How Anthony Albanese is taking a leaf from Scott Morrison’s playbook

History shows that a prime minister can win an election campaign with a simple scare about an opposition leader who will take the country into the unknown.

Scott Morrison did exactly that as prime minister in 2019 when he turned the tables on Bill Shorten by highlighting Labor tax increases worth $387 billion.

Anthony Albanese wants to do the same in 2025 by hammering Peter Dutton over the opposition leader’s emerging plan to cut federal spending.

In seeking to defeat Peter Dutton, Anthony Albanese is looking to a tactic used by Scott Morrison.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

The key difference is that Shorten made himself a big target with a bold agenda six years ago. Dutton is staying a small target for as long as possible. Albanese has to make voters worry about the cuts when the opposition leader will not be pinned down on what they are.

These are the defining lines of the battle this week over the federal budget. Treasurer Jim Chalmers set this up on Sunday with a $1.8 billion boost to energy subsidies for households and a warning about what Dutton would do if he took power.

Chalmers targeted Dutton and his colleagues over the “secret cuts” they would not reveal to Australians.

“I think in this building we’re tempted to think that their economic policy is some kind of slapstick comedy,” he told Sky News in an interview in Parliament House.

“But it actually masks a much more sinister intent and that is to keep these secret cuts secret until after the election with grave consequences for people on the NDIS, people on pensions and payments, and especially people who rely on Medicare.”

The fact is that Dutton is not talking about cuts to Medicare or pensions. He promises to protect them. On the NDIS and other payments, however, the Coalition is taking a hard line. “We think that there’s more that can be done,” opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume said of the NDIS on Sunday.

Hume argued that government spending should grow only as fast as the economy. This is a worthy budget goal. It is also a policy platform for spending cuts.

Some of the Coalition cuts do not do much for the budget deficit. They include dismantling the $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund and the $20 billion Rewiring the Nation fund, but these are capital items rather than recurrent spending. The savings would come from cutting the annual interest bill on federal debt.

The biggest Coalition cut is vague and also probably unworkable. Dutton estimates that he could save $6 billion a year by cutting the 36,000 public servants added to the federal workforce over the past three years. Could he really do this without hiring consultants and contractors? Or putting essential services at risk?

There are about 146,000 workers in departments and agencies outside defence, national security and support for veterans. The Coalition target means losing one in every four workers. The Coalition is yet to say how it would achieve its saving.

Dutton is promising a big policy this week, but that is the least voters should expect when the opposition leader gives his budget reply speech on Thursday. He has left it very late to tell Australians what he would do to lift living standards. He may have left it too late, in fact, when it can take weeks for a new policy to percolate through the community so that voters know what it is by election day.

So far this year, all the big policy moves from Dutton have been to copy government announcements: the funding for urgent care clinics, the $8.5 billion for Medicare bulk-billing, the bigger rebate under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and the $1.8 billion energy bill relief unveiled on Sunday. Dutton has been bold with his nuclear policy but very little else.

The most recent Coalition policy, to buy another squadron of F-35 fighter jets, is undercooked. It would cost more than the $3 billion announced to house and maintain the aircraft. Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor hedged on Sunday when asked if the spending was all new money or whether it would be funded from cuts elsewhere in the defence budget.

This also highlights the caution within the government. Labor is yet to preview a major new budget measure that Dutton struggles to accept. Will it attempt this on Tuesday night? The obvious way to wedge Dutton is to unveil a tax policy that cheers the Labor base. Albanese did this early last year with the revamp to the stage 3 tax cuts, but there is no hint he will try a similar move.

Albanese and Chalmers cannot spend their way to budget success, because they would only bear the blame for inflation. They send no signals about embarking on a startling new policy on Tuesday night. That leaves them with the proven approach that worked six years ago. Expect to hear a lot more about secret cuts.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.