Inside Politics: Is the campaign getting away from Peter Dutton?

This week on the campaign saw the release of competing housing policies, and the appearance of Peter Dutton’s son Harry.

But in many ways the campaign continued to be overshadowed by Donald Trump. Labor is making increasingly explicit attacks trying to link Dutton to the US president. And Dutton’s cause wasn’t helped with one of his key frontbenchers aped a Trump slogan. Does this mean the wheels have fallen off the Coalition campaign?

Chief Political Correspondent David Crowe and National Affairs Editor James Massola join Jacqueline Maley to discuss. 

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley, it's Friday, April 18th.
This week on the campaign saw the release of competing
housing policies and the appearance of Peter Dutton's son Harry.
But in many ways the campaign continued to be overshadowed
by Donald Trump. Labor is making increasingly explicit attacks. Trying

(00:24):
to link Dutton to the US president, and Dutton's cause
was not helped when one of his key frontbenchers aped
a Trump slogan. Does this mean that the wheels have
fallen off the coalition campaign? Joining me today to discuss
all this juicy stuff, we have chief political correspondent David Crowe,
as usual, and national affairs editor James Massola. Welcome, gentlemen.

S2 (00:45):
Thanks, jacki. G'day, jacki. Hi, James.

S1 (00:47):
Now, we did have the debate, the second sort of
leaders debate on Wednesday night on the ABC, which we
all stayed up really late to watch. I mean, it
was only like 9 p.m., but still. And all of us,
I think, actually gave that debate to Anthony Albanese. But
we want to move on to other matters and in particular,
the sort of shadow of Trump that has been casting

(01:09):
itself across the campaign. David. On Monday, you wrote up
resolve polling that gave us actual data about the impact
of Donald Trump on this political election campaign, as opposed
to our vibes and feelings on that subject. What did
the polling show?

S2 (01:23):
Well, one of the big findings was that 68% of
voters say Donald Trump is bad for Australia. That's up
from 40% last November. So we know that there is
this strong feeling in the Australian electorate about the problem
presented by Donald Trump. Now, there's been a lot of
supposition about how that plays out domestically, because there's this

(01:45):
perception that Peter Dutton would be more aligned with Donald
Trump on some policies. So we asked directly, does your
view of Donald Trump make you less likely to vote
for Peter Dutton, or more likely or less likely to
vote for Anthony Albanese, or more likely, two separate questions
worded exactly the same way. And they show a greater

(02:06):
tendency of voters to mark down Peter Dutton on this point.
And so there's a key problem here for Peter Dutton
to overcome this perception among voters that he's not the
right person for this era with Donald Trump in office.

S1 (02:20):
Yeah. Labor, of course, is very explicitly linked in its
agenda to Trump's, particularly in the case of Dutton talking
about anti-woke measures and his desire to cut the public service.
And he's also made some remarks praising Trump. You know,
a while ago now, he said, Trump was a big
thinker and very shrewd. And this perception was made much,
much worse on Saturday, wasn't it, James? When Jacinta Nampijinpa

(02:42):
price stood next to Peter Dutton at a press conference
in Paris, had a Trump slogan, yeah.

S3 (02:49):
Make Australia great again. Jackie, I think it was the
exact phrase.

S4 (02:53):
I'm so proud to be able to stand beside and
to ensure that we can make Australia great again, that
we can bring Australia.

S3 (03:01):
She then didn't recall, you know, 20 minutes later or
whatever it was at a press conference.

S4 (03:06):
No. If I said that, I didn't even realize I
said that, but no. Um, let's be very, very clear.
The media, you're all obsessed with Donald Trump. We're not.
We're not obsessed with Donald Trump.

