Peter Dutton sets the course for Liberals’ path back to power
Opposition leader says there are ‘15 significant’ policies that have been costed, vowing the Coalition will not run a ‘small target’ strategy at the next election.
On Monday Peter Dutton will mark his first year as federal Opposition Leader. It has been an “annus horribilis”, he tells Inquirer in an exclusive interview, in which he has faced more than the usual trials and angst after loss of government – not least brawling state divisions that have lost elections, descended into dysfunction and damaged the Liberal brand.
In Dutton’s words, the Liberal Party has been through tumultuous times as state and territory Coalition governments have been wiped from the mainland; it has gone into minority government in Tasmania; and, because of factional and ideological fights, it has faced calls for federal takeovers of state divisions.
In this time Dutton has presided over the first loss of an opposition seat to the government in a by-election in 120 years. He has shown little improvement in polling since the defeat of the Morrison government in May last year, and he faces pressure to produce new policies and to reform the party.
Dutton has to turn around a decade of Labor’s portrayal of him as a hard, angry man to deal with a generational threat from progressive independents and, by default, lead the No campaign on the referendum for an Indigenous voice to parliament and executive government.
He has responded to the mounting pressure on him to release new policy, reform the party and intervene in the Victorian state Liberal division. The response has few details but a lot of intent and a strategic schedule recognising there is finite time as he warned his colleagues this week “not to rush to failure”. There is unlikely to be a diminution in demands from within the party for all his intent and call for patience.
On developing new policies to take to the next election Dutton says there are “15 significant” policies that have been costed and they will go through a winnowing process to see which are affordable and will be kept and those that will “fall away”. He vows the Coalition will not run a “small target” strategy at the next election.
Apart from specific budget responses on JobSeeker and gas taxes, Dutton talks about the “spaces” of energy, taxation, welfare, environment and resources, and sets a deadline for release of the new approaches as after the voice referendum later this year, which will be the “second half” of this electoral term. The opposition is not going to relent on the cost-of-living pressure on middle Australia, holding Labor to promises of cuts in power bills even as energy costs are set to rise by up to 25 per cent from July 1 and ministers double down on the need for more spending on renewable power.
On the voice, Dutton intends to prosecute the No case as a political priority, subject to the inflation imperative. Faced with an increasingly personalised attack from Labor and Anthony Albanese’s argument that Dutton will be to blame for failure, he is putting back responsibility on to the Prime Minister for any setback to reconciliation.
With Liberals calling for him to do something about the state divisions, Dutton has effectively ruled out intervention in the Victorian branch but declared the NSW organisation is “no longer fit for purpose” and allows intolerable results for Liberal Party members.
He recognises he has a “hard” image after some of his cabinet jobs and Labor’s relentless portrayal of him as an angry man, and he seeks to flip the “hard” image into one that demonstrates a willingness to make tough decisions in the national interest.
Dutton faces a daunting task but calls on his long parliamentary and political experience to put the Liberals’ predicament into perspective, to have a schedule of priorities, to pragmatically do what is achievable rather than what is demanded by his critics, to focus on the areas of gain, and to point to positive attitudes and developments.
Dutton “was around” when John Howard lost the federal election in 2007 and the Coalition went into opposition, and he admits to being “scarred from the event” and not wanting to repeat “the tumultuous few years” that followed when there were two Liberal leaders in the first year after the election and three after two years.
“I didn’t want to repeat that episode,” Dutton tells Inquirer. “Therefore the most important goal that I set myself was to make sure that I could provide the leadership to unite the partyroom, to make sure that we had a sense of purpose, to recalibrate after a heavy election loss. It’s daunting and it requires experience and discipline.
“So, I’m proud of what we’ve been able to achieve over the course of this 12-month period and I think it provides us with a significant launching pad in the next two years.”
Of course, achieving a better result than a Liberal leader such as Brendan Nelson, who had personal approval ratings in the single digits and was undermined and ousted within a year, is not a high bar. There are plenty of critics who say Dutton is too slow to produce new policy, too “hands off” in reforming the Liberal Party, too slow in intervening in state divisions and not giving the conservative base enough.
Dutton’s response on policy development is that for the first year after a change of government the public does not pay attention to the new opposition, the new government enjoys a honeymoon, and to produce policy too quickly or too early runs a risk of mistakes.
“One of the things I did learn from 2007 in a positive way was that you need to do the policy work in opposition,” he says.
“I’m not going to lead an opposition which is a small target, we’re not going to be over the top or brazen or extravagant. I believe we have to provide significant policy alternatives in the space of energy, in the space of taxation, in the space of welfare reform, in the space of the environment and in the space of resources.
“Our policies need to target assistance and support to those families and small businesses who are going to be suffering most because of Labor’s mismanagement.”
In the immediate response to the federal budget proposal for a $2.4bn tax hike on gas projects and a $40 a week rise for those on JobSeeker, Dutton is prepared to leverage the Coalition’s Senate position as an alternative to more extreme demands from the Greens to get amendments.
While the gas producers fear a worse deal if Labor is forced to deal with the Greens, Dutton says he’s not acting just for one or two corporations and he will seek amendments to lessen sovereign risk for investors in the national interest.
“We’ll work closely with the industry and we will look at what’s the negotiating position we have,” Dutton says. “But we’re happy to engage constructively. And on this I think we need to look through the broader impact on the economy on just another layer of sovereign risk proposed by this government.”
Despite calls to intervene in the Victorian Liberal branch, Dutton’s preference is “for Victoria to resolve matters” and he says there are “green shoots” of improvement that are not publicly apparent. Of course, the Liberal Party rules and constitution do not allow the federal executive to “reach into” the state partyroom, no matter how badly it is performing. However in NSW, Dutton says, the executive council, which is bloated and crippled by sub-factional vetoes, is “completely unfit for purpose” and can’t be tolerated if it is going to drag down the chances of success.
“At a state level we have significant issues in some divisions … but I think at a federal level we are in a strong position to start to rebuild,” he says. Part of the rebuilding is to tap into the “rising anger” about the inflation pressures on cost of living and the failure to provide detail on the voice to parliament.
“There’s a rising level of anger from Australians who just want the details so they can make a decision for themselves. There is a chance that it (referendum failure) sets back reconciliation because there are a lot of people who have had their hopes built up by the Prime Minister,” he said.
Dutton deflects Albanese’s attacks on him over the voice by arguing the decisions the “Prime Minister is making right now” will worry Australians and “he’ll have to face up to the consequences if he fails”.
This deflection of Albanese’s blame over the voice and depiction of Dutton as angry and hard is part of the Opposition Leader’s recognition that he “might be seen as a tough persona”.
Yet, while trying to meet people and show them who he is personally, he is seeking to use that to an advantage and demonstrate that “my hard edge is a strength for being able to make decisions that are in our country’s best interest, that will keep us safe”.
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