Not only must Dutton start winning the cost of living contest, he must ensure Libs are ready to take on Labor

Peter Dutton treading water and simply holding the show together won’t get the Coalition into a competitive position ahead of the next election.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton has faced criticism for a lack of policy substance. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Peter Dutton is facing political warfare on two fronts. And he must start to take territory in both, by use of hostile force if necessary, if he has any hope of steering the Coalition back to winnable electoral territory.

Not only must he start winning the contest against the government over cost of living, he must ensure his own forces are ready to take advantage of any shift in electoral decline for Labor.

There are early signs that on the first issue the Liberal leader is beginning to make inroads.

There is a growing sense of community anxiety about inflation, interest rates and the broader economic outlook – and an impression since the budget that the government doesn’t have the answers.

Not that any of this has helped shift the Coalition’s primary vote out of the low to mid-30s.

On the second, however, there is limited sign if any that the Liberal Party structures are in any shape at all to meet the challenge, with Dutton’s call for reform so far being met with rejection.

Dutton on Tuesday marks 12 months in the job as federal Liberal leader. By comparison to the first year of its last term in opposition, Dutton has also achieved a minor historical success in simply keeping the show together.

This is no small feat considering how erratic and skittish politicians can be when they lose government, and at a time when there are deep internal ideological divisions.

Beyond this achievement, the party remains in a structural crisis and policy wilderness.

Dutton told his partyroom meeting earlier this week that he didn’t want to rush to failure by announcing policy too early in the cycle.

Yet he must be prepared for the possibility that Anthony Albanese may seek to go to an early election at the back end of next year.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese may seek to go to an early election. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

If that is the case, both sides will be heading into a campaign in 12 months’ time.

Dutton has faced criticism for a lack of policy substance. There are those who agree that now is not the time for any detailed work to be road tested.

There are others within the partyroom, fellow MPs, who disagree.

At the very least, Dutton has to give a sense that something is happening, to lay down policy markers to indicate where he intends to take the fight.

While the base may have welcomed his values-based budget-in-reply speech, some colleagues are despairing at the lack of coherent economic policy signals or social policy beyond an all-in approach to the no case on an Indigenous voice to parliament. But if the question is whether the Liberal Party is in a fit state to take advantage of any political opportunity, then the answer would have to be no.

Dutton gets a tick for holding the federal show together.

However, the handbrake being firmly applied is in the big structural problems the state divisions have, and which have been evident for some time.

This is destined to linger amid the atrophy and apparent internal antipathy toward reform.

Dutton openly expresses his private frustration at the lack of will for divisional reform. Only recently he said publicly that the Victorian and NSW divisions were devoid of ability to run an election campaign.

Former prime ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard both won elections despite their own unpopularity.

Dutton also appears spooked by his own unpopularity. Yet this was a problem both John Howard in 1996 and Tony Abbott in 2013 managed to overcome.

They presented as a team. And this is also where Dutton is being somewhat let down. He seems to be carrying the show alone, with the exception of one or two of his shadow cabinet colleagues.

There are signs that opportunities exist for Dutton to elevate the conservative case, with Labor’s budget falling flat and looming battles over social policy.

But so far there has been little pushback to counteract Labor’s negative framing of Dutton as leader, as was evident in the Aston by-election loss.

Treading water and simply holding the show together won’t get the Coalition into a competitive position ahead of the next election.