S3 (03:17):
You know, I mean, I guess sometimes the moment can
take us and we can kind of take off and
get into a rhetorical full flight and not quite, perhaps,
remember what we're saying. But I mean, what happened with
Jacinta Price, I think is emblematic of what's been going
on with the coalition through the course of this campaign
is that there is a cohort of coalition voters and

(03:39):
politicians who can't quite resist the lure of the of,
you know, the Trump brand and stance on certain issues,
you know, like woke education and these sorts of things.
And I think for Peter Dutton, it's been particularly damaging,
as you know, as the poll sort of proved, he
can't quite opposition leader. Resist the temptation to at least

(04:03):
ape some of the policies. And then he kind of
walks it back, and then he dips his toe in
the water again. And it's it's been really messy. And
I think it's a massive I mean, the numbers bear
it out. It's a massive turn off for Australians.

S1 (04:16):
You could just about hear all the Liberal campaign strategists
just absolutely slapping their heads in frustration when Jacinta Price
said that, um, how did Peter Dutton react afterwards? And
did he try to sort of laugh it off or
gloss over it? What did he do?

S2 (04:31):
He certainly didn't try to stop her from speaking. In fact,
he he let the press conference run and encouraged journalists
to ask Senator Nampijinpa Price more questions so he couldn't
be seen to sort of try and step in and
and silence her. So he was really caught in a
difficult situation.

S1 (04:50):
Um, it does seem a little bit like the campaign
is sort of getting away from Peter Dutton. I wonder
what you guys think about that. I'm thinking of the
ways in which he's had to apologize. He's obviously backed
down from a major policy completely. In the debate on
Wednesday night, we saw him having to apologise for a
remark he made about the Indonesian president basically misrepresenting him.

(05:12):
I mean, what's your take on that, David?

S2 (05:14):
I think it's getting to a very challenging time for
the coalition. On the Trump issue. I think that they
are you can almost hear the crunching of the gears
as they try to, you know, shift course on Trump.
It was earlier in the year, I think they thought
that aligning themselves on some of those issues was going
to be good for them. They set up a government

(05:37):
efficiency taskforce with Senator Nampijinpa price leading that. Peter Dutton
called Donald Trump a big thinker on Gaza because he
didn't want to look like he was at odds with
with Donald Trump. Then, as it became clear that that
was a net negative, they've got to change. However, that
wasn't nailed down clearly as a sort of a strategic

(05:58):
position at the beginning of the campaign. Otherwise, surely the
message to Senator Nampijinpa price would have been, whatever you do,
don't be pro-Trump with your rhetoric. And so they they
are adapting too late and maybe too late to right
the campaign in that sense. On one of the big
issues we've always found that Donald Trump is is one

(06:21):
of the political figures who is absolutely known by almost
every voter, much more so than some frontbenchers on both sides.
And so getting that language right is really fundamental. But
then you get these other mistakes as well. The mistake
about working from home, where Peter Dutton had to adjust
his language last week, and then the mistake this week

(06:41):
on the Russian talks with Indonesia or whatever status they had.
Then Peter Dutton saying the Indonesian president had said something
when in fact he had not.

S5 (06:53):
To a report suggesting Moscow wants to base military planes
in Indonesia. Jakarta has ruled out allowing such a provocative move.
But Peter Dutton maintains the government has key questions to
answer about whether it's been blindsided.

S2 (07:07):
That was loose talk, but also a big problem because
it was about national security, which is meant to be
Peter Dutton's strong suit.

S1 (07:14):
Yeah. And James, we also saw Bridget McKenzie come out
and say something about China and Russia, didn't she? Can
you tell us what went down there?

S3 (07:21):
Yeah. Bridget McKenzie's intervention there was slightly odd, jacki. I
believe she said she was. There were like the Russian
government was cheering for an Albanese victory.

S1 (07:33):
She said, I think that Russia and China wanted Labour
to win and that they were on record. The Russian
foreign minister and the Chinese president were on record as
having supported Albo, basically.

