Inside the Dutton camp: A leader’s downfall

Peter Dutton was full of bravado at the final question time before the election, but hiding in plain sight was a campaign about to go off the rails.

Today, political reporters Matthew Knott and Natassia Chrysanthos give the inside story on the demise of the Dutton campaign, and the recriminations that now follow. 

Read their full story here. 

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:01):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Cylinder Morris. It's Tuesday,
May 6th. The knives have been out for Angus Taylor
for a while. Former opposition leader Peter Dutton was forced
to defend the shadow treasurer in June last year after

(00:24):
one of his own Liberal frontbenchers attacked him with accusations
that he was incompetent. And now, in the wake of
the coalition's election bloodbath, many of his colleagues are not
just lobbying their own accusations that Taylor is perhaps the
main reason they lost, but they're spilling the beans to
our reporters today. Foreign Affairs and national security correspondent Matthew

(00:47):
Nord and federal politics reporter Natassia Chrysanthos. Give us an
inside look at when coalition MPs realised that their campaign
had gone off the rails. Welcome to you both. Okay, Taz,
I'm going to start with you because I want you
to take us back to the start of the election campaign,

(01:09):
the end of March. You've written about what was happening
within Peter Dutton's camp. You know, now we know there
was a complete overconfidence there. But can you take us
inside the room, like what was going on back at
the start?

S2 (01:22):
So if we go back to the final, final day
of Parliament, which was two days after the budget and
a day before the election was called.

S3 (01:33):
The Prime Minister has. The Prime Minister has caused a
lot of pain to Australian families over the last three years?
Will the Prime Minister join with me in cutting the
price of petrol and diesel to save? You had this.

S2 (01:47):
Very recent tightening in the polls. So I think you
started to see signs of confidence, I suppose, from both sides.

S4 (01:58):
I wonder, I wonder if I wonder if when he
sat there, members on my when he sat there and
reintroduced in organization in 2014, I wonder.

S2 (02:14):
I wonder what hadn't really happened at that point was
that kind of quite steady week by week decline in
the coalition standing? You know, as we as we wrote
in the piece, you had some coalition MPs saying we
can pick up 18 seats. Um, so feeling pretty good
about their chances.

S1 (02:34):
Okay. And then even back in late January, Matt, there
was one prominent sign that perhaps some Liberal senators were
really feeling too cocky. So tell me about that.

S5 (02:43):
Yes. Now, this is something that at some stage in opposition,
you would have to get around to if you thought
you had a chance of victory. But, uh, this is
being reflected on by several people in the coalition that
at the very first shadow Cabinet meeting of the year.
This was on the agenda was for the coalition frontbenchers

(03:04):
to do what are called statements of expectations. This is
what you would deliver to the public service if you win.
To set out your priorities. The fact this was being
discussed then is seen as a sign that expectations had
got completely out of control of victory. Coalition frontbenchers were
talking about the public service chiefs that they might want

(03:28):
to depose and appoint their own people. So it shows
that at this time, it feels like a long time ago.
At the start of the year, there was a very
different vibe that there was a feeling that they could win.
And yeah, there was a bit of hubris starting to
creep in.

S1 (03:45):
And at this time, the coalition is soaring in the
polls and an insider told you that, you know, the
party room was getting reassurance that the policy work had
been done right. So they were going to have a
clear economic vision about what they'd be selling to their electorates, right?

S2 (03:58):
Yeah. So MPs have said this is what they were
being told. And even in in the public commentary, um,
that was coming from the frontbench and opposition leader Peter
Dutton at the end of last year, um, with nuclear,
for example, it was like, oh, we've got the stuff
ready to go. We're just waiting for the right time.
They've done all these other things, for example, blocking student caps.

(04:19):
They were assuring everyone that we have our own student
cap policy ready to go. And every time the question
was when, when, when the kind of line you'd hear
from Dutton was, well, you know, why would we come
out with stuff when Labor's doing such a good job
of stuffing things up for themselves? We're just going to
let the wheels fall off labour and we'll come in
with our stuff when we need to.

S5 (04:38):
And this was a big difference between the two campaigns,
the two sides of politics. Looking back to the start
of the year, the coalition began the start of the
year with their policy offering being a taxpayer subsidies for
business lunches, which is a really minor policy that actually
proved a very easy to ridicule and wasn't going at

(05:01):
the heart of voters worries about cost of living. Whereas
the Prime Minister and Labour, they kicked off the year
with a big focus on health and Medicare and getting
down what you paid to go to the doctor, it
was much more substantial. The coalition had a very threadbare

(05:21):
policy offering then, and it was clear at the time
that that wasn't very useful. And with hindsight now, you
can see that they were focusing on the wrong things.

S1 (05:31):
And Matt and Taz, you you know, you've really given
us an inside look into when coalition MPs started to realise,
oh my God, the wheels are about to fall off here,
so take us inside that.

