Dutton’s counter-revolution to win back the battlers

The battleground for the coming federal election is starting to take shape. Anthony Albanese says sticking with Labor represents a vote for the future. Peter Dutton has set his sights on the basics, promising to restore the good economic management and conservative social policy approach of John Howard and Peter Costello. As the perception of a golden era under the Howard-Costello team is burnished in the face of the current harsh economic times, both have stepped up their public interventions as the Albanese government’s fortunes have waned.

This week Mr Howard and Mr Costello criticised the Albanese government’s financial management, arguing the failure to arrest spending had put upward pressure on inflation and interest rates, worsening cost of living, while the economy had lost competitiveness and productivity was in decline. Jim Chalmers is promising that things will get better. But voters need more than promises. Both sides of politics have a lot of work to do between now and the election to explain exactly in detail what they intend to do. For the Opposition Leader, economic reform will not take care of itself; just as the Prime Minister’s promise of exciting new times ahead does not automatically translate into a better standard of living for middle Australia.

As political editor Simon Benson writes on Saturday, the next election is a tournament of deep philosophical dispute that goes to the purpose of government itself. The Albanese government’s first term has increased the footprint of government dramatically through wage subsidies for low-paid care economy jobs and vastly expanded the reach of the public sector. It has sought to tackle cost-of-living pressures through government handouts for electricity and childcare that have made the challenge of cutting inflation only more difficult for the Reserve Bank. The Albanese government has intervened further by revising the architecture of key economic institutions including the Reserve Bank and Productivity Commission. It has undertaken a bold experiment in reforming the nation’s energy system in a renewables-only approach; tested the boundaries on cultural reform with the voice referendum, and; been prepared to turn a deaf ear to concerns from the nation’s economic foundations of small business, where insolvencies are growing, big business, which has been hit with an unexpected overhaul of workplace laws that favour trade unions, and energy exporters, who have found themselves on the wrong side of the progressive climate change crusade.

Out of this, the Coalition has identified electoral opportunity in what it believes is a middle-class counter-revolution. Mr Dutton is working hard to prove the doubters wrong. And, as editor-at-large Paul Kelly has written, Labor again may have miscalculated the electoral appeal of another tough, conservative opposition leader as it did with Mr Howard and Tony Abbott, who managed to win the Treasury benches from Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd, respectively. Labor’s belief that Mr Dutton would be unelectable looks shaky given the latest Newspoll trends that show the 35-49-year-old voting demographic has turned sharply against Labor across the past six months. This is the same group that elected Scott Morrison in 2019, swung against him in 2022 and is now showing signs of deep displeasure with Mr Albanese.

Mr Albanese’s loss of support proves the point that the business of government is more difficult than simply being a nice bloke. The enduring lesson is that voters will respond to strong leadership. Mr Dutton’s middle-class, counter-revolution strategy is designed to outflank Labor in the suburbs where Mr Howard won aspirational voters from Labor. Where Mr Albanese is asking voters to stick with the status quo, Mr Dutton is citing a sliding-doors moment in which the nation has a chance to dodge a bullet of three more years of Labor rule.

The challenge for both sides is to explain clearly what policies they have to deal with the fundamental problems that now beset the federal budget. By offering more of the same, Labor is putting its faith in the fact that bigger tax receipts from bracket creep will deal with the drag of increased government spending and higher debt payments. Voters ultimately are likely to lose patience with that approach. The Coalition is promising a return to budget discipline. This should include pegging government spending to a set proportion of GDP, as it was previously. Labor’s attack on Mr Dutton is that he will take things back to the future. On many of today’s cultural fancies that would be no bad thing. It also should be remembered that good economic management that gives incentive and rewards effort never goes out of style.