How Peter Dutton can deliver a miracle election victory

If you had to offer one word for Anthony Albanese, it would be weak. Weak on confronting anti-Semitism, weak on standing up to China and weak on taking responsibility for anything. He has become the nation’s spectator in chief – and Peter Dutton needs to take advantage with controlled aggression.

The more the major parties sound the same, the more the drift to minor parties and independents will continue.

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We live in an age where there is too much polarisation in our media and public debate, yet not enough between our major parties. Thankfully Peter Dutton and the Coalition opened two more clear distinctions with Labor this week in what I hope is a sign they understand the need for clear product differentiation.

If the Opposition Leader is to deliver a miracle victory by winning large swings in the outer suburban seats of Sydney and Melbourne, reclaiming lost Liberal ground in Western Australia, picking off a seat or two elsewhere in the country and getting rid of a few of the teals, he needs to offer a stark choice. It is no accident that when the Coalition matched Labor’s net zero by 2050 madness for the first time at the 2022 election we saw an unprecedented number of seats fall to Greens and light green (teal) candidates.

Peter Dutton and the Coalition opened two more clear distinctions with Labor this week. Picture: NewsWire/Brenton Edwards

Rather than a clear choice between the major parties, voters were presented with four or five versions of net zero from Labor, Coalition, Greens, teals and other candidates (none of them, by the way, offering an engineering mix that could deliver it). Little wonder voters scattered their votes around like wind turbines on the Great Divide.

With cost-of-living pressures high, living standards reduced after almost two years of per capita recession, a housing crisis, out-of-control immigration and border security problems, national security weakness, social divisions playing out in a wave of anti-Semitism and broken promises a-plenty, the time is ripe for a change of government. Anthony Albanese’s only hope is that votes again are spread far and wide – Labor needs the Greens, teals, independents and minor parties to staunch a flow of votes to the Coalition.

The major parties attracted only 68 per cent of first-preference votes in 2022, the lowest of the post-war era. Labor received less than 33 per cent, its lowest vote across the same period, and most polls show it going backwards in 2025 – it is all about the minor parties.

The more the major parties sound the same, the more the drift to minor parties and independents will continue. To win, the Coalition must present a compelling alternative, which should not be an onerous task given Labor’s incompetence and incoherence on many fronts.

This week the Coalition made the cut-through pledge to force federal public servants back to the office five days a week. Immediately the Prime Minister mocked it, doing the bidding of the public sector unions that had extracted a default work-from-home option from Labor.

This will be difficult for the Coalition to implement because of enterprise bargaining agreements, but it is a battle worth having. Labor can fight for the mollycoddled public servants in the Canberra bubble while the Coalition sticks up for overtaxed mainstream voters who want the workers they pay to turn up.

The other new policy differentiation, bizarrely enough, was on the Ukraine war. “There’s discussion at the moment about potential peacekeeping,” Albanese offered, “and from my government’s perspective, we’re open to consideration of any proposals going forward.”

Dutton quickly responded: “In terms of if we should have boots on the ground, in Ukraine, I don’t see that, I think the Europeans have that task.”

Which position makes most sense and has the most voter appeal when our military is stretched and we have pressing challenges in our region?

Dutton later cited this as evidence Albanese was “out of his depth” and “shooting from the hip”. No doubt it is also a factor of the Prime Minister being so weak and apologetic the previous week over the Chinese navy’s unheralded live-firing exercises – Albanese was so self-conscious about the need to sound strong that he overshot.

Here again is a clear policy distinction between the major parties. If the Coalition attacks on this issue I suspect Albanese will find a way to climb down, realising that another national security humiliation will do less harm than leaving the Diggers-in-Ukraine option alive.

On the central issue of energy, we already have one of the sharpest contrasts between the parties. Dutton’s nuclear plan can deliver emissions-free electricity that will be affordable and reliable – that is the experience in more than 20 other modern economies.

Labor is stuck with a renewables-plus-storage experiment that keeps pushing prices up, reliability down and simply cannot work – which is why no other nation is even attempting it. Until and unless battery technology delivers cheaper and more durable storage, we will always need baseload power.

If we must go to net zero, then nuclear is a no-brainer. Talk of high costs and long delays is laughable – the cost of a renewables transmission-storage grid will be even higher and require replacement at least three times across the life of a nuclear plant. Under either plan, we will need more coal and gas for at least another decade or two. The imprimatur for our national energy self-harm is absurd; we are seeking to reduce our tiny share of world emissions (1 per cent and shrinking) while global emissions continue to rise dramatically.

We are crippling our economy for no environmental gain. We really should abandon the folly of net zero, but no politician shy of Donald Trump is bold enough for such a reality check. At least Dutton’s nuclear plan can make the energy grid almost carbon neutral, provide energy security and foster a sophisticated new domestic industry that will complement our defence nuclear program. It is a national disgrace of historic proportions that we have turned an energy-rich nation into an energy basket case.

With Labor abysmally failing to meet its promise of a $275 electricity bill cut and seeing prices rise by double instead, the energy debate should be central in the campaign, playing right into the dominant theme of cost of living.

Immigration, too, should see a strong contrast between Labor’s talk of restraint while delivering an uncontrolled influx and the Coalition’s lower targets and stronger track record.

If you had to offer one word for Albanese it would be weak. Weak on confronting anti-Semitism, weak on standing up to China and weak on taking responsibility for anything. He has become the nation’s spectator in chief.

Controlled aggression should work for Dutton. The more he makes it a contest between him and Albo, between the Coalition and Labor, the more he will bring votes directly to Coalition candidates rather than via minor parties of the left and right.

It obviously would be a mistake to ape Trumpian politics here, but even with our significantly different systems and political cultures there are lessons to be learnt.

The Democrats made their campaign – in fact most of the previous four years – all about Trump, which was wind beneath his wings. Dutton should be pleased every time Labor attacks him. He should aim to rankle them. The way for conservatives to arrest the drift to the minor parties is not to assuage their concerns. Rather, it demands standing out from the crowd based on a clear set of values.

The Coalition was probably right to match Labor’s Medicare spend – that is one policy area where it may be best to avoid a fight. But on almost every other issue it should provide acute alternatives.

The task is herculean but it is doable. Dutton needs to be up for the fight – any bland day will be a good day for the Prime Minister. Remember Albo’s best week last time was when he was holed up with Covid.

Let Albanese be in the corner with the Canberra bureaucrats, let him share a corner with the renewables zealots, let him explain what electricity prices do to the cost of living, let him discuss why his promises on power prices, living costs and mortgages were broken, and let him make excuses for the anti-Israel crowds and the Chinese provocateurs.

Most media will not pin him down on these issues – it needs to be the Coalition.