On Sunday, it was Peter Dutton’s turn to lay out the detail of his formative years and the values they instilled in him and what they would mean if he were to be given the chance to lead the nation.
The contrast between the two leaders’ life experience is illustrative. Both came from relatively modest beginnings but each had a different pathway to political office. The Prime Minister was a product of student politics and worked as a bank officer for one year before being taken into the Labor Party machine.
The Opposition Leader had exposure to the sort of work opportunities and life lessons that are too often missing in our elected officials.
His life journey of enterprise defines the Liberal traditions of family, hard work and reward for effort, values Dutton says will shape the way he would govern.
He worked from grade 7 through to university throwing newspapers, mowing lawns and helping in a butcher’s shop after school and on Saturdays.
He saved a house deposit and bought his first home at 19.
Dutton ran a small business that employed 40 people, he was a police officer for nine years where he was exposed to the worst and best of human nature.
He became an investigator of organised crime, drug trafficking and sex offenders, sharpening, he says, his concern for the protection of women and family safety.
Dutton has been in parliament for 23 years, was assistant treasurer under Peter Costello and immigration minister when Australia faced a defining moment on cutting off the people-smuggler trade to stop people dying at sea.
As defence minister, he played a pivotal role in establishing AUKUS.
In his speech to launch the Liberal Party’s campaign for what will be a hard-fought election, Dutton returned to the basics of Liberal philosophy and tradition.
This is that family is the most important unit in society and that business and industries, not governments, are the main source of enterprise and wealth creation.
“Australians are best served by smaller government which gets off their back, supports free enterprise, and rips up regulation”, he said.
The responsibility of government was to get the big things right; manage the economy responsibly; ensure our nation was secure and self reliant and its citizens feel safe.
This is the big divide.
Dutton says the Albanese government has built bigger government to exert more power, instead of creating better government to empower citizens. If re-elected, it has promised more of the same.
Dutton says he will lower taxes, protect superannuation, assist small business, unwind industrial relations laws that punish casual workers, restrain trade union excesses, address immigration and its impact on housing and sort out the growing energy mess.
In reality, Dutton might not be able to do any of these things but what he says is a sliding doors moment for the nation is rooted in the real ideological divide between the two major parties.
He is playing to the Liberals’ traditional strengths as a strong leader, something that paid dividends for John Howard and Tony Abbott, who both wrested government from Labor.
Polling shows Labor has underestimated the voter appeal of Dutton and must do more than assume he is unelectable.
He is working hard to make the choice for voters a character test between two very different leaders – two people who have taken different pathways to end up in the same place and see the future in very different ways.
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