You can dress Dutton as ham, but that doesn’t make him PM material

If you cast your mind back to the period soon after the Morrison government was tossed out on its ear in 2022, losing 19 lower house seats, it would have been a brave person who predicted that the Coalition under Peter Dutton would be back in contention at the next election. Indeed, after the Liberals lost the seat of Aston in April 2023 – the first time a government had won a seat from an opposition at a byelection in more than 100 years – their outlook was bleak.

But here we are. Dutton and the opposition look to have upward momentum, and Anthony Albanese and his government do not. The trend towards the Coalition in the polls has become so sustained that the looming election is shaping as a contest to see which side will get the opportunity to form a minority government.

Dutton is now looking for the holdout voters such as women of all ages and younger people to try to get the Liberals enough seats to have an edge over Labor. His reputation as a bloodless tough guy can only take him so far. There’s a need to sell him as a more relatable everyman in the hope of securing those extra votes. The Liberal Party has been attempting to soften or just plain humanise Dutton’s public image by showing him in its messaging as a nice, thoughtful, caring fellow. A mate of mine, a former political reporter who lives on the other side of the world, describes the campaign as “Dutton dressed up as ham”.

Credit: Illustration: Dionne Gain

But even when he’s doing the personal, getting-to-know-you thing, the sharp edges are always close to hand. In the latest Liberal ad, Dutton claims that as a policeman he saw the “best and worst of our society”. That is his worldview right there: good people and bad people. It’s how he has been all the way through his political career, which began almost a quarter of a century ago. He speaks plainly, clearly and gives the impression of being unyielding – there is little place for nuance in his world.

It’s what has increasingly made him appealing to voters as opposition leader. After the Aston loss, he didn’t change his style. He is determined and ruthless, and proud of it. But in politics, the line between “ruthless” and “careless” can become blurred. With Dutton, what you see is what you get and this is simultaneously a strength and a point of vulnerability.

Why a point of vulnerability? Surely we have seen enough to conclude that in government he would conduct himself as he has as opposition leader, which was how he conducted himself as a minister in previous Coalition governments.

This week, he has been talking up his prospects, claiming there is a mood for change. From now until election day then, more voters will be imagining what sort of prime minister he might be. It could be in the government’s interests to encourage them to do that.

His biggest-ticket offering so far, the establishment of a nuclear energy industry, is a lay-by scheme that gives the Coalition and the country permission to go slow on or, when possible, avoid the transition to net zero. He has dodged and weaved on nuclear from the outset: the technology changed, he waited until the eve of the Christmas break to share costings. The policy assumed a future decline in the demand for electricity – a curious prediction given the age of AI, the next electricity-hungry industrial revolution, has just begun.

Where he has prospered is with his political attacks. The issue he harnessed to break the faith of a possibly decisive number of voters in Albanese was the Indigenous Voice referendum, which he now derides as wasteful and divisive. That was not always his position. Initially, Dutton appointed a Yes supporter, Julian Leeser, as his Indigenous affairs spokesman.

Dutton then spent 11 months considering supporting the Yes case – or at least giving the impression he was doing that – before coming down on the No side. A month before the referendum, he promised his own future referendum on constitutional recognition. When asked if he would hold a referendum in his first term as prime minister, he replied, “Yes. I believe very strongly it is the right thing to do … We went to the last election, and a number of elections before that, with that as our policy and that will be our policy going into the next election as well.”

Two days after the Voice proposal went down, Dutton’s commitment to a second referendum disappeared. Instead, the opposition’s Indigenous policies would go “under review”, and there would be no first-term referendum because, he said, “it’s clear that the Australian public is probably over the referendum process for some time”.

During the Voice campaign, Dutton thought little of questioning the integrity of the Australian Electoral Commission – one of the nation’s greatest democratic institutions – over what would constitute a valid ballot paper. For a major party leader, that was a wild stance and an example of crossing the line from ruthless to careless, or even reckless. It would be unbecoming of a prime minister.

But it all served its purpose because it damaged his opponent and played to his ways as a politician – the home affairs minister who railed at African gangs, the defence minister who warned of a war with China. He is skilled at channelling anger and frustration.

This is how he has almost single-handedly weakened Albanese and the government. But with the best will in the world he does not head a crack outfit. Sussan Ley as deputy leader, Angus Taylor as shadow treasurer. They don’t really trouble the scorers. It’s a fair way from John Howard with Peter Costello as his deputy. Should the Coalition take office in the coming months after one term in opposition, it would form one of the least prepared governments in modern Australian history.

This opposition has got to where it is through the sheer force of Dutton’s self-belief and his relentless pursuit of the politics of protest and disappointment at the state of modern life. Why would he change a winning formula? What we have seen is what we would get.

Shaun Carney is a regular columnist.

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