What Peter Dutton has in common with Australia’s most famous fly spray

“When you’re on a good thing, stick to it,” was for many years the advertising slogan for Mortein insect spray, one of Australia’s enduring brands. It might as well be Peter Dutton’s slogan too. After all, the way he’s doing his job as leader of the Liberal Party is working out very well for him and his colleagues. Also, Dutton is, like fly spray, in the business of killing: his sole mission is to put the Albanese government to death.

If current trends continue, he could well be declaring Mission Accomplished come election time.

Illustration: Dionne GainCredit:

Dutton is a purely political animal in a way that no one among his contemporaries can equal. His relentlessness is a thing to behold. Since assuming the leadership two years ago, he has not veered off his line once.

From the outset, the Liberals focused on querying the Albanese government’s ability to bring down living costs. At the 2022 election, opinion polls suggested that among voters Labor had a well-established advantage over the Coalition on its ability to handle the cost of living.

But Dutton had spotted a vulnerability on two fronts. One was systematic, the other resided in his direct opponent. Having served in the parliament since 2001, he knew how difficult it was for any government to receive and retain credit from voters for improvements in living standards. The greatest cliche spouted by politicians in modern times – in a crowded field – is surely the observation that “people are doing it tough out there.”

It’s designed to demonstrate empathy when it’s really just pandering, telling voters what they want to hear. Very few of us ever feel like we’ve got enough money. And the phrase long ago lost any meaning, given that it’s uttered in both good times and bad.

Today’s voters with mortgages fume about interest rate rises and refuse to cheer measures to alleviate the pain. The government went through months of angst over tweaking the stage 3 tax cuts to favour those on lower incomes. The cuts came into effect seven weeks ago. How many of us have heard friends or colleagues expressing gratitude for their resultant higher net incomes?

Dutton also made an early judgement about Anthony Albanese. Having observed him as Labor leader after the 2019 election, Dutton saw that Albanese had not once seized the national political narrative in his time as head of the opposition. If Albanese could not – or would not – do it then, when he did not have to deliver on his rhetoric, Dutton surmised he would struggle to do it when he held power.

That turned out to be an astute assessment. The government appears unable to break out of a low-key, reactive mindset. Supposedly, its application of orderly processes and avoidance of big ideas and inspiration was intended to convey an “adults in the room” image. But to many voters, it has come across as “fiddling while the mortgage belt burns”.

Dutton’s gradual demolition of the government’s advantage of incumbency has come from an understanding of the public’s expectations of politics at the national, rather than the state, level. There’s a big difference between federal and state government in the public mind. Voters are willing to elect Labor governments, as state and territory elections show. But nationally, they are much more reluctant to do so.

State government is chiefly about services such as schools, health, policing and transport – things you can see being delivered or built. National government is, in the public mind, primarily about the cost of living and the wider economy, and national security. It is also about less tangible things, such as social values and what defines the nation. Dutton has enjoyed pressing those federal buttons.

He is ruthless about it because he can afford to be. He operates freely in the knowledge that News Corp will always ride shotgun for him. The latest foray into accepting refugees from the war in Gaza was ugly but effective politics, with him on the front foot and the government put on the defensive.

Unquestionably, Dutton trades in anger and fear. The lowest point in his long ministerial career was at the beginning of the Abbott government when he oversaw health and sport. He was a complete dud because in those roles it was much more difficult to establish an us-and-them dynamic. After a year, he was in a series of adversarial portfolios: immigration and border protection; home affairs; and defence. His happy places.

The polls show Dutton and Albanese are roughly as unpopular as each other. For a first-term Opposition Leader, that is a historically good result.

At this point, what would a Dutton government do? Stick it to the universities and the ABC. Try to rub out the union movement and suppress wages growth as much as possible. Take a more hostile attitude to China. Drag its feet on climate change. Essentially, resumption of the work the Coalition was doing in the three years leading up to the 2022 election, with some drawn-out excuse-making about how long it would take to establish nuclear energy as the new element.

Labor has operated in the belief that most voters would not be able to bring themselves to make Dutton prime minister. Too scary, too negative, too strange. Once upon a time, they used to think that about Tony Abbott.

Shaun Carney is a regular columnist.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.