Dutton should not be our prime minister. But the Albanese government needs to be so much better

Sydney Morning Herald

01-05-2025

As the election campaign draws to a close, Australians are faced with the dispiriting choice of a government that has struggled to define its purpose and an opposition that has failed to prove it is anywhere near ready to take over.
Who deserves to win on Saturday? The truth is neither Labor nor the Coalition have done much to inspire. For the past five weeks, voters have been subjected to a political tussle devoid of a compelling vision for the future – it is an indictment of the major parties at a time of great domestic and global challenges.
The return of Donald Trump to the White House defines the uncertainty in the world right now. The US president is upending trading and security alliances, demonstrating total disregard for the rule of law, siding with war criminals such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and threatening to unleash a global recession.
At a time of such uncertainty and upheaval, Australia needs Opposition Leader Peter Dutton to be much better than he was in this campaign. Australia needs Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to be much better than he is in government.
After three years in power, Labor's policy machine should be in overdrive. Instead, it is barely getting out of first gear. It has no appetite for much-needed taxation reform beyond a tax cut of up to $5 a week from July next year. Negative gearing discussion? Forget it. GST reform? Too-hard basket. Brave new measures to boost Australia's flagging productivity or bring down debt? Nowhere to be seen.
Labor has perhaps been granted something of a get-out-of-jail-free card on big-picture thinking because its opponents are even worse. Despite the pleadings of Liberal Party elders such as John Howard to spend its three years in the political wilderness focused on an ambitious suite of new policy proposals, the Coalition has proven itself incapable of crafting and selling a plan for government.
Indeed, much of the policy outlined during the campaign is confused and contradictory. While many voters may support an east coast gas reservation policy amid skyrocketing electricity prices, the Coalition's proposal lacks crucial detail and could ultimately be struck down in the High Court as unconstitutional.
Its pledge to build seven nuclear plants in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia defies economic and engineering logic. It has so many holes and such little support that Dutton has barely talked about it for the past six months. The opposition's migration policy contains figures and assumptions seemingly plucked out of thin air. The DOGE-inspired vow to get public servants back to the office spectacularly backfired with voters, triggering one of the more remarkable campaign backdowns in recent memory. And the admirable pledge to lift defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030 and 3 per cent by the middle of the 2030s was unveiled with a lack of detail about how the money would be spent and how it would be paid for.
Dutton's key achievement of the past three years has been bringing unity to the Coalition team. This was not guaranteed after such a crushing loss in 2022. But it is a political achievement rather than a win for the public. Indeed, this discipline has been built on two little-recognised factors: that Dutton has no obvious leadership rival, and that the quest for unity has stifled much-needed debate within the Liberal and National party rooms over policy.