Dutton in last-minute teal seat blitz with one week to go

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton will launch a blitz of the teal-held inner-city seats he has shunned to date and ramp up his tempo of travel around the country in a final week rush to convince undecided voters to revolt against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

As national polling suggests Dutton’s chances of winning are rapidly diminishing, the Coalition will spend millions on an advertising barrage that it saved for the final moments of the campaign to spruik a $1200 tax rebate for low- and middle-income earners that has not received as much attention as the opposition hoped.

The opposition leader’s team is insisting he can still win in the face of diminishing public expectations of an upset victory, with senior party sources unable to speak on the record confirming Dutton will travel to the Sydney seat of Mackellar, held by independent Sophie Scamps, after a Sunday morning rally in the safe Labor seat of Hawke in outer-suburban Melbourne.

Dutton began his day in Cairns, flew to Darwin for a crime round table with Jacinta Price and then flew back to Melbourne. Credit: James Brickwood

In the final days before the election next Saturday, Dutton is due to visit the Melbourne electorates of Goldstein and Kooyong, two other teal-held seats the party desperately needs to win back if it is to make up the numbers to regain majority government. So far in this campaign, Dutton has only visited one teal seat, Curtin in Perth, and met Goldstein candidate Tim Wilson outside his electorate.

The same party sources, unable to speak publicly about Dutton’s diary, said Dutton would aim to travel to 28 seats between Sunday and next Saturday when the election would be held.

Such a tempo would equate to about three seats a day, often in different states, continuing with his intense schedule that has outpaced Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s diary most days.

“I do believe that we can form a majority government. I’ve said that from day one,” Dutton said in Cairns on Saturday, claiming he could win in the cities, suburbs and regions.

“Something like one in three Australians who are undecided or soft voters at the moment, that is a historically high number in federal elections, and it shows that people are weighing up their options.”

The Coalition believes Curtin, Goldstein, Kooyong and Mackellar are tough but winnable seats, in that order.

A top Coalition source claimed national polling, which showed Labor would win in either minority or majority, was unreliable because many voters were switching to parties such as One Nation and their preferences would flow more strongly to Dutton than they did to Scott Morrison.

“It is going to be 150 byelections,” the source said. “It’s close, the outer metro seats are swinging and in large part it’s going to come down to the local campaigns.”

The last-minute blitz comes as 2.1 million people have already voted or almost 12 per cent of the electoral roll. More than one in 10 voters in the target teal seats of Goldstein, Kooyong and Mackellar have already made their choices.

Labor is preparing to ramp up its scare campaigns against Dutton during the final week and is also preparing to start spending on ads in Liberal-held seats such as Deakin and Menzies, reflecting its view that it can actually grow its seat tally and gain a commanding majority.

Labor officials and ministers privately believe Dutton is maintaining an offensive strategy to fend off suggestions his own Coalition-held seats were at risk.

This masthead reported on Saturday the Coalition’s research showed it was neck-and-neck in Labor seats previously thought unwinnable such as Whitlam and Gorton, held by 10 per cent margins but with retiring members.

The difference in opinion on the state of the race, as reported on Friday, can be partly explained by the more optimistic polling coming from Dutton’s pollster, Mike Turner of Freshwater Research, which contrasts with the data from Labor pollster Campbell White who also runs Newspoll.

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