Dutton’s women problem: Men want a strongman, women something else

Peter Dutton is turning into a contortionist. Why? He’s got a woman problem. That’s not me saying it. That’s women across the nation. They are blunt in focus groups and in polling. Blokes don’t have the same problem.

Could someone please put me in a focus group to help me figure this out? Sadly, no one with the word “journalist” in their job description would be allowed within a whisper of one of these campaigning tools. A shame. I’d love watching political parties manufacturing consensus among a group of randoms in these weird times. Same rules with polling. Pollsters ask you if you work in the media. Oh, sorry. We can’t use you. Like we aren’t people. Rude.

Peter Dutton, now attempting to reassure women voters.Credit: Richard Gilberto

Late last year a newish outfit, DemosAU, conducted polling of nearly 3000 Australians. The questions were prescient. The answers should have attracted Peter Dutton’s attention. One-third of Coalition voters thought we needed a PM like Donald Trump. About a third of male voters thought so too. For women, that shrank to about 15 per cent. Bet if they revisited the poll now, you’d struggle to find a quorum among women.

Focus groups are useful for political parties because voters get to elaborate on what they really think. I spoke to six of the outfits conducting focus groups – on both sides of the fence – to get a sense of that thinking. Andrew Hughes, political marketing guru at ANU, says you can really dig deep. Recent excavations reveal blokes love the strongmen.

But these latest results tell a different story for women: they are horrified. One focus group observer told me Australian women loathe Dutton for fear he will behave like Trump. Work-from-home bans. Interfering with reproductive rights – a woman’s right to choose. Gutting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs because apparently they are wasteful. That’s led to US companies doing the same.

Think we don’t need DEI? Men are still in charge of just about everything. Power will only be prised from their cold, dead hands. I’d prefer not to go that far. Women in focus groups, at large, also emphasise their raging appreciation of Medicare as it is. They fear an American-style health care system.

Overall? I asked political pollster and lobbyist Kos Samaras, from RedBridge, what he’s seen in the latest focus groups. Dutton is described as strong, Albanese as weak. Neither is described as having much empathy and their priorities are in the wrong place. If you pushed for a kinder description of the prime minister, says Samaras, someone would say he’s nice. Neither evil nor nasty.

Another focus group wrangler says this: “Women have always had to deal with danger in their lives so they have a better spidey [sixth] sense of people. In the groups of women I’m seeing, there’s something about Dutton they don’t trust.”

That’s because the leader of the opposition parrots Trump. Work from home, out. DEI, out. Courtesy of proposed government efficiency tsarina Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, with her own inefficiencies when it comes to taxpayer-funded expenses. And Dutton is terrified of mentioning reproductive rights because he knows women feel reproductively unsafe with the Coalition.

So what of polls and focus groups? Apparently strategists don’t allow politicians to see a focus group in action because they would cry, but they can’t avoid polls. Those whispers in focus groups get a shout-out in the latest polls – the Coalition is losing women voters.

Jim Reed, the guy who runs Resolve Monitor (which The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age use), has polled 24 elections, state, federal and overseas. His data says women prefer Albanese to Dutton. Not much in it, according to his most recent Resolve poll, but the difference was there. Reed will be in the field again, polling, after the budget next week.

“The other thing I’d point out – an important caveat – is that this poll was taken over three weeks ago,” says Reed, “so before Albo looked strong on Cyclone Alfred/insurers, before Dutton was pinged on [his] property/share trades and leaving Queensland [during the cyclone emergency] for fundraising, before Trump’s tariffs and Ukraine stance kicked in. Any or all of these things could have changed the situation, and several other more recent polls are showing that.”

Recent polls? Ouch. The Essential poll published on Tuesday reveals a 40-point gap between how women aged 18 to 34 view Dutton and how men of the same age view him. Forty points! Did the Coalition miss the memo on the shift of voting power from Boomers to Millennials and Gen Z? And the latest Roy Morgan poll, released on Monday, shows support for the ALP among women is at 56.5 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis, men at 52.5 per cent – but both numbers have grown in this poll.

So what is the Coalition to do when faced with these numbers? Peter Dutton assured Nine’s Sylvia Jeffreys that there would be no American-style reversal of women’s rights. “Yes, I can [make that promise],” Dutton said. “And I think again, you should look at what politicians do as much or probably more than what they say.”

But as Peter Hartcher pointed out last week, Dutton’s remarks about working from home signalled the opposition leader was “uninterested in flexibility for working women”. A hot minute later, Dutton realised he’d made a boo-boo. Now working from home would return to its pre-COVID status.

Women know the reality. Dutton said if women wanted to work from home, perhaps they could job-share, aka wage-share. This was a deadset case of mother-shaming, right there. Please do not imagine that if you are a mother you are entitled to a full-time job, even if you need the money. Even if your productivity outdoes the men who work in the office and then rack off to the pub. In all my years working, I’ve rarely met a mother who enjoyed that privilege. Even if you stay at work until midnight doing all the things you need to do.

We have a way to go before the election. It’s possible focus groups will find new ways of thinking about the two leaders. Men appear more focused on leadership, whatever that means, while women worry about climate, the cost of living and workplace flexibility. According to DemosAU’s November 2024 poll, more than 50 per cent of men think nuclear power is awesome! Women, not so much. (Just 26 per cent support it.)

Women voters, already on unequal footing, are now on permanent pollie watch. It won’t be too long before one of these leaders embarrasses themselves in the ladies’ lounge. One of them already has.

Jenna Price is a regular columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

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