S5 (05:41):
Well, no one expected the result to be as bad
as it was. Even in the few days before the election,
MPs who were very disappointed with what the coalition had
come up with were telling me they were thinking perhaps
they could get say into the mid 60s in the
number of seats. Now they're currently in the low 40s,

(06:04):
which is a huge difference. And that goes to the
terrible internal polling that the party was getting, which seems
to be even worse than the published polling that we
were producing in the media, which was pretty accurate. You
usually hear that the polling political parties get is way
more accurate, and if you could only see the special

(06:25):
magical polling we're seeing, you'd understand. And in fact, it
turned out to be even worse. But what we saw
was this policy making process got even worse throughout the campaign. Uh,
you know, and in the days leading up to it,
Dutton's big announcement on a domestic gas reservation policy. This

(06:46):
was only done in the couple of days leading up
to his big budget reply Speech.

S3 (06:53):
And tonight I announce our national gas plan. This plan
will prioritise domestic gas supply, address shortfalls and reduce energy
prices for Australians. This is all about ensuring Australian gas
is for Australians.

S5 (07:08):
The industry was very unhappy about it, very hard to
explain to voters they didn't have the modelling on how
this would bring anybody's energy prices down. So in the
early days of the campaign I was travelling with Peter
Dutton and this was what the press pack wanted to
know was what's the impact for voters? I don't think

(07:29):
it was even a tricky gotcha question. We were trying
to find out for our readers what the impact would be,
and they didn't have it. And Peter Dutton just kept saying, oh,
we've got it, we'll bring it to you. And it
seems that they didn't release it yet because they didn't
have it, and they were cooking it up to essentially
backfill the policy they'd already announced. We saw this with

(07:50):
the very expensive a one year a tax cut which
cost $10 billion for a single year of tax relief
that was being written in real time the day before
the speech, with the numbers being plugged in to the documents. Uh,

(08:10):
and that's not the way policy should be made. So
there's going to be a lot of questions to be
asked about why it was all so last minute.

S2 (08:20):
To jump in there quickly with the two other examples
that to me, really stood out, were on immigration, was,
you know, that's one of the areas where the coalition
is seen as strongest amongst the public. They had a
really solid ground to make that attack against Labour, because
Labour did have, uh, immigration numbers blowing out year on year.
18 months earlier, the coalition had started putting out some

(08:43):
of its targets, um, or suggestions of where it wanted
migration figures to be. And come the week before the election,
they still had no detail about where those cuts were
going to come from. And they were they were talking
across each other and ruling one visa class out, but
then someone else would rule it in. Um, similar with
the public servants policy that had been floated, uh, back

(09:04):
in August last year. And again, come the costings, the
policy and numbers were changing week by week.

S1 (09:13):
I'm also really curious about the exasperation that you've heard
from coalition MPs because they've they've told you some stunning things.
Tell us what they've told you about how exasperated they've been.

S5 (09:26):
Uh, yes. Yes. MPs are absolutely exasperated. Uh, shadow ministers
are talking about they were doing work. They were submitting
a policy proposals that went into a void and were
never really seen again. I know that the defence policy
was being worked up and consulted on at least six

(09:48):
months ago, but only materialized with no detail in the
penultimate week of the campaign. We're starting to hear more
about the dysfunctional relationships between Peter Dutton and Susan Lay,
between Peter Dutton and Angus Taylor, between Peter Dutton and

(10:08):
Andrew Hastie. They weren't all on the same page. We're
hearing a lot about decision making being held within a
very small group in Peter Dutton's office that's been nicknamed
the FM crew to avoid using too crude language. So

(10:30):
this wasn't a broad cabinet style process of decision making,
and there's a lot of retribution about that, because this
isn't the way things are supposed to work.

S2 (10:42):
And on that, I think one coalition MP put it
quite aptly in the piece, which is they said we
didn't do the work. We haven't had a serious small
business or industrial relations policy or tax policy or anything
on investment and cutting regulation. We cautiously trusted them at
the time, but it became obvious nearer to the campaign
that the work was not actually done, and that we

(11:03):
believed we could win the election without a proper economic agenda.

S1 (11:07):
Will, this feeds into a question I was really, uh,
stuck with after I read your piece, which is why
did these insiders actually speak to you? I mean, was
it just anger over how badly things went? You know,
are they talking behind their colleagues backs because they're hoping
for change? Perhaps something else. Matt?

S5 (11:23):
Uh, well, they've been living this for several years, and
people want to vent. People want to get things off
their chest. People have grievances about their colleagues. You know,
people want to point fingers at others. People want to
control their narrative. During the campaign itself, everyone's very determined

(11:43):
to stay on message and help the team. And knowing
that a piece like this, which is only going to
appear the day after and the result is known, people
are more comfortable to talk then, and we're seeing it.
We're going to see it in the days following the election.
People will be speaking out. So, uh, yeah, there's a

(12:04):
lot of reason why people want to get things off
their chest in the days after such a disastrous result.

S1 (12:10):
Okay. And now we inevitably we've got to talk about
shadow treasurer Angus Taylor because, you know, the knives are
out for him. So what are members of the coalition
saying about him now? I mean, are they placing much
of the blame on him for this catastrophic loss?

