Election 2025: At last, Peter Dutton has rolled up his sleeves

More energy about energy could put Dutton back on track.

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At last, Peter Dutton has rolled up his sleeves at a petrol station, filled a car and spruiked the Coalition’s promise to cut the cost of filling the family car by $14.

At the end of the first week of campaigning in election 2025 the Opposition Leader has pulled attention back to his budget promise to halve petrol excise immediately and give families immediate relief, not a $5 cup of coffee tax cut in the second half of next year.

It was apparent to anyone watching the first week of the campaign that the Coalition campaign had drifted away from the highly popular petrol promise and the concentration on energy, energy, energy.

Dutton needed to energise his campaign, get back to basic issues and start to release some new Coalition policies. Instead of being sucked into talking about US tariffs and the fate of the Western world, he has been talking about Australian energy costs and the fate of Western Sydney.

On the campaign trail Dutton said he had been talking about petrol prices every day since Anthony Albanese called the election last Friday but it’s the first time he realised the travelling media campaign is part travelling circus and he had to put on a show to grab the attention he needed.

Energy is the big point of difference between Labor and the Coalition and its role is fundamental to the cost-of-living pressures which are by far and away the most important issue in the voters’ minds.

Spooked by the Trump bump to the incumbent and previously deeply unpopular Canadian government and backing in his line that the Australian Prime Minister’s “weakness” in the face of the US President was a failure, Dutton was baited into spending most of his time on the US tariffs.

In fact, the political impact of the tariffs is much greater than real economic impact on Australia; the cost-of-living crisis in suburban Australia started years before Trump was re-elected and there is a growing prospect that the White House could do a deal on tariffs with its AUKUS nuclear submarine partners Australia and the UK. On every count Dutton is better off talking about petrol prices in Parramatta rather than tariffs in Timbuktu, and the more often he pumps his petrol tax break the better for him.

The Coalition campaign has stuttered in the first week and Dutton has lost some skin but more energy about energy could put him back on track.

Dutton needed to accelerate his campaign and apart from being seen at a petrol bowser the policy release on the port of Darwin and the long-awaited modelling on the gas plan to bring down costs on the east coast will help re-energise the Coalition campaign.