And then it was gone. Since then,Dutton has made the running.
According to that conventional wisdom,this is no bad thing. The budget didn’t create major problems. And the discussion around Dutton has hardly been all good. Two topics featured:nuclear energy and immigration. Much of the nuclear debate has focused on a damning CSIRO report. And a big part of the reason the press kept talking about immigration was because the Coalition was all over the place,unable to clarify what its policy was or how it would work.
That last point demands emphasis. When you’re talking about immigration,numbers are almost everything. The people causing confusion were the leader,who should know the policy,and his shadow treasurer,who should know the numbers. This was no small mix-up.
Still,at this stage,the Coalition won’t mind. Political parties are less interested in whether they are winning arguments than in the topic being discussed. If you’re fighting on the other side’s ground,you’re losing.
Labor grasps this. There’s some awareness,too,that it hasn’t yet figured out the best response to Dutton’s focus on immigration. It knows it can’t ignore the topic. At the same time,fighting Dutton on the detail simply draws Labor further into his trap.
Labor’s feeling about nuclear is quite different:that Dutton is on a loser. Logically enough,then,Anthony Albanese yesterday launched an attack on the Coalition’s nuclear option,saying Labor wouldcampaign against itevery day. Dutton,said Albanese,“needs to stop hiding his plans and release the locations of these planned nuclear reactors”.
In recent weeks,Labor has increased the level of its attacks on Dutton. It seems to have accepted that if,as some believe,the electoral cycle is shifting from the period when voters judge only the government to judging the major parties against each other,then Labor needs to influence that comparison.