KATINA CURTIS: When will we get some new ideas this election campaign?

Peter Dutton was asked on Monday about the Government’s latest bid to make it easier to see a doctor.

“We have announced a $9 billion plan to ensure Australians can get in to see a GP,” he declared.

Not so fast: the Coalition announced it would match Anthony Albanese’s $8.5 billion bulk billing and GP workforce boost, and bundled in a previously-unveiled mental health care policy.

For three weekends in the past month, Dutton and his shadow ministers have responded to Labor policy announcements by saying, “Yep, same.”

It has sparked mutterings from Liberals about what the shadow cabinet has been up to for the past three years if not developing their own offerings.

Shadow ministers insist they’ve adopted the Government’s promises because it was pretty much what they had been working on anyway.

Are we really supposed to believe that two parties with different ideological stances looked at the state of things and reached identical conclusions about the way forward?

On the multi-billion-dollar Medicare package, Dutton said they’d spent a lot of time talking to doctors groups and others in the health space while working up their own policy.

This is sensible; an opposition can’t draw on the resources of a bureaucracy, and stakeholder groups know the weeds of a policy area.

But none of those groups had been asking exactly for what the Government produced. In fact, Labor’s policy doesn’t meet a central ask from both the RACGP and AMA to lift the base Medicare rebates.

With a $95 million two-year freeze on draught beer excise, shadow treasurer Angus Taylor said the Opposition had previously “given it serious consideration”.

Matching policies to neutralise a political line of attack happens all the time. Labor have also this past month said “us too” to Dutton’s proposal to stop foreigners buying homes.

But it should follow improv’s “yes, and. . .” rule: take the policy and add your own idea to it.

Asked why the Opposition backed Labor’s $573 million women’s health package instead of putting up its own, shadow minister Anne Ruston said Coalition had had a policy in 2022.

“I’m very pleased with what the Government has announced . . . because it was very similar to what we would have been considering putting on the table,” she said.

So instead of hustling to unveil its plan, the Coalition ditched its work and adopted Labor’s pledge.

Little wonder the Labor attack lines about Dutton having no ideas are in high rotation.

Of course, Labor isn’t dazzling voters with especially new ideas either.

Most of its splashy announcements so far have taken something the government is already doing and amped it up.

Extend bulk-billing incentives now in place for kids and pensioners to everyone. Add more urgent care clinics to the network promised in 2022. Build on the cheaper childcare and free TAFE offerings.

All very on brand for Labor, but nothing people haven’t already heard about.

Bored voters can only dream of the imminent campaign being accompanied by some new-new policy.