‘I’m not Morrison – but I’m still Dutton’ is not a strategy to fix the Coalition’s problems with women and urban professional voters
When Albanese stood at much the same political crossroads Dutton is standing at now, his call was: Big Opposition will kill us.
The belief was Australians don’t want tactical carping in the middle of bushfires, a pandemic, an economic slowdown and escalating geo-strategic competition. Carping might win the day, it might get us in the TV news package, but it won’t get us to the government benches. That’s why Albanese asked to join the national cabinet when Morrison set it up.
Perhaps he’s right about that. But I think it’s equally possible the Albanese zeitgeist diagnosis remains the correct one and that Australians are sick to the back teeth with opportunistic politicking. If the core judgment that propelled Albanese to the Lodge remains correct, then Dutton is ignoring all the lessons the Liberals could usefully learn by shadowing the methodology of their successful opponent.
Let’s stocktake the opening months of opposition leader Dutton. He’s appointed a shadow cabinet that is more praetorian guard than frank advisory council, and surrounded himself with mini-me advisers who tell him what he’s already thinking. Right now, he looks like a politician who fancies he can win an election by saying no to everything Labor suggests - and by not being Morrison.
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