The opposition leader wants to avoid culture wars but is short of ideas in the big economic fights.
The opposition leader wants to avoid culture wars but is short of ideas in the big economic fights.
Opinion
February 6, 2025 — 7.02pm
Peter Dutton sent a sharp message about culture wars to his party room on Tuesday morning at a time when some of the Liberal Party’s deepest conservatives are trying to start fights over questions such as transgender rights and freedom of speech. In his opening remarks to the weekly gathering of the Liberals and Nationals, once the photographers were escorted from the room and the private talks began, the opposition leader told his colleagues that the Coalition was campaigning on the cost of living and could not be distracted by anything else.
Dutton hammered home the message in a separate meeting of the Coalition frontbench this week. He reminded all his shadow ministers to stay focused on their portfolios – not their personal agendas. Memories differ on his exact words, but he told them he would remember after the election if anyone freelanced.
This was a pointed reminder when Alex Antic, the South Australian Liberal senator, is speaking up on trans kids and terror laws. MPs say Antic told the party room he had concerns that the mandatory sentencing laws would impose a 12-month prison term on people who display the Nazi flag, arguing this could hurt free speech. In a separate meeting of senators, he said he was concerned about the federal government’s review of healthcare for trans kids and thought the Coalition should go ahead with a review of its own.
There is no mystery about what Antic wants. He put forward a private senator’s bill in 2023 to ban what is known as gender-affirming care for young people, such as puberty blockers and hormonal treatments that can help them transition to a different gender identity. The bill would have required doctors to take kids off the prescribed medicines, but it failed to make any headway in parliament.
Dutton is trying to shut down those who stir up trouble on social questions. He did the same last November when he rebuked MPs who wanted a federal debate on toughening laws against abortion. “We will not be changing our position. It cost us votes in Queensland,” he said at the time, according to MPs who spoke later to my colleague, James Massola.
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“It’s a clear message,” says one Liberal. “We need to be fighting on the cost of living, not culture wars. Dutton knows that’s a losing strategy and has no interest in it.”
This is the reality, even if many want to dismiss Dutton as a cheap copy of United States President Donald Trump. The new catchphrase, spreading fast online, is that Dutton is a “Temu Trump” because he is a bargain alternative (as with the online retailer Temu) to the more expensive original.
Labor would love to see Dutton turn into a Temu Trump – copying the president by deriding trans people, blaming diversity for airline disasters, pulling the country out of the World Health Organisation and stopping access to abortion. This would make Dutton easy to defeat in an electorate with compulsory voting, the counting of preferences on ballot papers and a tendency to support the middle ground rather than the extreme.
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But the truth is more complex. Dutton only copies Trump when it suits him. And he takes a different line to Trump when he needs. This is why he is not easy for Labor to defeat. The Liberals did not pull ahead in the opinion polls by accident – even if they are yet to level with voters about their agenda for government.
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Yes, Dutton has swiped a few Trump policies. As Sean Kelly wrote in these pages on Monday, the Coalition’s new tax break for business lunches echoes an idea Trump liked back in 2020. Dutton complains about diversity and inclusion, echoing Trump. Dutton derides the “woke” agenda and goes hard on patriotism and security. There are good reasons for Niki Savva to observe, as she did here on Thursday, that Dutton is following Trump’s lead.
No, Dutton is not a carbon copy. Not on abortion, trans rights, tariffs or Gaza. He hedges by calling Trump a “big thinker” on removing Palestinians from Gaza, but says the Coalition supports a two-state solution. He borrows the Trumpian language about slashing the bureaucracy, but sends a confused message about “no cuts” and more frontline staff.
This nuance matters because there is another difference. Trump wants to upend America – and citizens voted to send the bull into the China shop. Dutton has no such ambition. His election agenda is modest – so modest, in fact, that many Australians would struggle to name any big Dutton ideas other than nuclear power stations.
Liberals know this is a problem. They know Dutton and his team have failed to set out an economic agenda of any great consequence when Australia is so close to election day. The big argument in parliament this week, over the tax deductions for business lunches, threw the spotlight on this economic vacuum. Liberals know the “long lunch” idea is lazy and lightweight.
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The mantra from shadow treasurer Angus Taylor is that the Coalition will deliver “back to basics” economic management – a meaningless slogan that is easy to lampoon. Does it mean basic hospitals and basic schools? Basic wages? The empty economic agenda has made Dutton and Taylor look complacent for months. Now it makes them look negligent.
John Howard knew this problem. “You can’t fatten the pig on market day,” he often said. No political leader should leave it to the last minute to tell voters what he or she will do on the most important election issue – the economy. Dutton admires Howard, and no doubt speaks to him often, but it is intriguing to see him disregard one of the former prime minister’s most famous sayings.
David Crowe is chief political correspondent.
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David Crowe is chief political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via Twitter or email.
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