Peter Dutton is a blunt instrument and sometimes blunt has its benefits. On Monday, reporters didn’t have to parse any weasel words. The new Liberal leader made his thoughts about the next three years very clear.
Dutton thinks Anthony Albanese is going to blow the coming term in government by becoming caught in the crosshairs of the progressive parliament the Australian people voted for on 21 May.
As well as parliament dragging the new prime minister left, Dutton thinks events will work against Albanese – rising inflation, rising interest rates, high petrol prices, geopolitical instability. Up until the election, voters blamed the Coalition for these things. Now Australians will blame Labor.
Dutton thinks the pathway back to government is through the outer suburbs and regions – and he thinks his personal, tough-guy-made-good political brand will be a plus in those kinds of contests because aspirational working people will feel a cultural affinity with him.
He clearly thinks there are Labor seats ripe for flipping now the Liberal party has dumped its main barrier to entry – Scott Morrison.
The new Liberal leader, let’s call him Mr Relentless, believes he can neutralise the voter backlash about an absent federal integrity commission by supporting one in the new parliament, preferably Helen Haines’s version, just to give Labor administrative heartburn.
Mr Relentless also thinks his deputy, Liberal Sussan Ley, can first work out, and then sort out, whatever it is Australian women are cranky about now they don’t have to be triggered by looking at Morrison every day. Ley made a point in her opening statement of saying she understood some women were unable to vote for the Liberal party in 2022 and she’d be out and about listening to them.
Mr Relentless also thinks some Liberal voters who lodged a protest vote last Saturday can be wooed back if he can focus the party’s post-election policy debate on the economy, cost of living and the future prosperity of small business. The Dutton managerial formula sounds like a bit less culture war, a lot less religion, and a bit more traditional Liberal policy.
The new Liberal leader doesn’t feel the need for a grand bargain with Labor when it comes to climate action. Dutton clearly thinks the debate the Coalition has rendered toxic through the decade of lying will default to a brawl about cost of living once Labor pushes ahead with actual mechanisms and policies to reduce emissions – and that debate will benefit the Coalition.
Closer to home, he thinks the Greens territorial high water mark in Brisbane in this election will be an aberration rather than a permanent feature of the system, and while it lasts, will be more of a problem for Albanese than him.
Asked whether he intended to write off the teal belt – North Sydney, Mackellar, Wentworth, Goldstein and Kooyong – Dutton said he wasn’t in the business of writing off any seats, but he was also very clear climate change won’t be his preferred means of rapprochement with inner-city centre-right progressives either.
On this point, the Nationals did Dutton a solid by moving on from Barnaby Joyce and installing David Littleproud. Joyce and his protege Matt Canavan are associated with hardcore climate science denial in the minds of voters, which makes them a drag on Liberals and Nationals in parts of the country where climate action shifts votes, whereas Littleproud has a more nuanced position, which is broadly helpful in a marketing sense.
When I say nuanced, Littleproud is progressive by Nationals standards, and he’s a genuine supporter of the Coalition’s commitment to reach net zero emissions by 2050. But it is also unlikely the new Nationals leader will undermine Dutton if he chooses to weaponise Labor’s proposed medium-term action as a cost of living debacle over the next three years, which is clearly the new Liberal leader’s current inclination.
So it’s fair to say Dutton’s situation report post-election was comprehensive – and clear. But it doesn’t make it predictive. Albanese may not screw up. Events will certainly be difficult, but the pressures may not be insurmountable for the new government.
It’s also hard to see where this swag of Labor-held seats ripe for the taking is. Looking at the pendulum post 21 May, it is much easier to see a set of circumstances where the Liberal party could peel enough seats off Labor in 2025 to put them in minority government than it is to see a clear path back for a Dutton-led majority government.
The outgoing Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman was blunt on Monday morning. He said the Liberals needed to win back the seats Morrison lost to independents last Saturday to form a majority government in the future.
He was very clear voters in those seats cared about climate change. Zimmerman, who knows his own electoral terrain, and knows the sensibility of his constituents, suggested Dutton could make a start on the necessary courtship of the party’s progressive heartland by supporting Labor’s 2030 target. Mr Relentless made it clear on Monday that would not be happening.
So being clear about your political objectives is one thing. Being right is quite another.