S3 (07:47):
Yeah, exactly. It just was a bizarre intervention and one
that you can't really give any credence to at all. Look,
to come back to your starting point question, Jackie. This
has been one of, if not the most untidy, messy,
you know, small problem plagued campaigns I've ever seen. You know,

(08:09):
the 2013 Labour campaign to try and, you know, get
Kevin Rudd to, you know, to keep him, keep him
in office, get him re-elected. That was probably worse. But
that was because Labour by that point was in such
bad odour with the electorate, there was really nothing the
ALP could do. This just feels like a not even

(08:29):
weekly but daily kind of cavalcade of small mistakes begetting
bigger mistakes or missteps or tactical errors or look, it's
sort of all of the above. Do you know what
I mean? Um, and what it has meant is that
we are now at a point where, you know, three

(08:49):
months ago the coalition was talking about majority government. We're
now at a point where minority, even the prospect of minority,
seems to be slipping away from them.

S1 (08:58):
Yeah. And David, on that point, there's also a sort
of affirming prospect that labor might be able to win
government in its own right.

S2 (09:05):
I think so, because that's what the polling indicates. An
improved chance of labor winning enough on preferences to have
a strong enough two party vote to hold seats and
maybe even gain a few. But look at this point.
There's a margin of error in all polling, and it's
still very early. So I think, you know, we should
really treat and I try to write about the campaign

(09:27):
as if every scenario is still on the table. You know,
the coalition could could get its act together and have
a much more convincing message in the final two weeks.
And early voting doesn't start until Tuesday. However, I think
it's important to also note we shouldn't ignore the fact
that there are still some challenges for Anthony Albanese. On
the labor side, their majority is slim, their margins are

(09:47):
pretty narrow in some of those seats. And in the debate,
Anthony Albanese did not have a convincing answer on whether
energy prices would come down. He was evasive, and I
think any ordinary viewer watching that debate would have assumed, okay,
my energy bill is going to go up.

S6 (10:02):
Mhm. Is cheaper than 30. When do we when do
we see the bills come down. Well what we need
to do is to roll out renewables, make sure there's
energy security, make sure it's backed up by batteries, by
hydro and by gas.

S2 (10:15):
He was asked about whether he'd had negative gearing modelling done.
And James and I reported this story last year in Treasury,
not in Anthony Albanese's department. There was modelling done on
negative gearing. Now, again, it's kind of a tricky issue.
I'm not saying that they're going to have a secret
plan to tax changes to negative gearing, but there are

(10:36):
some issues for Anthony Albanese to navigate in this campaign,
and there's still two weeks to go.

S1 (10:40):
It was a very good question. I thought that, you know,
we're repeatedly told by Chris Bowen, the energy minister, and
by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that renewables are the cheapest
form of energy. So why isn't that translating to our
bills yet and when will it? And it was a
very simple question that the Prime Minister did not have
an answer for, and I think that spoke volumes. We
did see Dutton sort of focus a little bit more

(11:02):
this week on, you know, the sort of classic liberal
territory of home ownership and how important that is for
family formation. He keeps sort of saying that there are
people who are putting off having children, or that there
are grandparents or would be grandparents putting off retirement so
that they can help out, you know, the next generation.
Then we saw the intervention of Harry Dutton. Peter Dutton's son,

(11:24):
sort of representing this young legion of voters who are
struggling to get into the property market. Tell us about that, James,
because you wrote about it.

S3 (11:34):
Yeah. Look, this was a bit bizarre. It has to be, said, jacki,
the appearance of Harry Dutton on the campaign trail.

S7 (11:40):
I mean, we're saving like mad, but it doesn't look
like we'll get there the in the near future. Um,
but we'd love that to change.

S8 (11:47):
We've just.

