At this stage of the campaign policy questions are asked repeatedly. Voters deserve answersGina: the billionaire who wants to make Australia greatSee all our Australian election 2025 coverageGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThey say a week is a long time in politics. On Tuesday we had confirmation of how long “some time” is in Australian politics: 17 months.That’s how long it was between Peter Dutton saying Australians were “over” having referendums and him sort-of-but-not-quite proposing one of his own. Continue reading…At this stage of the campaign policy questions are asked repeatedly. Voters deserve answersGina: the billionaire who wants to make Australia greatSee all our Australian election 2025 coverageGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastThey say a week is a long time in politics. On Tuesday we had confirmation of how long “some time” is in Australian politics: 17 months.That’s how long it was between Peter Dutton saying Australians were “over” having referendums and him sort-of-but-not-quite proposing one of his own. Continue reading…
They say a week is a long time in politics. On Tuesday we had confirmation of how long “some time” is in Australian politics: 17 months.
That’s how long it was between Peter Dutton saying Australians were “over” having referendums and him sort-of-but-not-quite proposing one of his own.
Apparently the multimillion-dollar cost of a constitutional vote such as the $450m Indigenous voice referendum, which Dutton has criticised innumerable times, is not quite the factor he once thought it was; nor is his concern about governments being distracted from the cost-of-living crisis.
“I think it’s clear that the Australian public is probably over the referendum process for some time,” Dutton said in October 2023, soon after helping to defeat the voice.
This week the opposition leader apparently thought Australians had decided they were champing at the bit for constitutional change, telling Channel Seven he wanted “a discussion about whether we’ve got adequate laws, whether the constitution is restrictive”.
Seeking to give ministers the explicit constitutional power to remove the Australian citizenship of dual nationals would be a confronting enough proposition in itself (certainly some Coalition MPs, plus the former Liberal attorney general George Brandis, were alarmed). But the fact Dutton himself was the main champion of the idea, as colleagues distanced themselves from it and Liberal talking points told MPs to hose down the concept, made it all the more surprising.
Dutton’s momentum as opposition leader – in which he brute-forced his way into becoming the central character of federal politics, the most effective opposition leader since Tony Abbott – began rolling due to his stance on the voice referendum. Each day he pummelled Labor over its lack of detail, the failure to simply explain the constitutional change, overlooking the cost of the poll, not being focused on immediate challenges like cost of living, and being distracted by an issue most Australians were barely aware of.
But now here was Dutton providing little detail of the change he wanted, not trying to explain the constitutional change it would require, waving off questions of cost, and dismissively answering “you can walk and chew gum” when asked whether the cost of living wasn’t a greater priority.
It continued a trend: the Coalition seems weirdly unsettled at the moment.
Dutton especially, but also his wider team, seem off-balance and searching for a handrail. There have been weeks of headlines about unrest in the ranks over a lack of policy, and disunity and confusion about basic policy questions (such as whether their divestiture push will apply to insurance or not). There have been multiple instances of internal talking points being leaked, which is a big red hooting siren signalling grumpiness in the caucus.
Dutton made a massive deal (as did his cheerleaders in the press) of how holding his team together in a disciplined, united way was a major accomplishment of his leadership. But that discipline has crumbled – and it’s no coincidence that it is happening when the Coalition has for the first time come under sustained pressure for its policy offering (or lack thereof, so far).
Really, Dutton has not recovered since the twin revelations about his share portfolio and his property investments hit the papers during the last parliamentary sitting week.
The Coalition hasn’t had many good days since then, fumbling policy announcements (such as its work from home head-scratcher), while Labor has had a few better ones in announcing major policies on its preferred battlegrounds of health and manufacturing.
The Coalition took great pleasure in criticising Anthony Albanese for a lack of effort in trying to avoid Donald Trump’s global tariffs on steel and aluminium but the situation allowed Labor and the prime minister to push back strongly against Trump. Standing up to the bully garners sympathy and Albanese this week scored his best approval ratings for 18 months in the Guardian Essential poll, a nine-point turnaround from the previous survey.
Dutton suffered his highest disapproval rating since Essential began tracking his rating in April 2023.
The same poll found that more than 60% of Australians thought Trump’s presidency would be negative for the global economy and for Australia’s economy. That’s probably not great news for Dutton, who has been drawing inspiration from parts of Trump’s playbook – crusading on government efficiency, cutting the public service and diversity roles, and now seeking to deport criminal dual nationals.
It’s no surprise we’ve suddenly heard Albanese, in scripted remarks, saying, “We don’t need an Americanisation of the health system.” The implication is clear, in linking Dutton to Trump, and the threat of more tariffs on medicines won’t reverse that trend.
Labor MPs doorknocking in marginal seats say they are picking up concern from voters about “Americanisation”. No doubt it’s coming up in focus groups. Labor polling of 2,000 respondents, which found its way to this column, found that 54% preferred Albanese because he would provide stability while 46% preferred Dutton because he’s more aligned with Trump.
We’ll take all polling at this stage with a big grain of salt but chew on that for a moment.
The same strategy that made Dutton competitive and ascendant for the past two years may now be bringing him unstuck. Not having finalised policies, announcing little beyond the nuclear plan, meant it was hard for journalists or political opponents to scrutinise how the Coalition would act in government – it’s hard to unpick something that doesn’t exist. Dutton and his team have encountered little interrogation since 2022.
But at this stage of the campaign questions will be asked repeatedly. Detail will be pored over and ruthlessly questioned. At minutes to midnight, we still know little about what a Dutton government would do. Protestations such as Angus Taylor’s this week that the referendum idea “is not our policy at this point in time” will cut the mustard less and less.
It’s not a witch-hunt. It’s not unfair questioning. They are simple questions that a prospective government should be able to answer.
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