Clarion call for Dutton to rally a nation in peril
The 2025 contest is coming across as a trifling popularity contest, akin to a state politics campaign with squabbles over competing giveaways, when the issues at stake are historic, consequential and grave.
Peter Dutton is attempting to make history. As has often been noted, no first-term government has been defeated in the post-war era.*
Still, by way of paradox, we need to understand that Anthony Albanese it trying to make history, too. Our politics has become so febrile that no party leader has won two elections in a row since John Howard’s fourth victory 21 years ago.
Yet while Dutton’s performance at the Sky News People’s Forum this week was solid, probably kickstarting his campaign a week late, the Coalition pitch does not seem fit for purpose. The 2025 contest is coming across as a trifling popularity contest, akin to a state politics campaign with squabbles over competing giveaways, when the issues at stake are historic, consequential and grave.
The superficiality suits the Labor strategists. They want this campaign to remain muddled in discussions about Medicare entitlements, education funding and minor infrastructure projects.
Dutton needs to make a compelling case for change. He needs to reflect the urgency of the moment, the dire nature of the challenges and the dramatic changes our country must embrace.
Our security environment is bracing, with China testing our mettle, the US suddenly as erratic as its commander in chief and our defence preparedness underdone. Our economic situation is perilous with debt soon to top $1 trillion, federal government spending accounting for more than 27 per cent of our economy, our cheap energy advantage deliberately squandered and productivity declining as a global trade war erupts.
Winston Churchill was not the first to observe that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. Neither is it novel to note that democratic systems vary greatly and all have their imperfections.
It is often argued that our compulsory voting and preferential system ensure politicians must win “from the centre” rather than seek to energise their bases in the way of US politics. This is true to an extent, but it also means we have election campaigns that, by necessity, focus on the least engaged and informed voters.
This is why the People’s Forum format is so telling – it tests the leaders in front of the undecided voters who will determine the contest. Yet it also can be deflating because this showcases the narrow focus, self-interest and even ignorance that can drive some voting decisions, demonstrating how politicians must pander to those instincts or perish.
Unless politicians break out of these necessary confines with a bolder vision or some unpalatable truths, elections will be condemned to petty auctioneering, stunts and the endless search for campaign gaffes. To supercharge the campaign and convince people to change government in worrisome times, the onus is on Dutton to generate the sense of urgency. He needs to make the case that a re-election of the Albanese Labor government will materially damage the national interest and make life worse for most Australians.
This is not a small charge but I believe it is true and it must be made out explicitly, with evidence.
We are on a disastrous fiscal path with federal funding for health, education and the National Disability Insurance Scheme in permanent expansion despite unimpressive outcomes.
Our productivity is in decline as union power increases and the public sector and nonproductive sectors of the economy expand at taxpayers’ expense.
Our defence forces lack the naval platforms, remote control weaponry and personnel they need. Albanese has failed to stand up to China as it repeatedly and dangerously has intimidated us and he has failed to stand up for Israel or against anti-Semitism at home. Our immigration rate has outstripped our capacity to provide housing and infrastructure.
We have given a right of veto over almost all economic development to environmental and Indigenous activists, their lawfare sometimes funded by taxpayers.
Our climate and energy policies have contributed to industries closing or moving offshore while increasing the cost of living and fuelling inflation, hurting the most vulnerable families and small businesses. This renewable energy push also has imposed heavy costs on taxpayers as they fund grants and subsidies, while it has eliminated our cheap energy advantage, acting as a disincentive for investment and an internal tariff on all our production without delivering one iota of environmental benefit (global emissions continue to rise sharply).
This week’s debate on energy was dismal, with Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen refusing even to admit that electricity prices had risen rather than fallen under his watch and failing to detail the total cost of his renewables-plus-storage model. More to the point, most of the global evidence and experience show that this model will not work, so Bowen and Labor are taking us further down the road to energy chaos.
We have schools and universities that teach children to be ashamed of our history.
We have large licks of taxpayers’ money flowing to institutions that promote only green-left views, from the ABC to writers festivals; taxpayers even see funds earmarked for social cohesion go to groups associated with radical Muslim clerics. While Australia’s national energy self-harm is undeniable, our cultural and educational undermining may do more damage. The insidious nature of the cultural rot facilitates the economic malaise because young people do not learn what has driven our prosperity, and public debate too often is superficial, jaundiced or non-existent.
To correct the national drift, Dutton first needs to call out the problem. He needs to explain how the nation is in peril and why this election is so crucial, otherwise we will float through the campaign like so many frogs in warming water. He might like to wonder aloud how much better off the country would be if Gough Whitlam’s government had not been returned for a second term in 1974, or if the Kevin Rudd-Julia Gillard government had not been given a second chance in 2010.
Those Labor governments made plenty of mistakes in their first terms but it was the second terms when the whole caboose went off the rails. They provide salient lessons for this election.
Albanese is only just getting started; wait until you see a second term of Labor, probably sharing power with the Greens – it will be a catastrophe of unconstrained spending, union dominance and strategic weakness.
The second part of Dutton’s task is more difficult. If he is to declare the national emergency then he will need to propose substantial policy differentiation to repair it.
Unfortunately, this cannot be done overnight and so far he has done so only on energy – which is significant enough. In other areas such as tackling union power, boosting productivity, curbing government spending and properly resourcing defence, we are left to assume the Coalition will outline broad intent without being prescriptive – the regional and future generations funds are a welcome step towards fiscal repair, ensuring windfall tax receipts offset debt and fund productive infrastructure.
Dutton’s campaign launch on Sunday needs to be elevated beyond the orthodox campaign packaging we have seen to this point. It needs to be a dramatic call to action, a raising of the alarm and a plea for voters to look above and beyond the cheap salesmanship of what giveaways politicians can offer with taxpayers’ funds.
The Opposition Leader needs to call on voters to rescue the country. To pull it back from the brink of day-to-day living funded on the intergenerational credit card, unreliable and unaffordable electricity, uncontrolled immigration, expanding government, diminishing productivity, subservience to China and irrelevance to our alliance partners.
When we have a government that increasingly identifies with the nutty climate activists who glue themselves to the roads, we need an alternative that readily aligns with the people stuck in traffic wanting to get on with their lives. We need a government that will back economic development rather than make excuses for those trying to block it.
We had Whitlam’s disastrous second term 50 years ago and we got an extension of the Rudd-Gillard chaos 12 years ago. If we have learned one thing from this experience it is that bad governments do not improve with a second chance; rather, the damage they cause is compounded.
*It is arguable that Tony Abbott defeated Labor in 2010 before former conservatives Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott rolled over for Julia Gillard.
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