Peter Dutton has blamed poor polling during the election campaign on Labor attack ads rather than his own performance including two self-confessed mistakes and ditching a policy to force some public servants to work from their offices.
Dutton accused Anthony Albanese of not being able to “lie straight in bed” and being “loose with the truth” on several occasions during the third leaders’ debate, hosted by Nine, prompting the prime minister to accuse him of desperate personal attacks.
There were no admissions of error or significant misteps at the third debate of the campaign, with both leaders relying on familiar talking points and existing themes of the campaign so far.
Albanese accused Dutton of “damaging” Australia’s relationship with Indonesia last week, when he wrongly claimed that president Prabowo Subianto had announced a Russian proposal for military planes to be based in the east of the country. During last week’s leaders debate, hosted by the ABC, Dutton admitted this was a mistake.
“A really important relationship that we have that was damaged by the comments that Mr Dutton made last week,” Albanese said.
Albanese also dismissed Dutton’s insistence his government would have been the only nation in the world to have secured an exemption from tariff exports introduced by Donald Trump earlier this month.
“Peter [Dutton] puts forward this complete nonsense that the whole of the world, including every US ally, has not been able to get an exemption,” Albanese said. “But he’s going to be able to achieve it.
“[He] said that we should put the defence relationship on the table for negotiation, now, that’s not something that I will do.”
In response, Dutton accused Albanese of “being loose with the truth – if I’m being polite”.
“Our argument is that we want to make sure that the American side of the equation in this discussion around tariffs is aware of what more we could put into the defence relationship. It’s not about taking away.”
When asked why the Coalition was going backwards in the polls with less than two weeks remaining until the election, Dutton said “the Labor party spent $20m throwing mud and negative ads and that has an impact”.
Multiple polls have shown the Coalition’s now abandoned plan to force Canberra based public servants back to the office has proved unpopular with voters. When the policy was dumped earlier this month, Dutton conceded it was a mistake.
Dutton said he believed polls would improve closer to 3 May, when more undecided voters start paying attention to the campaign.
“For a lot of Australian families, over the course of the next few days, they’re going to have to make a decision about what’s in their best interest and what’s in our country’s best interests,” Dutton said.
Dutton also suggested polls showing a slip in popularity could be wrong, citing former prime minister Scott Morrison’s against-the-odds election victory in 2019.
“There was a very different outcome on election day compared to what the polling indicated,” Dutton said.
“I believe that we’ve got a very strong chance at the election. A first term government has not lost since 1931, but there has not been a worse government in Australia’s history since 1931 than this one.”
When asked to identify some of the biggest lies told about their campaigns, Dutton accused Albanese of mounting a scare campaign over Medicare funding. During an exchange over the 2014 budget, Dutton accused Albanese of misleading the public by claiming the Coalition ripped $80bn health and education.
“Prime minister, you couldn’t lie straight in bed,” Dutton said. “Honestly, this is unbelievable.
“When we were in government and I was the health minister, hospital funding went up by 16% and the prime minister stands here with a straight face and says what he knows not to be true.”
In response, Albanese said Dutton had resorted to personal abuse and claimed it was a “sign of desperation”.
“Go to the 2014 budget papers,” Albanese said. “People can do that online. It’s all available for all to see.”
