Numbers stack up for Dutton’s hard right push

The notion that Opposition Leader Peter Dutton cannot win this year’s election unless he moves more to the centre to recapture the seats lost last election to the teals, independents, and Greens is misguided because it defies electoral arithmetic.

In fact, Dutton’s divisive, polarising, attention-grabbing politics provides a more likely path to victory for him than moving to the centre. It is unfortunate, but true.

Yes, the teals, independents and Greens won a lot of seats from the Coalition in 2022. But the Coalition does not have to win them back to win the election. And purely from a strategic, win-at-all-costs, political point of view, it would be silly for him to try.

History shows us that once an independent or minor-party candidate wins a seat, they tend to keep it. Independents and minor-party candidates who get elected and do a reasonable amount of electoral and profile-raising work become hard to dislodge.

For example, Bob Katter has won eight elections as an independent; Andrew Wilkie and Adam Bandt (Green) five each; Rebekha Sharkie (Centre Alliance) four and Indi has been won by an independent for four elections.

Aside from that, the raw electoral arithmetic explains why Dutton has given away appealing to the more educated, higher-income, inner-city voters to get the teal seats back, even if he gives occasional lip-service to the idea.

Labor holds 18 seats with a margin under 6 per cent. And three more (all rural-regional) at between 6 and 6.5 per cent.

On the other hand, only four independent seats are held by under 6 per cent. Dutton could forget them and concentrate on less-educated outer-suburban and regional seats and have an easier path to victory.

Further, the two seats taken by the Greens in Brisbane in 2022 (at less than 4 per cent) would be winnable by the Coalition even with a divisive, right-wing campaign.

That makes a Coalition majority.

Going after the Labor seats in the outer suburbs and regions makes more sense politically for someone like Dutton than trying to appeal to voters in the inner city who are concerned about the environment and truth and integrity in politics. 

And he certainly will not win them over by insulting them by saying they are “anxious” and in need of “strong” rather than “weak” leadership, or with a scare campaign about hung Parliaments.

So, he is going for the seats with fewer tertiary-educated voters where almost the totality of people’s concerns is the economic well-being of themselves and their immediately family – encapsulated in the phrase “cost of living”.

It may be self-centered or even selfish, but in those electorates, living is more hand-to-mouth than reflective. Issues are more likely to be judged quickly on gut-feeling and the pub test, rather than evidence and modelling.

To take a small example, evidence from other countries shows that a tax on sugar in drinks and food would ultimately reduce obesity and health costs to the benefit of all, but Dutton would successfully appeal to gut feeling and paint it as a tax on families and win the pub test.

So, a sugar tax is in what I call the “too scared” basket along with many other worthwhile policies.

That approach fits Dutton’s natural inclination and also provides a firmer basis for Coalition unity. The old capital v labour political divide has gone. The urban-rural divide and the educational divide are far more predictive of voting inclination.

The Coalition now has 55 members in the House of Representatives. Of those 21 are from the Queensland Liberal-National Party; 15 are Nationals; and just 19 are Liberals from outside Queensland. Of those 19 Liberals, nearly all hold rural and regional seats.

The Coalition is now a rural and regional party nibbling at the outer edge of capital-city suburbia, rather than a party whose power, wealth and organisational strength comes from the wealthier areas of the main cities in league with a purely rural National Party.

The only danger for the Coalition is that its strategy might result in the Liberals losing some more seats to teal independents, making the quest for majority government more difficult.

The bigger danger, though, is for the Australian polity as a whole if one major party copies the Trump playbook: dog-whistling, attention-seeking, polarisation, sloganeering, and populist policy on the run. 

It is happening already. Dutton’s statement that, if made Prime Minister, he would not stand in front of the Indigenous flags was a classic populist, nationalist piece of attention-seeking on par with Trump saying he would rename the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America”. Lots of attention, but utterly irrelevant. 

As Bruce Wolpe says in “What Trump’s Second Term Means for Australia”: historically, Australia is prone to accepting so much of what happens in America as being worthy of adopting. But these says so much of the Trump-Republican agenda is decidedly not worth adopting: leaving international treaties on climate change; privatising the whole health system; refusing to agree on anything the other side proposes; childish appeals to strongman tactics; idiotic portrayals of compassion as weakness, and so on.

Polarisation too often leads to paralysis, or simplistic, ill-thought-out, distracting policies because the politician’s main task these days is to get re-elected (even if by duping voters with things like nuclear power) rather than governing well.

The barbecue stopper and pub test are important. They reinforce and propagate views because people like to belong and feel comfortable agreeing. It is true, too, of people using evidence and rational argument, for the same reason.

It is decidedly paradoxical that the human urge to belong and be part of a group can be used to create the divisions we are seeing.

In the meantime, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is being accused of timidity on his left flank and weakness on his right.

But Labor has done quite a few things: rejigged the tax cuts; improved child-care; made prescription medicines cheaper; subsidised electricity; put extra money into Medicare, renewables and housing; made life a bit easier for employees; and so on.

All fine, but bitty. Unless Labor can cohere these policies into a single narrative, the bits will fall through the electoral sieve. Surely, the underlying theme is fairness. It is no good doing a range of good things unless they are linked to a theme: who can you trust to be fair?

But the danger for Albanese is that, to succeed, the fairness must mean a better deal for those who see the world through the economic well-being of themselves. If, however, it is divisively derided as being fairer to the “undeserving”, it could fail.

Labor has to do a lot of work to convince a critical mass of voters that Labor is fighting for people like them. Just playing on the fear of Dutton is not an election-winning strategy, even with compulsory voting.

Perhaps the best antidote to this divisiveness will be for neither party to have a majority after the election which will require a bit more compromise, co-operation, and diverse input. It might also mean some structural reform to the Parliament which has been in the “too scared” basket for most of the past 40 years. A subject for another column.

Crispin Hull

This article first appeared in The Canberra Times and other Australian media on 14 January 2025.