If Peter Dutton ever had a so-called “two-term strategy”, that strategy disappeared on Sunday when he soft-launched his election campaign in the Victorian seat of Chisholm.

No longer was he accepting that the Albanese government would likely win a second term. There was no hint of the strategy some have identified, where the Coalition would focus on Queensland and the regions this election before recapturing city seats in the next cycle. He was going for it all in one.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has shifted his campaign strategy to again involve the teal electorates, although moderates in the party say he is still using ‘the Trump playbook’.

By Rick Morton.

It was not a surprise to Liberal moderates that Dutton has become increasingly enthused by potential gains in Victoria, but the strength of the signal being sent was notable.

“I thought Chisholm was a very interesting choice,” one Liberal MP tells The Saturday Paper.

“We’re clearly targeting these seats, but to have what seemed like a little bit of a launch event in Chisholm tells me the party is seeing something concrete in its research that I’ve been hearing anecdotally – that there has been a little bit of a shift in perception, even since Christmas.”

The perception, as the party sees it, is that more voters than anticipated are not just angry at Albanese but also disappointed in him.

In September last year, Dutton told 3AW radio presenter Neil Mitchell he was seeing “good swings in seats to us here [in Victoria] and seats on the radar that we hadn’t expected to be on the radar at this point in the cycle”.

He was asked point-blank: The polls tell you that you can win? “Yes,” Dutton replied.

The Coalition needs to pick up 18 seats to win government in its own right and may yet lose one or more of the seats it holds.

The shift in Liberal focus back to inner-city seats is testing the ideological divide in the party, where moderates have lost influence over the past few election cycles.

An expression of the divide is the preselection battle in the northern Sydney seat of Bradfield, where right-wing candidate Nyunggai Warren Mundine is being backed by figures including Tony Abbott over the moderates’ Gisele Kapterian. The local teal candidate, Nicolette Boele, is also seen as a chance to win.

“If Warren Mundine were to get up in Bradfield, that seat is gone,” one MP says.

Another says it won’t happen because Mundine won’t even win preselection.

“They voted ‘Yes’ in the referendum and Mundine campaigned for ‘No’. He’s not going to win preselection and he’s the wrong candidate anyway,” the Liberal moderate says. “I don’t know if we can win Bradfield or not.”

The calculus for Labor is in some respects dicier, though it has history on its side. With 78 seats – it won the 2023 Aston byelection – a loss of only three would dip Labor into minority government.

While there hasn’t been a one-term federal government in Australia for almost a century, Dutton is emboldened by global forces that are rewriting the political rulebook.

“I think Covid has fucked up the world. People have become more reactive than they ever have been. They are more suspicious, they have less trust and honestly I just think he is kind of tapping into that.”

Liberal MPs and candidates who spoke with The Saturday Paper this week note that Dutton hasn’t moderated his approach as he attempts to more actively court inner-metropolitan seats lost to Labor in the 2022 election. Instead, he is attempting to capitalise on a broader push towards reactionary and divisive politics.

Promising good governance, Dutton is rarely asked to confront the institutional rot at the Department of Home Affairs – a rot that festered while he was minister. Nor is he asked about the asylum seekers and refugees who suffered needlessly while he controlled the borders.

He is the same Peter Dutton whose long history of arrogance on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander matters saw him announce he will refuse to stand in front of either flag during official press conferences if he becomes prime minister.

He is the same Dutton who has built a political career out of moral panics over “African gangs” and fear of Muslims, but who now promises to be the only man who can unite Australia and fight anti-Semitism. He warned that Protestants could be next but could not bring himself to mention Muslims among the races and faiths for whom he is concerned.

“I think Covid has fucked up the world,” one Liberal MP says. “People have become more reactive than they ever have been. They are more suspicious, they have less trust and honestly I just think he is kind of tapping into that.

“That is kind of the Trump playbook but also it works because it is the zeitgeist. Like, I’m no Dutton booster, or even going to defend him on this stuff, but there are people in my electorate who tell me there are too many Welcome to Country ceremonies or that they want to celebrate Australia Day.

“I’m not agreeing with the sentiment, but this is the shift we are seeing. I think that’s what we are extrapolating from, what the Voice referendum told us. And we know some of the seats that voted ‘No’ to the Voice are Labor seats.”

One independent MP who received support from the Climate 200 group tells The Saturday Paper her constituents are appalled by the divisive gesturing on Indigenous affairs.

“You know, when he says he won’t stand in front of an Aboriginal flag, they hate that. Whether they voted Liberal or for me last time, they hate it,” she says.

“I think Dutton wants to pick up Labor seats and if he can get any teals along the way, that will be a bonus.”

By other accounts, the Liberals’ teal strategy is to undermine them now in advance of a possible minority government.

As the election gets closer, and tighter, various outgrowths from the campaign have sprouted.

Former Liberal MP Julian Simmonds – who lost the Queensland seat of Ryan when Scott Morrison’s government was swept from power in 2022 – has created a group named Australians for Prosperity.

Despite claiming to be unaligned, the group’s website attacks the record of Labor, the Greens and the teals but makes no mention of Coalition policy.

One of its early and biggest donors is Coal Australia, which funded the group to the tune of $725,000.

This month the group ran a series of ads targeting community independents in teal seats, focusing on their economic credibility as part of its campaign to “fix their focus”.

The ads featured a greyscale copy of the Climate 200 logo, which prompted a legal letter from the group established by Simon Holmes à Court, alleging copyright infringement and a “dirty” campaign.

