Anthony Albanese rarely misses a political opportunity in the post-truth world that Labor not only seeks to exploit but actively facilitates.
The “Trump equals Dutton” notion is a political confection, but it is a relatively easy one to consume for those already struggling to distinguish between fact and fiction in the clutter and disorder of an election campaign.
Labor’s strategy on dealing with Donald Trump is two-fold. The Prime Minister now wants the fight with the US President. And in doing so, Peter Dutton becomes the proxy.
As bad as Trump’s tariff war may be for the Australian economy and trade-exposed businesses, Albanese is taking a big bet on where he thinks the political advantage is running.
The Opposition Leader appears to be spooked.
In abandoning hope of special treatment for Australia, the Prime Minster has shifted to a hawkish, confrontational posture ahead of Trump’s “Liberation Day”.
Engineering his own version of Scott Morrison’s Team Australia moment, he is taking his cue from the Canadian left, which has experienced a revival inspired by Trump’s aggression.
Dutton’s argument until now that Labor has failed through weak leadership to secure special treatment from our closest ally remains valid. The risk is that it becomes rapidly consumed by Labor’s ability to engineer an Australian domestic movement of rage against the US President.
The popular appeal of this would presumably swamp the strength of voter sympathy to at least the principles of Trump’s radicalism in an Australian context. And the obvious expansion of this is to link it to Dutton.
The Liberal leader is now acutely aware of this, which will explain his own sudden shift in language.
Having earlier sought to portray strength in leadership through political allegiance, Dutton now also seeks to take Trump head on.
“If I needed to have a fight with Donald Trump or any other world leader to advance our nation’s interests, I’d do it in a heartbeat, and I’ll put the Americans on notice and anyone else who seeks to act against our national interests,” Dutton said on Wednesday.
The risk for Dutton is that a perceptible shift in the political dynamic will be seen as a response to Albanese. A majority of voters in the past have accepted Dutton would be a better leader in dealing with Trump. Albanese is attempting to neutralise this.
It’s not without almost comical irony that Trump is rapidly poisoning the well for the broader conservative movement.
Labor’s ability to exploit a culture of fear and loathing fuelled by the US President is now directly infecting almost every aspect of the Coalition agenda.
There is nothing extraordinary about Dutton’s proposed public service cuts, his railing against wokism in schools, forcing bureaucrats back to the office or slashing red tape.
The Liberal Party has taken the same or similar agendas to elections long before Trump was resurrected. Former Coalition education minister Alan Tudge was talking about wokism in the school curriculum more than five years ago.
And Tony Abbott celebrated Australia’s own version of “Repeal Day” in 2014 when the Coalition sought to slash a wave of green and red regulations.
This was before even the first iteration of Trump.
What has changed is that everything Dutton now does or says, new or old, Labor is trying to associate with Trump or DOGE, regardless of how uncontroversial such positions may have been in the past.
The end of the first week of the campaign will be consumed with the fallout of Trump’s “Liberation Day”.
Dutton will need to ride this out until the nation steers its attention back to concerns closer to home. He won’t want this discussion to still be raging heading into the second week of the campaign.
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