Why Peter Dutton will remain vulnerable to Labor as Anthony Albanese fights to win election

Peter Dutton will remain vulnerable to Labor without showing what he can do better. While Albo mightn’t have done much, everything he has done, the opposition leader has opposed.

Having banged on for months that Anthony Albanese is ignoring cost-of-living, Peter Dutton can hardly complain if the Prime Minister gets a poll boost from spending $8 billion expanding Medicare bulk billing.

Sure, the change in the past fortnight might be within the margin of error and – importantly – he’s still behind, but just as we saw with Labor’s poll boost after the changes to the Stage 3 tax cuts, despite the overall unhappiness with his performance, when Albo does something about cost-of-living, voters are still prepared to listen.

The poll shows Albo and his government are getting big fails on cost-of-living, housing, the economy – basically everything important except health.

The PM is also well behind the Opposition Leader on his attributes as a leader.

And yet …

Despite the public’s problems with Labor, the Coalition has yet to close the deal.

Two reasons suggest themselves for why this is so.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with workers at Whyalla Steelworks in South Australia. Picture: NewsWire / Tim Joy

Firstly the decent size jump in the percentage of people who say they think the country is going in the right direction in the wake of the RBA rate cut should remind us that many of the government’s woes stem from unhappiness caused by things largely out of the government’s control.

In other words while they might think Albo useless they don’t think he’s the source of their problems.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton in western Sydney. Picture: NewsWire / Richard Dobson

The other reason why Labor remains alive is because we’ve yet to see much of what exactly the Coalition would do differently.

Indeed the movement to the government should also serve as a warning to Peter Dutton that if he stands still he risks being run over.

For more than two years the Opposition Leader has been the beneficiary of Albo’s incompetence as a communicator and the community’s anger at the decline in their standard of living.

But as polling draws near it is becoming increasingly clear that as well as articulating people’s anger Dutton needs to show how he’s going to make things better.

Instead, what do we have at the moment?

Well there’s nuclear power but even its biggest fans would have to admit it’s more than a decade away at least.

And aside from a – since walked back – promise to cut migration, and a firm commitment to bring back taxpayer-subsided lunch, there’s not much one can point to.

Until we have some concrete promises Dutton will remain vulnerable to the charge in Labor’s attack ad, which is that while Albo mightn’t have done much to help people, everything he has done, the opposition leader has opposed.

Originally published as Why Peter Dutton will remain vulnerable to Labor as Anthony Albanese fights to win election