Droppie [infosec] 🐨:archlinux: :kde: :firefox_nightly: :thunderbird: :vegan:<p><a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/04/07/peter-dutton-policy-backflip-2025-federal-election-liberals-coalition-party/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">crikey.com.au/2025/04/07/peter</span><span class="invisible">-dutton-policy-backflip-2025-federal-election-liberals-coalition-party/</span></a></p><p><strong>QUOTE BEGINS</strong></p><p>The opposition leader has begun his election campaign in shambolic fashion. He urgently needs to fix it — otherwise, we might be doomed to a Labor majority. </p><p>It started with the Roy Morgan weekly federal poll in February. After the Coalition had held a narrow lead over Labor on a two-party-preferred basis at the end of last year, the government suddenly regained a small lead.</p><p>It looked counterintuitive: Peter Dutton had all the momentum, Anthony Albanese looked powerless to respond, and the return of Donald Trump seemed to suggest the wind at the backs of right-wing strongman-style leaders — exactly Dutton’s image.</p><p>A week later, Morgan flipped back to a narrow Coalition lead, 50.5-49.5, and it seemed the boost for Labor might have just been a one-off because of the Reserve Bank’s rate cut.</p><p>But then Labor regained its lead. And in mid-March, Morgan produced a shocker: 54.5-45.5 with Labor leading. A rogue poll, surely? But the result was 53-47 a week after that, a result that held through to the end of March. We’ll know shortly what last week’s poll was, but meanwhile, every other poll has flipped in Labor’s favour as well.</p><p>Dutton’s repeated blunders reinforced the mood that Labor was making a comeback. In particular, his early enthusiasm for Trump’s return and his efforts to ape The Mad King became politically toxic as it became clear what a disaster the US president was for the American economy and what a threat he was to Australia. Then came the campaign proper: Albanese was fast out of the blocks, whereas Dutton looked like he was surprised to find himself in a political shooting war.</p><p>The transformation of Dutton’s political prospects has been one of the fastest ever. From looking like the next prime minister in January, he’s now fighting to prop up a collapsing campaign. The prospect of an outright victory for the Coalition now looks remote, and a Labor majority is back on the cards — only the appalling Victorian government is a major impediment to victory. Already there’s talk of Andrew Hastie replacing Dutton post-election.</p><p>John Hewson underwent a larger but longer decline before the 1993 election. At one stage, Hewson’s opposition held a double-digit lead over the Keating government. By the election campaign, the lead had narrowed, and then Keating got to work dismantling Hewson. But we still went into election night expecting a Coalition victory.</p><p>Victorian Liberal luminary Michael Kroger made an acute observation about Labor’s campaign in the wash-up from “the sweetest victory of all”: Labor had started poorly, but then it “hit the panic button — and it was the right button”.</p><p>Dutton is currently hitting the panic button — time will tell if it’s the right one. The increasingly malodorous policy to force public servants to stop working from home has been abandoned, with apologies from Dutton. The commitment to sack tens of thousands of public servants has been walked back to a hiring freeze and natural attrition, which is what some of us predicted would always be the outcome. That wrecks Dutton’s planned savings. When Tony Abbott imposed a hiring freeze on the APS, it only yielded a net fall of 15,000 over two years — and a long-term rise in reliance on more expensive consultants.</p><p>The dearth of proper costings and detail around that plan, or the gas reservation policy, or even the Policy That Dare Not Speak Its Name, nuclear power, is a characteristic of this opposition — as is a lack of any policies at all. “You haven’t seen anything yet,” Dutton said last week by way of apology to his colleagues, inadvertently putting his finger on a key problem. The opposition leader’s advice to colleagues to wait until they get into the campaign is problematic given Easter, Anzac Day and school holidays are looming. And pre-poll voting — despite the efforts of the political parties to curtail it — starts in a fortnight.</p><p>What’s gone wrong for Dutton? First, Trump has gone from talisman to toxic in a matter of weeks, and all the more so after last week’s declaration of war on the global economy — and, indirectly, on every Australian’s superannuation account given the colossal damage to stock markets.</p><p>Second, under Dutton, the Coalition has been lazy on policy. The leader’s office can’t do all the work, but the opposition leader has failed to make sure shadow ministers have consulted on, developed and properly costed detailed policies. It reflects that this is the weakest frontbench the Coalition has taken to an election since 1990, when Peter Shack admitted at the election he didn’t have a health policy. (No wonder Hastie is being mentioned in dispatches, given the NSW and Victorian Liberals have failed to produce any talented frontbenchers.) This is the least prepared opposition we’ve seen for some time.</p><p>The final reason is the persistent structural tension that has existed right through Dutton’s time as leader: the dissonance between his preferred policies and Liberal Party traditions. We’ve never seen the Liberals take a big-budget expansion in the role of government to an election, or oppose tax cuts, or publicly feud over whether to break up major Australian companies. The business press hates Dutton’s unwillingness to reform tax. Their business supporters are ropeable that he refuses to commit to reverse Labor’s industrial relations changes; the gas lobby thinks the gas reservation policy and commitment to make gas a “critical mineral” (sic) stink. Even Gina Rinehart, who had Dutton at her beck and call for most of the past three years, is stroppy.</p><p>In contrast, Labor is doing what Labor does — promise lots of spending on health and pumping money into the economy. So far, it’s working. If Dutton doesn’t push the right panic button, the result might be another Labor majority — an outcome that would be disastrous for Australia, given the urgent need for the major parties to be confined to minority status to force them to embrace better policies.</p><ul><li>Bernard Keane is Crikey’s politics editor. Before that he was Crikey’s Canberra press gallery correspondent, covering politics, national security and economics.</li></ul><p><strong>QUOTE ENDS</strong></p><p><a href="https://infosec.space/tags/AusPol" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>AusPol</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/ClimateCrisis" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ClimateCrisis</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/WomensRights" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>WomensRights</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/ShitParty1" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ShitParty1</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/ShitParty2" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ShitParty2</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/FsckOffDutton" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>FsckOffDutton</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/WhyIsLabor" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>WhyIsLabor</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/NoNukes" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>NoNukes</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/VoteGreens" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>VoteGreens</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/ProgIndies" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ProgIndies</span></a> <a href="https://infosec.space/tags/OzElection2025" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>OzElection2025</span></a></p>