S3 (11:48):
We know and we see, you know, politicians, partners, their kids,
sometimes their parents. We see them all the time, but
they're kind of seen and not heard on the campaign trail.
Peter Dutton is a very, very private individual. So, you know, where,
you know, at this point in the cycle when Kevin
Rudd was opposition leader or John Howard or Tony Abbott,

(12:08):
you know, we'd met Therese Rein or we'd met Margie
Abbott or whoever it might be. We'd met the kids,
we might have met at least a couple of the
brothers or sisters or cousins or whatever. We haven't seen
any of that with Peter Dutton. We don't even know
the names of his brothers and sisters. He's got five.
But then up pops Harry Dutton, and he's not just

(12:28):
at the press conference supporting his dad. He's answering questions
about how tough it is to get into the market.
And that's great. You know, the kid's 20. He's doing it,
but he traineeship as a builder. Good luck to him.
Most people probably aren't thinking about buying a house at 20,
but he is, you know, I take my hat off
to him. But the really like, the thing that stuck out, Jackie,

(12:49):
is that they didn't have an answer ready when they
were asked, would Peter Dutton help Harry Dutton get into
the property market?

S8 (12:56):
You're doing pretty well yourself. Why won't you support him
a bit and give him a bit of help with
getting his house? I haven't finished the excellent points. I
was making the next point as to why people should
vote liberal is that we can manage the economy well.

S3 (13:09):
Now Peter Dutton, as we know, has turned over something
like $30 million in property over the last 25, 30 years.
He's bought 26 houses. You know, surely he's turned his
mind to this at some point, but apparently he hadn't.
And it took him a day and a half, and
it was just odd.

S8 (13:27):
And the Prime Minister and I might be able to
help our kids. But it's not about us. It's about
how we can help millions of Australians across generations realise
the dream of home ownership.

S3 (13:36):
And sort of more, um, broadly. Jackie, the thing that
was kind of curious about this is, you know, politicians
use families as props. They use, um, retirees, whoever it
might be, as props dogs.

S1 (13:50):
I mean, Toto, Toto the dog gets exploited on a
near daily basis.

S3 (13:53):
Exactly. There are case studies, right? Well, there case studies
for Peta to use Harry Dutton as his case study.
And then to have not actually done the research, it
just looked very messy, I have to say.

S1 (14:06):
Yeah. I mean, he was sort of holding him up
as a sort of. Yeah, as basically representative of this
younger generation who are finding it so hard.

S3 (14:12):
This is your typical 20 year old.

S1 (14:13):
Yeah. But of course, the inevitable questions came up to
Peter Dutton of whether or not the bank of Mum
and Dad would help out Harry Dutton. And, you know,
more power to them. Like if the bank of mum
and Dad can help out, then then they should or they,
they're perfectly within their rights to. But I think the
probably the major issue or the crunchy issue with, with
home ownership in the housing crisis is for young people

(14:35):
who don't have the bank of mum and dad, and
that's where we have, you know, both sides of politics,
trying to come up with these interventions to, I guess,
give support to young people who don't have that support,
you know, from generational wealth. You, David, you had a
different take, though, didn't you? You thought the intervention of
Harry Dutton was actually a net positive for Dutton?

S2 (14:52):
Yeah, I thought so. I thought I thought it helped
Peter Dutton to have his son there. I thought they
should have been ready for the question about the bank
of mum and Dad. And that question was asked by
Olivia Ireland from our mastheads. And it was then followed
up 24 hours later by other journalists, also putting the
same question. It was a good question. It needed to
be asked and Peter Dutton was not ready with the answer. However,

(15:14):
I think that policy thing is sort of secondary. A
lot of people would have seen he's got a son
who's loyal to him, who loves him, and who's willing
to stand up in front of a press pack and
speak up for him. And I think that's a net positive.
And I think also he was actually gutsy for Harry
Dutton to do it, because what do you cop when
you do that? You just cop a lot of whinging

(15:35):
about and criticism and scrutiny of you as a private individual.
So it's not an easy thing to do. And I
think it was an indication that on the coalition side,
they realized they've got to humanize Peter Dutton more. But
all that said, it worked.

S3 (15:50):
There's this sense, though, David, that I mean, why are
we seeing Harry Dutton in what is it, week three
of the campaign? Like, like they're building the plane as
they're trying to fly it as well? Harry, I would
argue Harry Dutton should have been introduced to voters six
months ago. Do you know what I mean?

