Opinion
Just when Dutton is winning, he sounds like a sore loser
David Crowe
Chief political correspondentPeter Dutton should have sounded like a winner this week when he walked into question time after the latest opinion polls confirmed his gains against Anthony Albanese. The opposition leader trails the prime minister on most key measures, but he is no longer the pitiful laggard he was a year ago. The numbers highlighted the way he has steadily climbed into contention.
Yet he sounded like a sore loser. Once in his chair, across from Albanese, he mouthed off against cabinet ministers and even started yelling at the Speaker, Milton Dick, about the prime minister’s answers. Dick took the unusual step of halting everything to pull Dutton into line. “Continually yelling at me has never happened before from the role of the leader of the opposition,” he said. “It’s got to stop.”
Illustration: Simon LetchCredit:
That was Monday. By the next day, Dutton and others were on the attack over power prices and nuclear energy, giving Albanese a chance for a rejoinder: “If the leader of the opposition wants us to go down the nuclear road, he should stop having meltdowns.”
Yes, the question time clash followed the usual formula. Dutton calls Albanese weak. Albanese calls Dutton angry. Each is trying to pin a label on the other. But the strange thing is that Dutton makes it so easy for his label to stick.
Some of his Coalition colleagues know it’s a problem. They think the leader needs an attack dog by his side to do the ugly work of tearing down an enemy. The trouble is that none of the Liberals seem to want to do the job.
And the big Labor move this week, to reveal a sudden change to migration law, only made the opposition angrier. The government told Dutton about the law on Monday night but did not reveal the bill until Tuesday morning. The Coalition immigration spokesman, Dan Tehan, mobilised quickly by calling a press conference shortly before 9am that day to denounce the surprise plan.
This meant the first news of the government proposal came from Tehan, who framed the argument around Labor chaos and breach of process. Labor won the vote in the lower house later that day, but lost the tactics from that point on. When the bill reached the Senate, the government could not get anyone to agree to its demand for swift passage.
Labor deserved to lose the Senate vote. It takes extraordinary arrogance to unite the Greens, Liberals, Nationals, One Nation, the United Australia Party and independents such as David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie against a Labor bill. No government should be rewarded for asking parliament to decide a new law within 48 hours without proof of an emergency.
The tactical loss, however, is not a lasting defeat. The migration bill goes to a committee inquiry before a final vote. Albanese will accuse Dutton of blocking a solution at the same time the government argues in the High Court for the power to deport an Iranian man, known as ASF17. If the government loses the High Court case, it will blame Dutton for not helping pass its new law.
For all the messy tactics, Albanese does not look weak. Many voters will agree with two central elements of the bill. First, that Australian authorities should be able to impose criminal penalties against people who are not refugees but refuse to co-operate in being deported. Second, that the immigration minister should be able to rule that visitors will not be accepted from a particular country.
Labor will have to endure weeks of pressure from its own left flank, and the Greens, to soften these proposals. A swift decision would have worked better for Albanese, like ripping off a Band-Aid, but this is the second time in recent weeks he has shown he does not want to play to the left.
As with the religious discrimination laws, Albanese challenges Dutton to vote for something he says is in the national interest. Then he holds the line when Dutton says no.
Some within the Coalition privately acknowledge they can support the bill in the end, but they are not inclined to make it easy for Labor. The inquiry reports on May 7, the week before the federal budget, and the government might find its economic message is caught in migration wildfire.
Labor has no reason to gloat about its political performance, given the latest Resolve Political Monitor showed its primary vote fell from 34 to 32 per cent over the past month, taking it below the 32.6 per cent at the last election. This week’s Newspoll showed a fall from 33 to 32 per cent over a roughly similar period.
Voters turned against the Coalition, as well, by cutting its primary vote from 37 to 35 per cent. Even so, Dutton is in a better position today than he was one year ago. He has a poor net performance rating, just like Albanese, but he has gained on other measures.
When the Resolve Political Monitor asked voters to name the party and leader who was the best choice for their household, 30 per cent named Dutton and the Coalition. That compared with 27 per cent who named Albanese and Labor. When voters were asked which side was best for the country, the result was tied on 28 per cent each. When the question was about which side offered strong leadership, it was a tie again: 29 per cent each.
The Resolve Political Monitor surveyed 1610 eligible voters from Thursday to Sunday, generating results with a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.
Labor has lifted itself out of the funk it fell into after the Voice referendum, thanks in part to big calls on policy. The changes to the stage 3 tax cuts have turned out to be a smart political move and popular with voters. The revised plan for vehicle emission standards is being called a workable compromise. The actual results are at odds with the confected catastrophe in the Coalition talking points.
The result is a recovery in the Labor agenda, even if it is not showing up in the polling. While it is true that the latest numbers suggest Albanese is heading towards a hung parliament at the next election, that decision point is at least a year away. That means predictions about a minority government are as sketchy as the chatter about election timing.
The idea of a race to the ballot box later this year is a theory in search of a rational case. Why? Because Labor needs a steady period of good economic news before it asks voters to decide its fate.
The path ahead for Albanese is to ask Australians for a second term when he can assure them that real wages are recovering, inflation is moderating, tax cuts are flowing, energy bill subsidies are under way and the migration surge is being brought under control. And he would be wise to wait for more than one or two interest rate cuts by the Reserve Bank.
That path is the same at the end of the week as it was at the start, regardless of the fury in parliament. The economic cycle may turn Labor’s way. Perhaps that explains why Dutton does not look happy.
David Crowe is chief political correspondent.