Memo to Dutton: It’s the final quarter, you’d better start kicking

The game plan that turned Anthony Albanese from an opposition leader to a prime minister is known by a simple phrase he used for three years before he gained the top job. “I said that we had a plan: kick with the wind in the fourth quarter, outline our policies close to the election,” he said in the weeks after Labor took power.

Albanese tends not to use the phrase these days. No prime minister can tell voters they will only bother with big policies when the election comes. That is true even if it is a plain fact that Labor is working on new measures for the campaign ahead – and that changes to negative gearing may end up in the surprise package.

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Peter Dutton, by contrast, lives the Albanese motto every single day. The opposition leader is holding back on every policy that would normally shape an Australian election: on the economy, the cost of living, housing and defence.

Even the glaring exception to that statement – his proposal for seven nuclear power stations – confirms the flimsiness of the Liberal policy platform. Dutton and his energy spokesman, Ted O’Brien, are incredibly coy about how this policy might work. What would it cost? How long would it take? What replaces our ageing coal-fired power stations while we wait for nuclear?

“We will release our costings in due course – at a time of our choosing,” Dutton said in a speech to a business audience on Monday. Sure, it is common for opposition leaders to reveal their full costings shortly before the election. But they tend to put their big-picture policies on the agenda well before that final stage.

Dutton is running out of time. He is acting as if the last phase of this term of parliament is still months away. In fact, the final quarter is already upon us. It started last month, assuming the election is as late as May. And Dutton is yet to prove he can kick when it counts.

Liberals make a fair point about how to judge their policies: they may not have that many, but the ones they have are big and bold. This is absolutely true of the nuclear policy. No matter how many voters were alarmed at the Labor plans for negative gearing in 2019, the prospect of a nuclear accident may frighten a few more. It is a big idea and a huge political risk.

Dutton has leapt ahead of Albanese on a few fronts. He called in May last year for a ban on advertising sports betting during game broadcasts – an idea on which federal cabinet is yet to decide. He backed an age ban on social media earlier this year, months before Labor, thanks to early work by Coalition communications spokesman David Coleman.

Even so, it only takes a quick check of recent history to confirm how slow Dutton has been to tell voters about big policies. At this point in the political cycle three years ago, towards the end of 2021, the Labor opposition had far more to offer voters.

In March that year, Labor took a risk on border protection by formally declaring it would abolish temporary protection visas. Later that month, it unveiled its $15 billion National Reconstruction Fund to support manufacturing. It promised a tax discount for electric vehicles a few days later, then a community battery scheme at the end of March. All these policies are now in place.

By May, Labor had unveiled the Housing Australia Future Fund, the $10 billion policy that was finally legislated earlier this year. It is true that the Greens dismiss this policy as too small, but Albanese put his biggest housing policy to voters a full year before they cast their votes.

The Labor proposals on climate and energy were confirmed in August that year. That is when Albanese renewed the Labor commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 and when the energy spokesman, Chris Bowen, pledged $20 billion to upgrade the electricity grid – a policy dating from several years earlier. The argument continues today about whether Labor is reaching the goals set three years ago. At least Bowen set some goals.

The most detailed Labor policy arrived in December 2021, when Albanese and Bowen revealed the mechanism to cut greenhouse gases. This came with their target to cut carbon emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 and some economic modelling to claim a $275 cut in household electricity bills by 2025.

The political cost of that climate policy is now obvious: power bills are up, ministers never mention the $275 claim, and the government is relying on household bill subsidies to cut the cost of energy. But the safeguard mechanism has been overhauled as promised to cut emissions.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Dutton has the wind behind him in the opinion polls but looks reluctant to risk this good fortune by telling Australians what he would do with power. And the risk is real: the Coalition’s hasty retreat on airline policy earlier this month, when the Nationals talked about breaking up Qantas and the Liberals hit back, showed how messy things can get when the Coalition attempts a policy debate.

Dutton’s hard line on migration is another case in point. He and his frontbenchers sent mixed messages for days when he promised to cut net overseas migration to 160,000 a year, which is 100,000 lower than the Labor forecast. Will this mean turning away skilled workers? The Coalition complains about government caps on overseas students but has a policy that could cut the numbers even harder.

There is very little pressure on Dutton to move any faster because he has a disciplined frontbench and party room that waits for him to make the big calls on policy timing, as well as a supportive conservative media that tells him he is outsmarting Albanese at every turn. He avoids press conferences in Parliament House, so the press gallery gets relatively few opportunities to question him. He has a narrow list of preferred TV and radio spots. The media strategy spares him any exposure to long interviews that might test him on what he would do if he was running the country.

Labor tacticians see this as a flaw that will weaken Dutton when the election nears. They regard the gains for Dutton in the opinion polls as a protest vote from Australians who are angry about the cost of living. This is not proof that voters are buying what Dutton is selling, they say. After all, nobody is sure what he is selling just yet.

The Labor tacticians could be totally wrong, but the Liberals are certainly taking their time. If Dutton wants to kick with the wind in the final quarter, he will need to run a little faster.

David Crowe is chief political correspondent.