S2 (16:08):
Oh. Fair point. Absolutely fair point. And I think I
think it cements this, this view of the of the
coalition campaign that they did not prepare well enough. And
now they're finding past the halfway point just as early
voting is about to start, that they're really in terrible trouble.

S1 (16:27):
I mean, you talk about humanizing Peter Dutton, which I
think is a really interesting verb at this stage because,
I mean, he is a human. We shouldn't have to, um,
you know, we shouldn't have any doubts on that matter.
But I think what we're really talking about here is
that voters need to get a sense of the kind
of person that Peter Dutton is. It's almost as though

(16:48):
we can't sort of get a handle on him. Like,
is he is he a dad? Is he just a
sort of hard man on national security? Does he have
other complexities or nuance to his personality? Which, of course
he must, and he does. But voters haven't been given
a sense to them. And I suppose putting someone's child
out there and showing that father son relationship is a
sort of concrete way of doing that. I can only

(17:09):
imagine that was what the the liberal strategists were thinking.

S2 (17:12):
I think that's a really good point, because I think
Peter Dutton has spent far too much of this term
talking to his echo chamber, talking to Sky news at night,
talking to conservative supporters. I mean, it's not like he's
done a lot of interviews to reach out to voters
in the teal seats, right. Who might want action on
climate change, for instance, people in the middle ground there.

(17:33):
So I think now they're finding out too late that
they haven't reached out far enough into the community to
get the undecided voters in the middle of the community.
And it may be too late for them to do that,
but that's what I see as one of the dynamics here.

S3 (17:49):
One of the things that's really struck me through the
course of this campaign is the frustration in coalition ranks,
and some of the questions that Peter Dutton is getting
are the, you know, from coalition strategists, from MPs, oh,
the press packs being so much tougher on him than
on Albanese. It's not fair. And it's clear where the
bias is and what have you. What I actually think

(18:10):
we're seeing is three years of frustration borne out, like
Peter Dutton has very rarely, very rarely stood at press
conferences in Canberra and taken all questions from all comers.
Right now, after three years, people have a long list
of questions stored up. And that's.

S1 (18:27):
That's.

S3 (18:28):
That's what we're seeing. You know, I meant to ask
this six months ago or 12 months ago. I mean, personally,
I don't know what David does. I don't know what
you do, Jackie, but I keep a list of questions
for every senior politician, so I'm never caught short. If
you know, I'm at a press conference. Any more questions? Yeah, actually,
I've got one. I've got a long list of questions
for Peter Dutton of from from the mundane to the
obscure to the, you know, immediate and germane. And I'm

(18:51):
sure other people do, too. And that's what we're seeing.
People are getting those questions finally, and it's been difficult.

S1 (18:58):
I totally agree with you. There's like there's a pent
up demand, as an economist might say. And I think
that was one of the things that was so satisfying
about Wednesday night's debate was that David Speers had all
those questions, and he really, really prosecuted them. I felt very,
very fairly. But the questions of Peter Dutton in particular,
like he sort of really hammered him, particularly over stuff
like water reservations for his nuclear reactors, the cost of

(19:21):
the nuclear reactors and so forth. I just want to
ask you both briefly about something from that debate, which
is the remarks that Peter Dutton made about climate change,
because he was pressed pretty heavily on that point by
David Speers, the host. He did say that. He acknowledged
that that there were impacts from climate change. But then
he seemed to say sort of something a little bit different. David,
can you pick up what he said?

S2 (19:42):
Yeah, basically he said, um, I'll leave that to the
scientists as to whether climate change is real. He wasn't
willing to say clearly, publicly on live television. I believe
the scientists, when they say climate change is real.

S8 (19:57):
Well, I'll leave others to.

S9 (19:58):
What do you think? You're a Queenslander.

S8 (19:59):
I'll let scientists and others pass that judgment.

S9 (20:02):
But really not willing to say this is climate change
happening right now?

