How Dutton is recruiting Labor to do his job for him

Our cost-of-living crisis has been top of the polls for so long that it looks like never shifting. It’s become cliché. People out there are hurting. There’s no doubt about it. Politicians empathise. The cost of a damn cabbage is high enough to offend even a comfortably post-materialist vegan.

And yet, we’ve never spent more. Perhaps not as individuals – “discretionary” spending is down. But as a society. Government spending commitments continue to grow: health, education, childcare, NDIS, welfare, aged care. All have increased steadily over the years.

Bringing the fight to his turf: Opposition Leader Peter Dutton with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The largest share of spending is now on social security and welfare, taking up nearly 37 per cent of total government expenditure. Health comes in at around 16 per cent. Education at around 7 per cent. All paid for, directly or indirectly, from taxpayer pockets: the largest portion via direct income taxes, the next largest via company taxes (and of course the price of goods to consumers factors this in), then GST.

Line this up against household spending and a story begins to emerge. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australians are spending less on in-home discretionary items such as furnishings and household equipment, and less on personal adornments like clothing and footwear. But we are spending more on hotels, cafes and restaurants, and on transport.

And there it is: Australians, like most developed societies around the world, have become a nation of outsourcers. We task the government with delivering the care and social supports that were once provided in the family, then leave the house to work more. But it turns out that filtering all our money through Canberra does not leave us feeling better off.

This is not the Albanese government’s fault alone, but it is its problem. As the electoral cycle rolls around to another election, Albanese and his Treasurer Jim Chalmers appear responsible for inflation and its concomitant worries in the eyes of the majority of their disloyal subjects.

Some Australians are attracted to the promises made by the Greens, that they’ll take from the richer-than-thou to make life free for thee and thine. Others, while not exactly warming to Peter Dutton, are coming around to his economic credentials. This is because Dutton got strategy right after the Voice referendum. The government’s lesson from that defeat was it should focus more on the cost of living. But the opposition learnt a subtler lesson: many things are important to Australians, and the common denominator that connects them is their influence on the cost and quality of life in this country.

Which is why Dutton is starting to win the media cycle. The opposition leader talks about nuclear energy and, in trying to attack his (not yet released) costings, the government suddenly finds itself having to quantify the cost of renewables, poles and wires included. It’s complicated to add up all the costs – especially as the various agencies refuse to publicly share their full costings – which keeps the policy debate at bay. But people see their power bills increasing each month and wonder why this cheap energy is so expensive.

Dutton talks about problematic numbers of economic immigrants and the government is on the hook for the rising cost of housing and implicated in a poor university experience for domestic students. He talks about weak border policy, implicating the government in a perceived rise in crime and cultural tensions which are reducing the quality of life in some less well-heeled suburbs. The link, which some dispute, feels very real to others. There are the crimes committed by the detainees released into the community following the NZYQ ruling, and community tensions over the Israel-Hamas war make some outer suburbs feel less safe, while urban areas heave with pro-Palestine hobby riots, including this week, when Victorians attacked horses in the name, supposedly, of peace.

So move where it will right now, the government seems to find itself on Dutton’s ever-expanding territory. Talking about its own policy somehow keeps turning into an ad for the opposition.

And things aren’t getting easier. It’s a credit to the government that it’s trying to tackle government programs that threaten to become unsustainable. But doing so has the unpleasant effect of shifting costs onto individuals.

“Putting the NDIS on a more sustainable footing”, as Bill Shorten hopes his changes will, inevitably means that some people will pay for things they wish they didn’t have to. Similarly, the reforms to the aged care system. Sure, both might be the right thing to do, and both might have opposition support, but it will be the government that bears the brunt of any anger from decreasing what it delivers. Whichever way it moves, Labor is seen to be contributing to the cost of living.

That, of course, suits Dutton just fine. Now the debates are being held on his terms, he’s got Labor doing his job for him. Yet another classic example of an Australian outsourcing to government.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.