Peter Dutton frames election on issues that matter most to average Australians

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Picture: Getty Images

The real political contest has finally begun.

Peter Dutton strives for a revival of a Liberal Party defined by traditional values, with an unapologetic conservative policy appeal, as he seeks to establish a case for the electoral repudiation of a government leading the country down the road of economic and social disaster.

If elected Dutton pledges to cut the migration rate, unwind the worst of Labor’s industrial relations laws, block or scrap green hydrogen subsidies, impose uniform national knife laws, boost defence spending and commit to a nuclear power energy policy.

Dutton believes he has identified the searing election issues where Labor is at its most vulnerable, accusing the government of disconnecting from economic and social reality. This is a Liberal leader seeking to provoke a community rejection of Labor as he pins blame for the cost-of-living crisis on the government’s incompetence and a decay in values on Labor’s leftism.

The defining conclusion from the Opposition Leader’s budget reply speech is his intention to resist moderate tremors from within his party, in the belief that the times, and the community, now demand a return to fundamentals.

Migration and housing will headline the Coalition’s campaign to address the cost-of-living crisis. This is no surprise. Dutton has been leading into this space for a year as the government has fumbled over its response to a problem that is only growing in its urgency.

It is, he says, now out of control.

Dutton has put clear and achievable targets on the table. He will cut net overseas migration dramatically, as opposed to gradually under Labor, to 140,000.

He is banking on voters having more faith in the Liberal Party achieving such a goal considering it has done so before.

Dutton also pledges to take on university vice chancellors, which Labor promised to do before backing down, by cutting foreign student numbers. This he says, will quickly free up 100,000 homes, reduce pressure on rents and tackle a big part of the inflation problem.

Labor’s failure on migration is profound. It is rapidly losing credibility in its management of the issue. In government, Labor appears paralysed by the politics of it.

When it came to power, the forecast net overseas migration rate was 1.1 million for five years. In its second budget, that forecast rose to 1.5 million before reaching 1.6 million in MYEFO. Despite the government’s claim to a halving of the rate next financial year, the budget is forecasting it to rise even further – to 1.7 million over the same five years.

Dutton is appealing to what many people instinctively know, and what the RBA has confirmed: that record high migration is a key part of the housing shortage crisis, and hence a key element of the broader inflation and cost-of-­living crisis. The great Australian dream of owning a home, he says, had now become a “nightmare”.

Dutton believes he has got the big strategic calls right so far, and he believes on this issue alone, votes will shift. A former police officer, he has also pivoted to his comfort zone on crime, with a promise of uniform knife laws and tougher bail laws for family violence offenders. Crime is now an elevated issue of concern for many. This was unexpected, but Dutton is playing to his natural strengths.

The Liberal leader has identified the top three issues that any focus group research will tell you are most pressing for voters. And he has drilled into them like a miner in search of paydirt. He has sought to play to what he believes are the Coalition’s assets while highlighting Labor’s weaknesses, through a prism of what he believes average Australians look for.

Some of his colleagues were looking for a broad policy sweep. He has resisted this call, mindful of the obvious politics that no opposition would be wise to show its hand on everything this far from an election. But this is as comprehensive as a budget reply speech gets for an Opposition Leader.