One teal MP says the early campaigning has been “much more toxic” in this election cycle than it was in 2022.

“It’s hard, I always knew it was going to be, but it’s really difficult,” she says.

A Liberal MP suggests the Australians for Prosperity group is loosely affiliated with the federal Coalition, although arms-length enough to maintain a “plausible deniability” about the campaigning strategy.

Another says it is possible some “longer-term strategy is at play”.

“Some of what they’re trying to do is to campaign on the record of the teal incumbents,” the MP says.

“If the most likely scenario happens, where Albanese loses some seats and he’s invited to form a minority government, you know, it’s about making that harder. Because, well, who are the kingmakers here?

“Albanese would walk off a cliff before asking the Greens, if that were even an option. So it has to be the teals.”

A Liberal moderate tells The Saturday Paper that they are far from convinced Dutton will win the election, although they see strong trends emerging that point towards a better result than many thought possible a year ago.

“The only thing that matters at the moment is cost of living and if you are honest and wonder whether people really blame the federal government for that, I’m not so sure that they do,” the MP says.

“People are upset and finding it hard to live, but if they won’t specifically blame the federal government, then they’re not going to see us as the answer.

“It’s the same on housing as an issue. Well, do people think we’re the answer? What do you think? No.”

By this Liberal’s cautious arithmetic, the only seat his party would “guarantee” to be picked up in Victoria is Aston. In New South Wales, the MP argues, they can only bank on Gilmore.

“In Queensland I think we can hold Leichhardt with a question mark and I do think we will pick up Brisbane, although there is a risk that Labor can get to it.

“The problem with independents is that they are very individual campaigns. I’m very cautious about our ability [in NSW] to pick up Warringah and Mackellar and I don’t know whether we can hold Bradfield or not.

“[In Victoria] Goldstein will be easier to pick up than Kooyong, which has a lot of younger and more professional-class voters whose standard of living has not declined quite so much.

“On the balance of probabilities, I think it will be a minority government, although I don’t for a second underestimate Labor.”

According to RedBridge Group polling from late last year, the “Liberal-National parties are now well placed to win at least nine seats from Labor, particularly around Sydney and Melbourne: Gilmore, Paterson, Bennelong, Aston, Robertson and Macarthur; along with Lyons [in Tasmania], Lingiari [in the Northern Territory] and Bullwinkel [in Western Australia]”.

“A minority government is the most likely outcome: a greater than 98 per cent probability neither party will have a House of Representatives majority, and slightly less than a two per cent chance of a Coalition majority,” its polling report says. “The probability of a Labor majority is now approaching zero.”

In its electorate breakdown, RedBridge has Zoe Daniel retaining Goldstein and Monique Ryan holding Kooyong.

As part of his plan to chip away at these seats, Dutton is now describing the teals, somewhat confusingly, as the “Green teals”. During his interview with Neil Mitchell in September, Dutton briefly forgot the messaging and had to correct himself.

“I think most analysts now have shifted from, say, 12 months ago, where there was only talk about a second or third term for the Albanese government,” he said.

“Those analysts are now saying the only prospect for Labor to form government after the next election is in coalition with the teals and Greens… with the Greens, the green teals and the Greens. And people now are talking about, well, it could be a minority Coalition government.”

Dutton said he would prefer a Labor government to win in its own right than either major party have to form a minority government.

Between now and the federal election, messaging from the Coalition will become even more focused on cost of living. As one Liberal moderate says, never underestimate how much even wealthy people resent losing something they had.

“You know, some of my constituents might be wealthy and, of course, they have more choice than someone who earns very little,” the Liberal moderate says, “but psychology tells us it hurts a lot more to lose something like having to get rid of the beemer than for an aspirational family to have to forgo something like a holiday.”

That may have some truth, but the example is illustrative in its own right. On Sunday, Dutton talked about his “working-class” roots as the son of a “secretary and bricklayer” who worked in a butcher’s shop and delivered newspapers for money. He said, “Buying my first home aged 19 was one of my proudest achievements.”

Dutton did not mention that he and his wife, Kirilly, are rich beyond most Australians’ wildest dreams, with a property portfolio that saw at least eight investments bought and sold between 1992 and 2006, when Dutton stepped down as a director of the Dutton family trust.

Kirilly is the sole director of another family trust, RHT Investments, which bought an entire shopping strip in Townsville in 2016.

Nobody knows their true net worth.

Neil Mitchell tried to find out, with limited success.

“You’re a rich man,” he put to the opposition leader.

Dutton was lightning fast in his response: “No.”

Mitchell continued: “I read on the internet the other day you’re worth $300 million.”

Dutton laughed: “You better talk to my wife. She’ll be scouring accounts somewhere. We’ve had three kids through private school. In politics you can’t invest in shares or anything like that.”

Dutton bristled when Mitchell suggested taxpayers “paid for” the flat in Canberra he used to own and claim travel allowance to stay in during 17 weeks of the year, as many politicians have done and do.

“You didn’t; I did actually,” Dutton said. “I just think if we dumb down politics and we dumb down the profession, I just don’t think it does any good to anyone.”

Even the ascendant have weaknesses. The only question now is whether Labor can articulate them.

The transcript of Dutton’s interview with Mitchell does not appear on the opposition leader’s website, unlike countless others.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on January 18, 2025 as "‘More reactive … more suspicious’: Dutton sharpens focus on teal seats".