Dutton and the Opposition: playing the long game for policy and political success
Recently, some commentators have labelled Liberal leader Peter Dutton and the Opposition he leads as being weak and lacking spine in not opposing the Albanese Government’s about face stage three tax cut changes.
This charge seems odd when Dutton is so often charged by some members of the Labor Party as a ‘conservative extremist’ and even by a former Liberal leader as being a ‘thug’.
The complaint is that by not immediately rejecting the Albanese Government’s latest tax proposals the Opposition is ignoring its principles and that voters don’t know what it stands for anymore.
Such complaints show a simplistic understanding of the role and choices confronting oppositions especially in the current volatile political environment.
They also ignore Dutton’s record concerning the Voice Referendum.
Let us not forget how in 2022 when that referendum was getting underway, how Dutton refrained from immediately opposing it despite the National Party’s early and typically pre-emptive rejection. He was criticised at the time by many on the non-Labor side of politics as being indecisive and lacking principles. At the same time he was condemned by many commentators for not supporting the referendum.
But Dutton knew what he was doing. He held his ground.
He appreciated that he leads the Liberal Party whose parliamentary composition and voter support is more diverse than the narrow, regionally based National Party. Dutton had to take into account that many of his Liberal parliamentary colleagues, including his own then shadow minister for Indigenous Affairs, along with several Liberal state leaders, had expressed support for the referendum. Many federal Liberal members also held seats where early opinion polling was indicating voter support for the Voice.
As leader of the Opposition, Dutton’s first duty is to keep his party and the Opposition together. It’s a big task. Being Opposition leader, especially after a major election loss, is one of the hardest jobs in politics. After the 2007 election loss the Liberals looked like disintegrating and went through three opposition leaders in three years.
Dutton’s skill to date, as seen in his handling of the Voice referendum, was having patience to see if polling support declined, to be seen as consultative in seeking further details from the government and to wait for other critical analysis to surface and gain public traction. He wanted to avoid just being ideological and a reactionary on the issue, as he is so often labelled. He sought to bring the whole Opposition with him. He also sought to develop a legitimate case to vote ‘No’.
In the end he did.
Dutton was proved right. Polling changed reflecting declining support for the Voice. The government was ham-fisted in its responses to his concerns and in its presentation of the ‘Yes’ case. Other serious criticisms surfaced. Together, all these developments made opposing the referendum a political positive as well as a policy imperative. In this way the Liberal Party and the Opposition remained united, and the referendum was defeated.
Similarly, concerning the tax cuts, Dutton is playing the long game in managing the politics and developing the policy.
He is aware the polling is presently in favour of the Albanese Government’s backflip changes, like it was initially with the Voice. He appreciates that it is an anathema for a Liberal led opposition to reject tax cuts. He remembers when John Howard was Opposition leader how he supported the Hawke Labor Government’s deregulation of the domestic wheat market, despite the National Party’s contrary views. As Howard has said to do otherwise, “would look as if the Labor Party were more market oriented than … the Liberals.”
Dutton understands the Albanese Government is playing the short-term political game. It is twisting policy to win the forthcoming Dunkley by-election and to wedge and divide the Opposition, while forsaking needed long term policy reform. Dutton thinks that as the limited benefits of the revised tax cuts emerge after July, voters will be less impressed and their support will wane. More importantly, Dutton is stressing the need for wider genuine tax reform which this country has lacked for a decade. He is proposing developing a real tax reform policy package to be launched at the next election and hopefully implemented if the Coalition win office.
All this requires a cool head, not hot-headed, reactive decision making that has been too easily and unthinkingly urged by those on the sidelines.
It is legitimate to criticise the federal Coalition parties when they were in office for nine years for failing to pursue policies that reflected their principles. It is true that they vacated the policy field to their opponents too often and too easily. At the same time a new opposition must resist the temptation to return too enthusiastically to their ideological roots and to see every issue through that narrow prism without consideration of the electorate’s wider and more moderate interests.
Robert Menzies, the founder of the Liberal Party, and in opposition for eight years, and leader for six of those years, understood that opposing everything a government proposes can easily mark a party as being one of reaction and negation. This does not mean an opposition should not oppose where necessary or to adopt policies that differentiate it from the government of the day. The key issue though, is that such differentiation should be on a major policy issue and where the opposition has a viable alternative.
And that is what we are waiting for from the current Opposition – not just another tax cut to buy votes for some immediate by-election win or to gain a temporary polling uplift, but genuine tax reform that is better for all Australians in the long term. That would be real policy differentiation from the policies currently pursued by the Albanese Government. It would be worth the wait.
References
Prasser, S., “What should oppositions do?” Australasian Parliamentary Review, November 2023, 208-230 https://www.aspg.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/What-should-Oppositions-do-.pdf