Wakey, wakey: Dutton looks shaky as his aptitude is put to the ultimate test

Last year, some people felt comfortable predicting the winner of the 2025 election campaign was more likely to be Peter Dutton.

Not because he had shown himself to be a formidable campaigner outside his electorate (he hasn’t) or because of his reputation as a policy wonk (he isn’t), but because he had resuscitated the Coalition, mainly by capitalising on Anthony Albanese’s many bloopers and strategic errors.

Illustration by Joe Benke

This year has a very different vibe. Dutton has had a shaky start. He has sounded flat, looked flat-footed and seemed woefully unprepared for a fight he knew was coming on territory he should have already staked out. Meanwhile, Albanese has performed better and Labor has prepared better for the contest.

This is Dutton’s first federal election campaign, possibly the first time in his political life that he will face sustained national scrutiny for weeks. It will be a supreme test of his stamina and reflexes.

That could be a problem for someone who avoids getting bogged down in details of costings or numbers and has habitually disappeared from the media cycle for days, usually when there were adverse stories around. Do that in a campaign and you are done for.

Dutton has made a lot of mistakes – both of commission and omission – since the campaign unofficially began in early January, and the mistakes are beginning to catch up with him. He should have released policies sooner to address the cost of living. He needs to stop jumping into culture wars or parading on obsessions, the latest being the “indoctrination” of schoolkids, but refusing to say how or where that is happening. Feel free to make a wild stab.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in the electorate of Hawke in Melbourne on Wednesday.Credit: James Brickwood

His budget reply speech was dull. He sounded nervous. He had a few word slips. Nothing life-threatening (Albanese still does it) unless his confidence takes a hit, and he spirals, or he is panicked by the polls into other missteps.

Dutton boasts of his wide experience, particularly that he helped clean up Labor’s economic mess as assistant treasurer to Peter Costello.

Yes, he was. For 12 months in the final year of the Howard government – when all the heavy lifting on tax reform and budget repair had been done. It was also the year that Costello pushed John Howard to go for a massive $34 billion tax cut package – quickly matched by Kevin Rudd. Costello would rather jump off a tall building than promise to repeal income tax cuts as Dutton did after Jim Chalmers ambushed him, threaten insurance companies with divestiture, or contemplate building, owning and operating nuclear power plants.

Labor’s unpretentious tax cuts were designed weeks ago by Albanese and his economics team in preparation for an expected April 12 election. They were meant as a tool to remind voters of other measures Labor had implemented or announced to ease cost-of-living pressures – last year’s stage 3 tax cuts, billions for bulk-billing incentives, energy subsidies, cheaper medicines, HECS relief and so on.

The bonus was that they turned into a wedge. After adopting all of Labor’s health measures – much safer than devising his own – Dutton was clearly overcome by too much “me too-ism”. It was a bad call.

Then, there was the half-baked gas reservation idea. It provided a good headline – Australian gas for Australians – however, it was missing content, and it now threatens to crumble under expert examination. Just like the unaffordable, undeliverable nuclear policy was meant to mask continuing Coalition conflict on net zero emissions, gas reservation smelled as if it was devised to divert attention from nuclear.

Dutton says details on gas and almost everything else will come “later”. Responding to muttering from colleagues about his poor campaign, which some senior Liberal MPs say is partly factional and partly post-election leadership positioning, Dutton was dismissive. “Well, I don’t think you’ve seen anything yet.” (Exactly!)

“I think wait until we get into this campaign, and you see more of what we’ve got to offer.”

As if the election is months rather than days away. Wakey, wakey. Voting begins in 19 days.

Dutton has also whinged that Albanese has waged a sledge-a-thon against him. He sounds like the school bully complaining to the teacher that one of the kids he picked on has punched him in the nose. Anyway, he better toughen up because Labor will not stop. Its mission, especially in Victoria, where Labor stinks, is to make him unacceptable. Labor could maintain the status quo in every other state, then lose the election in a state once seen as a stronghold.

There is still time for Dutton to come good, and certainly Labor is not underestimating that possibility. Nor is there absolute confidence inside Labor’s ranks the prime minister will not stumble or succumb to hubris.

The winner this year was always going to be decided by the campaign. It will be the one whose policies best address the key concerns of Australians, the one who makes the least mistakes, who shows the best character and temperament to be prime minister, who reacts faster and smarter, or better anticipates the forces outside his control that can derail or undermine messages.

Say, like Donald Trump. Or Kyle and Jackie O.

Albanese and Dutton especially – who has gushed over Trump and continues to ape his policies – have nothing to lose if they go in hard against him. How will Trump punish us? By scrapping AUKUS? Please. Make our day.

Malcolm Turnbull is right. No slumping to our knees, no sucking up. Allowing Trump to think it’s OK to treat Australia as an enemy rather than as a friend is not on.

Nor is it OK for a prime ministerial aspirant from Queensland to spit on the capital of the nation he wants to lead while expressing his preference to live in a harbourside mansion in Sydney.

Niki Savva is a regular columnist and author of The Road to Ruin, Plots and Prayers and Bulldozed, the trilogy chronicling nine years of Coalition rule.

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