S8 (20:05):
Well, as the Prime Minister refused to do the other
day to make comment in this regard as well. I
don't know, David, because I'm not a scientist and I
can't tell you whether.

S2 (20:14):
That's obviously got some downside for him in his conservative
base if he is to say that. However, he didn't
even get close to saying the kinds of things that
Margaret Thatcher has said in the past. Or I think
John Howard has also had a good answer at times.
Rupert Murdoch used to say, you know, it would be
a good idea to give the planet the benefit of
the doubt on climate change. There are ways to answer

(20:34):
that question, and I think it's connected to what we
were just talking about. If for three years you only
talk to Sky news at night or a conservative support base,
you never get asked, do you think climate change is real?
Maybe he should have done a few more press conferences,
doorstops a wider range of media interviews, and he'd be

(20:55):
better prepared for these. It's a simple question, and he
was not prepared.

S1 (21:00):
I know it's sort of like a batting practice issue
or something. James, I just want to go to you
quickly because I watched him sort of struggle with his
answer on that and thought, well, you know, there goes
any hope of sort of winning back or even increasing
margins in the teal seats. And young voters in particular,
I think would have been, you know, a little bit
skeptical of, you know, a senior male politician who hopes

(21:22):
to be prime minister, not being able to sort of
fulsomely embrace the effects of climate change or acknowledge them.
That was just my take. What do you think?

S3 (21:29):
Look, I think I'm going to be a slight contrarian here.
You could argue that perhaps he's giving the absolutely correct answer,
which is just I will be guided by the science,
you know, respect the science. It will do what the
science says. But it didn't feel like that at all,
did it?

S1 (21:47):
I mean, isn't that a bit of a tricky way
of saying it? Because the science is settled? Yeah. And
so he could have just said, I abide by the science,
which is settled and tells us that these extreme events
are becoming more extreme and more frequent because of climate change.

S3 (22:01):
That's right.

S1 (22:01):
It was sort of it was a tricky answer, I think.

S3 (22:03):
Yeah, I think that's right. And it just it felt
like there was a kind of a calculation there that.
Oh that's right. Hang on. I've got Nats on my
right flank who really don't think this is a real thing.
And I've got that guy in that seat somewhere who's
also a skeptic, and I have to sort of balance
or calculate my answer just so.

S1 (22:24):
I mean, but this goes back to the strategy because
those people are already in the tent. Where else are
they going to go? It's they're not they're not the
people that you have to woo on to your side.

S2 (22:33):
I think it's another example of and maybe we've canvassed this,
but not reaching out enough to voters that he really needs.
We've seen the coalition get get really quite chippy about
what the teal candidates are doing in those former Liberal seats.
They don't like some of the climate 200 tactics, and
they don't like some of the independent campaign methods and

(22:53):
so forth. So there's been, you know, some negative stories
about about the teals. We haven't really seen a value
proposition from the liberals to those teal voters to get
them back. And climate change is kind of a part
of that. What is the value proposition? Come back to us.
We know that you left us three years ago, but
we really want you back and this is what we

(23:14):
offer you. I haven't seen that positive message, and that's
why it now looks increasingly challenging for the liberals in
some of those teal seats.

S1 (23:22):
Yeah, I know I would agree. And it is most puzzling.
I sort of can't wait for election night now, because
even though the election campaign itself has been a little
bit dull in terms of the policy offering. Particularly the
election night itself is going to be really exciting. Um, anyway,
we've got a few weeks until then and let's not
get ahead of ourselves. Gentlemen, thank you so much for

(23:42):
joining me. I really appreciate it. It was fun.

S3 (23:44):
Pleasure, Jack.

S2 (23:45):
Thanks, Jackie. And there is a long way to go.

S1 (23:47):
Yeah. Today's episode was produced by Julia Katzel. Our executive
producer is Tammy Mills, and Tom McKendrick is our head
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(24:09):
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I'm Jacqueline Maley, thank you for listening.