Peter Dutton eyes new battleground over crime and personal safety

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Ben Clark

Peter Dutton is embracing the political principle that you never get in the way of your enemy when they are engaged in the process of destroying themselves.

But he is assisting them where he can.

While some criticism is beginning to be thrown the Liberal leader’s way over the absence of policy and a timid narrative on the economy, Dutton’s strategic judgment so far has served him well.

Despite the appearance that he defaults to his former comfort zone of being a home affairs and defence minister, it is not without some justification.

Dutton is at his most potent as an opposition leader when prosecuting the case against Labor on national and personal security.

It’s not surprising that some of his own colleagues are beginning to form the view that this necessarily means that Dutton is most uncomfortable talking about the economy.

And there may be some element of truth to that.

Both Jim Chalmers and Anthony Albanese have left the door wide open for the Coalition to muscle into the cost-of-living ­debate over the past several weeks.

But Dutton’s political instincts have served him well so far.

He may have taken his time to arrive at a formal position over the voice, much to the frustration of conservatives within the party room, but he had to be convinced that he was on the right course.

History shows that he picked the public mood right.

Dutton clearly believes that once again he is on the right track, deciding for the meantime to focus the laser on crime, violence and immigration detainees and less so on the budget and ­inflation.

This is doubtless frustrating for some of his colleagues who believe there is no other game in town beyond the economy.

But presumably the Liberal Party’s own polling and focus group research is showing the same thing as the most recent SEC Newgate findings of where the national mood has shifted over the past month.

For the first time since this regular study began its snapshot of the nation, crime now features in the top three issues of concern. Prior to this, it ranked down as low as 10th and highest at sixth earlier this year.

The fact that this sentiment is unprompted reveals the depth of concern now embedded in the community.

Albanese knows he is skating on thin ice over the immigration detainee disaster and the crime wave that appears to have broken on our suburban shores.

On Friday, the Prime Minister took the unusual step of delivering a backhander to the commonwealth prosecutor in what appeared to be a flirtation with the separation of powers over the West Australian court case involving a detainee and the alleged bashing of a 73-year-old woman during a home invasion.

This intervention by the Prime Minister only re-enforced the image of a government ­petrified by a policy area ­notor­iously lacking in advantage for Labor, while elevating a sense that the government was not in control.

Nevertheless, cost of living and housing still rate as the top two concerns.

And this is where Dutton is applying the principle of not getting in the way of Labor’s own self-made problems.

While the clock is ticking for Dutton to present an alternative policy prescription on the economy, he clearly believes that for the meantime the correct political play is to wait and watch as the government fumbles from one crisis to the next.