Some Coalition backbenchers would rather not go to the brink by blocking the whole bill. Russell Broadbent,the member for Monash in regional Victoria,told the party room on Thursday morning that the Liberals could not govern from opposition. He made the case for letting Albanese get his way and then holding him to account when energy bills rise.
Others see things the same way. Bridget Archer,who proved by her victory in the Tasmanian seat of Bass that she is one of the smartest minds in the party room,also urged caution. Nobody is breaking ranks in a way that makes things worse for their own side. It is Dutton’s call and the party room is giving him its loyalty.
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But the aftermath goes beyond energy. Is Dutton reading the room? Voters support the concept of price caps,as theResolve Political Monitor in these pages has shown. More Australians support Labor than they did at the election,so there is goodwill in the community for Albanese to get on with the job. And there is no doubt which leader the people prefer:Albanese has a lead of 54 to 19 per cent over Dutton when voters are asked to name theirpreferred prime minister.
There is more to Dutton than most voters see. He smiles in private but hardly ever in public. His Liberal colleagues trust him far more than they trusted his predecessor,Scott Morrison. There are Liberal moderates,for instance,who are confident that Dutton will be a pragmatic leader who keeps the “broad church” together when they are still angry at the way Morrison was driven so often by his personal beliefs – his evangelical Christianity – at a cost to their government.
The problem for Dutton is his history. Dutton boycotted the apology to the stolen generation in 2008;he joked about sea level rise in the Pacific;he has a history of inflammatory rhetoric on African and Lebanese migration. The record is there. Dutton is hoping Australians will gradually soften the way they see him,but it is a big ask.
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The former United States vice president Walter Mondale summed up this challenge better than anyone,and one of the sharpest observers of politics,Laurie Oakes,quoted his words when seeing Australian leaders struggle with the problem. “Political image is like mixing cement,” said Mondale. “When it’s wet,you can move it around and shape it,but at some point it hardens and there’s almost nothing you can do to reshape it.”
For Dutton,that cement is about as hard as granite.
An election defeat throws the losing side into a long period of recrimination. It has been especially brutal for the Coalition,however,because of the Morrison legacy:the multiple ministries,the robo-debt royal commission,the residual anger in the party room. The break was cleaner in 2007 when John Howard not only lost power but lost his seat.
As if that is not tough enough,the Coalition is losing badly in a structural shift in Australian politics. It is not just about the arrival of the teal independents in Liberal seats.The Australian Election Study,released by the Australian National University last week,shows younger voters have fled the Liberals and Nationals. The authors of the study,Sarah Cameron and Ian McAllister,say they have never seen such low support for the Coalition among voters under the age of 40.
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It is even worse among Millennial voters,born from 1981 onwards. Over three elections,from 2016 to 2022,the ANU study found that support for the Coalition among this group fell from 38 to 25 per cent. Here is the cold academic verdict:“Changes of this magnitude and this pace are rare in Australian electoral history.”
Dutton knew he was in for a bleak year as soon as he became leader. As a former Queensland cop,he runs towards a political challenge without a hint of fear or doubt. But he is carrying a heavy load of personal baggage when the structural change in Australian politics forces him to climb a very steep hill.
And his vote on energy just made that harder.
David Crowe is chief political correspondent forThe Age andThe Sydney Morning Herald.
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