a traitor to his people isn’t enough to get Albanese visibly animated, what is?

The PM seems unable to shake the conviction that what got him into the big chair – the “slow but steady wins the race” routine and a low-key, almost sleepy and monotonous demeanour bolstered by the “ordinary Australian from a deprived childhood” story – will continue to work its magic in keeping him there, despite all evidence to the contrary. Opposition leader and prime minister are two vastly different jobs requiring an entirely new set of political and communications skills.

And that’s something Dutton might also want to reflect on. Continued pandering to resentments through a right-wing version of virtue signalling would render him a candidate for the one-and-done PM club too.

Shaun Carney is a regular columnist and author.

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