Messiah to pariah: Dutton stopped believing in Trump, and now we know why

It wasn’t too long ago that many Coalition members looked to Donald Trump as their messiah.

A little over two months ago, Peter Dutton said: “So, what I’d say about President Trump, and I think a lot of people realise this, but I think a lot are coming to grips with it as well, is he’s a big thinker and a dealmaker. He’s not become the president of the United States for a second time by being anything other than shrewd. You’ve seen it in his business life, and the art of the deal is incredibly important to him.”

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The opposition leader rejoiced in Trump’s political halo and sought to share in its glow. “The question Australians should ask themselves is this: Who is better placed to manage the US relationship and engage with President Trump?” posed Dutton a month ago.

“I do believe that, if there’s a change of government, I will be able to work with the Trump administration Mark II to get better outcomes for Australians.”

But this week, in a premonition of Easter, perhaps, Peter denied the messiah three times. When David Speers asked Dutton during Wednesday’s leaders’ debate whether he trusted Trump, Dutton said, “we trust the US” but that “I don’t know the president”. That was the first denial.

Next, Dutton said: “I’ve not met him.” That was the second. On further prompting by Speers, Dutton denied Trump a third time: “I don’t know. I don’t know Donald Trump is my point.”

In the Gospels, when Jesus was in trouble, a fearful apostle Peter denied him three times and then, realising his betrayal, went outside and wept bitterly. But this is an election campaign, and it’s not about loyalty to the onetime messiah but winning. In the space of a few weeks, Trump had gone from potential Coalition asset to real liability. Dutton distanced himself as the situation demanded, with no regrets.

He even went a step further and tried to associate Anthony Albanese with Trump. Dutton said that while he’d not met Trump, “the prime minister obviously has been able to” speak with him in a couple of phone calls. Was this the same opposition leader who’d been criticising Albanese earlier for not being able to get Trump on the phone?

The US president had unsettled the election campaign from the outset. But in the past couple of weeks, the tangerine titan had become totally toxic. And the pollsters can tell us precisely when it happened.

“When you speak to people in focus groups, it had gone from a mood for change, a desire to do something about the cost of living, to do anything about the cost of living, to feeling insecure,” says the Resolve Strategic’s Jim Reed, pollster for this masthead. “Change was starting to look risky.”

Donald Trump’s tariff announcement was a “hammer blow”. Credit: AFR

And the mood switch struck suddenly. “Almost immediately” after Trump’s announcement of global tariffs, the so-called Liberation Day, which was successful mostly in liberating people from their life savings.

To Redbridge director Tony Barry, Trump’s big tariff announcement on April 2, and the sharemarket crunch it precipitated, was “a hammer blow. I don’t think people realise what a massive impact that has had”.

But does the Australian electorate really pay so much attention to offshore developments? “In our research that we do for News Corp, Donald Trump went from a net favourability rating of negative 30 to negative 60, so people obviously are paying attention,” Barry says.

“When the sharemarket crashed, as in any time of uncertainty and crisis, like September 11 or the global financial crisis or COVID, any change of government is asking people to accept more risk. In an uncertain world, you look for security. Better the devil you know, and they’re the exact words people are using in focus groups.”

And the devil they know is the Albanese government. “People find comfort in what they know,” says Barry, a former Liberal campaign director. “I don’t think I can overstate the impact that it’s had.” Barry says the fear and uncertainty generated by Trump is even worse than that of the financial crisis: “The GFC was a liquidity problem, and we knew it would end eventually, but Trump is just complete uncertainty.”

He takes us into a focus group he conducted shortly after the Trump shock: “One over-55 voter said it was the first time he’d checked his superannuation balance twice in one week.” It was a “deeply upsetting” experience for him, says Barry.

Jim Reed was at a dinner party a couple of days after world sharemarkets gave their verdict on Trump’s tariffs. “I said, ‘have you checked your super balance?‘, and everyone pulled out their phones and said ‘oh my God!’.” The dinner party had become Reed’s personal middle Australia focus group.

“Even if you’re nowhere near retirement, your shares go down, your super goes down, you feel less confident about the future, even if you’re in your 40s or 50s. ‘My nest egg is a bit smaller – who’s doing something about it?’.”

The Trump shock didn’t occur in a vacuum. Reed says Labor had entered the campaign with some recent evidence of competence. “Instead of seeing Albanese as weak and distracted, people had started to say, ‘I think he’s starting to get on top of things’.”

Jim Chalmers was “able to seize the economic narrative”. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

This impression was created, he says, by Albanese’s performance in Cyclone Alfred, followed by the federal budget with its cost-of-living measures and the fact that interest rates had started to ease: “The government had just proved its credentials when this [Trump] shock comes along.”

Barry agrees the budget was an important precondition for establishing a public impression of Labor competence. “Everyone said ‘the budget is going to be tough for Albanese’,” because it’d confirm that the deficit was blowing out, “but I said, ‘be careful what you wish for. It’ll give Jim Chalmers the microphone, and that’s dangerous’.

“Chalmers was able to seize the economic narrative and that’s the main game. He bowled up the tax cut and the Coalition opposed it, so the Coalition became the party of higher taxes.”

By contrast, the Coalition had suffered an untimely setback. “Peter Dutton,” says Jim Reed, “was backflipping and lacking policies and the Liberals’ traditional perceived strength on the economy had gone down in recent weeks. Peter Costello and Josh Frydenberg were able to give you some confidence, but Angus Taylor? ‘We don’t know who this guy is,’ people say. They focus on Dutton, and he’s not exuding confidence, and he’s not speaking the language of the economy.”

This campaign is beset with more foreign shocks than any since the end of the Cold War: the Chinese navy task group that conducted live fire drills off the coast of Sydney, the Trump destruction of wealth worldwide, the news that Moscow reportedly was seeking to base military aircraft in Indonesia.

These dramas should have been able to play to the Coalition’s advantage as the party perceived as better on national security. But it hasn’t been able to capitalise on this. Labor went into the election with an edge on perceived competence in foreign policy, according to Lowy Institute polling, and Dutton fumbled as events unfolded.

After embracing Trump, he’s had to disown him, and after over-reacting to the reporting of Russia’s basing ambitions, he was forced to concede that he’d made “a mistake”.

And Labor’s election campaign has been “ruthlessly efficient” in Barry’s estimation, while the Coalition’s campaign “looks like it’s had four or five campaign directors – there’s been no clear messaging”.

And the prime minister’s campaign performance? “If Albanese were a racehorse, you’d give him a drug test.” After years of waffling, “he’s suddenly got shorter, sharper answers”.

One result of the new perceptions of the major parties, overlaid by the Trump shock, is that the formal party launches last weekend made no real impact on the newly formed landscape of sentiment, according to Reed.

Both parties announced policies to help first home buyers as their launch centrepiece: “The people telling us, ‘yes, please do something about cost of living and housing’ have sided with Labor slightly. I think that’s a reflection of Labor being seen as more likely to win and, therefore, to deliver.”

With Labor holding an advantage on the election-winning measure of the two-party-preferred vote in every major published poll, can the Coalition win with just two weeks to election day?

“Theoretically,” says Barry, pointing to the fact that “soft” voters – not firmly committed to their choice – account for some 40 per cent of the electorate at the moment. “But I’m not dashing down to the TAB to put a lot of money on it. The trend is going one way,” and it’s not in the Coalition’s favour.

Trump, from right-wing messiah to political pariah in a few short weeks, can take credit for reframing Australia’s choice.

Peter Hartcher is political editor.