S5 (12:26):
Yes, this was a big thing that was coming up
in the days leading up to Election Day, when it
looked like the coalition wouldn't win. Uh, a lot of
feedback coming back that the main source of blame should
be the coalition's economic team, which simply didn't produce the
type of policies that you would expect they'd had three

(12:47):
years of opposition to develop policies, and what came out
was very threadbare and then done at the last minute.
Now there's a lot of back and forth about this.
We're seeing briefing from people close to the shadow treasurer,
Angus Taylor, who are talking about some of the great
ideas they think they had that never went anywhere. Clearly,

(13:08):
there was a dysfunctional relationship between him and Peter Dutton.
But throughout opposition, Angus Taylor has struggled to go up
against a Jim Chalmers, the treasurer. It's been a running
joke in labor about how few questions Angus Taylor asks
of Jim Chalmers in Question Time. We've seen Liberal Senator

(13:31):
Hollie Hughes out on Monday morning very critical of Angus Taylor,
saying she has concerns about his capability.

S6 (13:40):
I think the fact that the economic narrative was just
completely non-existent, I'm not quite sure what he's been doing
for three years. There is no tax plan. I think
the economic team has significant something.

S5 (13:52):
You were hearing from her colleagues in the lead up
to polling day was just the economy is supposed to
be a strength for the coalition, but they felt they
had very little to sell there, particularly in a long
term sense beyond a few temporary one off measures that
were going to expire within a year.

S1 (14:10):
And do you reckon it's fair their criticisms of him,
or do you think that's just them, you know, trying
to shift the blame because, you know, obviously the recriminations
are savage now. So do you think this is just
protecting their backs or do you think it's fair, especially
what Hollie Hughes says. She said that, you know, they
had a complete lack of policy and economic narrative and that,

(14:31):
you know, she says, I don't know what he's been
doing for three years. Is that fair? That really he
just hasn't done much?

S5 (14:37):
It's certainly fair. Based on the results. Now, Angus Taylor
and people close to him will tell you that work
was being done. It didn't all get through the leader's office.
You know, there are conflicting accounts here, but whatever the case,
you only need to look at the results, that it
wasn't effective. There wasn't good economic policy, and he was

(14:58):
the shadow treasurer. And he has to bear a big
responsibility for that.

S2 (15:01):
I think as well, since so much of the criticism
that had come from Taylor was around tax and Australians
are paying too much income tax. So I think one
could expect and a voter could expect, given that he's
identified this big problem, well, you'd expect some kind of
solution to that. And what we saw at the end
of the day was the coalition coming in to raise

(15:21):
income taxes, um, by repealing Labor's recent tax cut, which was,
as many people have pointed out, a very absurd position
for them to be in and probably really hurt their
credibility on that issue going into the election.

S5 (15:33):
Well, yeah, it was absolutely bizarre. It was bizarre as
it was happening that the Labor Party came out on
budget night with pretty modest tax cuts and what everyone
in the press gallery expected was. Of course, the coalition
would match them and maybe try and outdo them. But no,
that wasn't the decision. So Jim Chalmers has said that

(15:57):
he couldn't believe they gave them such a political gift. And,
you know, this will be a key source of the
retribution within the party. And as he was saying, what
a gift it was. I was thinking of his political hero,
Paul Keating, who used the phrase getting hit in the
arse by a rainbow. And that's really what labor was
with decisions like this from the coalition to go to

(16:17):
an election promising to raise income tax.

S1 (16:20):
I love that so much. I mean, it's commentary like that.
This is why we love politics. But but just to
wrap up on Angus Taylor, you know, was he once
considered a forerunner to lead the liberals after Dutton? And
if so, what are his prospects now?

S5 (16:33):
Well, he's still very much one of the leadership contenders.
What everyone within the Liberal Party is saying is we
don't have a lot of great choices. They're not very
enthused about any of the candidates. So Angus Taylor has
a support base. You know, he's he's a factional player.
He has numbers within the party. He's been working on

(16:55):
that throughout opposition. Uh, Sussan Ley clearly was a bit
disconnected from Peter Dutton, as she would present probably a
more moderate face than some of the others. The Liberal
Party is struggling with women. She would be a good
choice there. You couldn't say. She did a lot during

(17:15):
the campaign. And then Dan Tehan, when Taz was talking
before about the immigration policy, he had a battle to
hold on to his seat and he did win, but
he did absolutely no national media during the campaign, which
he could have still done while campaigning for a seat
to talk about immigration, which was supposed to be a
strength for the coalition. So no one within the party

(17:39):
is very excited about any of the candidates, and it's
being seen as it's a job, perhaps for someone to
do for a few years while they rebuild, and then
they can think again about who an actual alternative prime
minister would be.

S1 (17:52):
Okay, well, definitely a space to watch. So thank you
so much, Natasha and Matt, for your time.

S5 (17:58):
Thank you.

S7 (17:58):
Thank you.

S1 (18:02):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Tammy Mills,
with technical assistance by Josh towers. Tom McKendrick is our
head of audio. To listen to our episodes as soon
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(18:25):
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Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris.
Thanks for listening.