Josh Butler
Peter Dutton and his team keep contradicting themselves, ‘misspeaking’ and backtracking. In a few weeks, they could be the government
You have to wonder what’s going on inside the room when the Coalition brains trust assembles to discuss policy ideas. With just weeks until election day, it seems many on the opposition frontbench either misunderstand their own ideas or make up responses on the run when asked for basic details about the few proposals they have announced.
This week we saw Peter Dutton and his shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, at complete odds over whether the Coalition’s proposed divestiture powers would extend to the insurance industry. Three weeks ago, Dutton said they would; this week Taylor claimed “we’ve been clear” that they would not.
There aren’t many possible explanations for such a clanger. Either Dutton wasn’t across a key detail of his own policy three weeks ago, or Taylor wasn’t across it on Wednesday, or there was a major backtrack inside a month. John Kehoe in the Australian Financial Review suggested it was the first one, that Dutton had “appeared to make up on the fly” the application of the divestment policy to the insurance industry, and his pronouncement surprised his own team “because it was not Coalition policy”.
We’re on the cusp of an election, where leaders come under intense scrutiny across multiple media appearances or speeches each week, so there can be some sympathy for a leader who might get their facts muddled up, or suffer a brain fade. As Anthony Albanese considers when and how he will call the election, it’s hard to forget his first day on the 2022 campaign trail, as he literally stuck his tongue out in exasperation when he couldn’t immediately name the cash rate or unemployment figure.
But the divestment ding-dong is hardly the first time Dutton and his team have either got their wires crossed on a major policy or had to publicly backtrack. Indeed, it’s becoming a pattern, more rule than exception.
Think back over the Coalition policy proposals so far.
How many public servants will they cut? Somewhere between “hardly any” and all 36,000 the Labor government has hired in the last three years, depending who you ask. How will they do it? Either sacking, focusing on “DEI” roles, or natural attrition and hiring freezes – again, depending who you ask.
There was the “meals and entertainment policy” that was quickly amended to a meals-only policy after confusion and derision over whether it would extend to tax-deductible footy tickets or golf days.
Then this week, the shadow minister for finance and the public service, Jane Hume, criticised flexible working policies in the APS, citing a paper from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research which found “productivity fell by about 20%” for those working from home – but the same paper also found examples of productivity rising, or at least not falling, in other WFH arrangements, and that flexible working arrangements could lead to happier employees.
Hume’s office later said the senator “misspoke”, after she had earlier claimed in a radio interview that “every academic study” found productivity falling among WFH employees.
Albanese in 2022 found himself painted with accusations of a “small target” policy slate. But at least Labor MPs and frontbenchers could usually publicly discuss their agenda without tying themselves in knots.
Dutton could be sitting in The Lodge in little more than a month, but we still know precious little about what the opposition would seek to do on cost-of-living relief, home ownership, renting, climate change, grocery prices or social services. Beyond the plan to build seven nuclear reactors over the next few decades, we know little about their plans on energy or power bills.
Dutton has not tried to compete with an ambitious policy agenda. And yet even the policies which have made it from the whiteboard to the public domain seem to be either contested, half-sketched or not settled.
For someone professing to be a tough leader, he is sensitive to criticism, as last week’s complaints about Labor’s “dirt unit” exposed: a hard man with a glass jaw.
The polls say there is somewhere in the realm of a 50-50 chance the Liberal leader will be sitting in C1 in April or May.
As the Canberra press gallery pulls out the crystal balls and tea leaves once more to forecast how and when the prime minister could call the election, the cyclone that was meant to bear the name Anthony is throwing Albanese’s best-laid plans into disarray.
Widely held wisdom in Parliament House was that he would drive to Government House this Sunday or Monday, to call an election for 12 April. But with Brisbane and surrounds potentially underwater by then, or at least needing mopping up, think of the TV shots contrasting Albanese having tea and scones with the governor general while Dutton in gumboots shovels mud to help clean up Dickson, his electorate. It might be too much to bear, even if it necessitated changing intricate plans around policy rollouts, advertising buys and other launches.
Even if 12 April is off the cards, the PM still has a way of avoiding handing down a budget before the election. Calling a six-week campaign, slightly longer than usual, around 22 March for a 3 May polling date would push him past the immediate cyclone aftermath but let him escape a budget.
It’s far from the most important thing at the moment, when those in Queensland and northern NSW are bracing for a natural disaster. This whole charade could be ended with legislating fixed three-year terms, or the PM just naming a date well in advance.
Albanese has bristled in recent weeks whenever he’s asked the date, or made jokes to journalists about how they should keep an eye on his car instead. He’s the only one who knows when he wants to hold it; one way of nipping those questions in the bud would be to just answer it.