Opinion
When entrail-reading media sages (like me) pontificate over polling, it’s easy to get misled by “personal approval” polling for leaders. But is “popularity” everything? Kevin Rudd was immensely “popular”, even more than Jacinda Ardern — and both are now despised. Tony Abbott was never popular — and came within a hair’s breadth of regaining government in just one term and achieving a landslide win in the next.
Peter Dutton isn’t exactly Mr. Popularity, either. But he doesn’t need to be. All he needs to do is give Anthony Albanese enough rope to hang himself while providing a credible alternative and appealing to the Coalition’s hitherto estranged base.
At both of which, he’s doing a remarkably good job.
On the first, Albanese’s too-clever-by-half attempt to wedge the opposition on tax cuts has floundered, because Dutton managed to keep his backbench from taking the bait.
Dutton had little choice but to back in the bigger tax cuts for low-and-middle-income earners. And he managed to avoid a damaging internal row over the capitulation. His colleagues largely agreed this was the least bad option.
A handful of Liberals would have preferred to “stand and have a fight” rather than “roll over and get smashed in Question Time”, as one disappointed MP privately put it, but this would have given the government exactly what it wanted: a drawn-out fight in which the Coalition would be belted for standing in the way of cost-of-living support.
To keep faith with those disappointed at the Coalition running up the white flag, Dutton insisted he’s still committed to the “principles” of the original Stage 3 plan.
Coalition spokespeople also cleverly reminded the backbench — and voters — that they are always the party of lower taxation. Which makes it appear less of a backdown while returning serve to Albanese as a promise-breaker. The “man of my word” who isn’t.
Dutton’s also promising more tax changes, without elaborating too much.
The Opposition Leader has already pledged to reverse Labor’s tax hike for big superannuation accounts. From mid-next year, earnings on super balances of more than $3 million will be taxed at 30 per cent rather than 15 per cent. Reinstating the more generous tax rate will cost the Coalition around $2 billion a year.
The only other policy detail he’s giving out so far is one that will wedge Labor and the Greens.
Then there’s nuclear power, something no Liberal leader has ever dared to take to an election. On this, Peter Dutton is certainly proving more courageous than his predecessors.
He made nuclear energy a focus of his budget reply speech last year, arguing small modular reactors are “safe and reliable”.
“The new nuclear train is pulling out of the station,” he says. “It’s a train Australia needs to jump aboard.”
Given that the COP28 climate conference firmly endorsed nuclear as a means of slashing carbon dioxide emissions while still maintaining a reliable energy supply, the green left are looking increasingly out of touch on this one. Anti-nuclear is particularly the founding conceit of the Greens. There’s simply no way they’ll ever back it.
Now it’s they who’ll be the Luddites.
Whether all this talk results in genuine campaign bravery from Peter Dutton is yet to be seen. We may end up with modest proposals, a small target strategy, and an effort to keep the focus on Anthony Albanese’s “lies”.
But if the Opposition leader does go the election promising significant tax cuts for the top, sweeping spending cuts, subsidised nuclear power, and an industrial relations roll back, we could be in for quite a policy contest.
ABC Australia
There is indeed the risk of giving the government too much ammunition. Just ask John Hewson and Bill Shorten. On the other hand, Anthony Albanese is no Paul Keating, either.
So it’s a matter of just enough policy detail to seem credible — and a whole lot of belting the government, day in, day out.