LATIKA M BOURKE: Peter Dutton caught in twist of faith on Federal election campaign trail

Peter Dutton is a man running out of time, and the opposition leader is now hostage to events overtaking any eleventh-hour miracle he can conjure, with the death of Pope Francis wiping yet another precious day from his electioneering.

Mr Dutton was due to campaign in a battleground regional seat of NSW that the Coalition is desperate to reclaim from one of their political traitors, but had to abandon the city of Orange in the early morning, diverting back to Sydney to attend mass for the cameras.

Neither Prime Minister Anthony Albanese nor Peter Dutton are particularly religious men, but with eleven days to go until the Federal Election — and one of them ANZAC Day — one might have been praying a bit more than the other for some divine intervention as they listened to sermons in tribute to the Argentine Jesuit.

Because the Pontiff’s death leaves Mr Dutton further exposed, given his mystifying decision to delay the release of his major policies until after early voting began.

His campaign heads west for what is likely to be his long-awaited announcement on boosting defence spending faster than Labor currently plans, on Wednesday.

It’s dangerously last-minute as Mr Dutton goes into the final stretch slipping behind in the polls and fighting a runaway news cycle now preoccupied with the colour of smoke emanating from the Sistine Chapel.

If you are Anthony Albanese, a timeout even on the day pre-polls open is wholly good news. He can afford to look prime ministerial and step back from a day’s politicking, having spent months frightening the living daylights out of people about the Member for Dickson.

A flat-footed Mr Dutton has not just failed to combat Labor’s scare campaign but incongruously insists there is still plenty of time to announce his policies and get his message across.

“Many Australians don’t even know there’s an election coming up,” he said in response to The Nightly’s questions at a campaign stop in the Labor-held marginal seat of Dunkley outside Melbourne on Monday.

“There is an enormous soft vote out there, as you know.

“That’s what you’ll see in all of the polling and that’s certainly what we’ve heard.

“I think there’s a lot anger in the suburbs and I think you’re going to see that expressed.”

Mr Dutton and his camp believe this election will be fought and won in the final week and that preferences, not primary votes, will be the decider.

But are they forgetting that last election nearly half the country voted early? Indeed by midday on Tuesday, the AEC said nearly a quarter of a million had already voted.

Mr Albanese’s cabinet confidante, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, certainly hasn’t.

“We accept that people aren’t hanging on every word that politicians say on a day to day basis, and that you do need time to talk about what your plans are,” Senator Gallagher told the ABC.

“So certainly, you know, we have got a lot of our major policies out.”

By contrast, the Opposition Leader will be “wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’” that his faith in the “enormous soft vote” and quiet rage of the burbs coming to save the day on May 3 is not misplaced, if not downright misguided.

Not that Mr Dutton is the overtly praying type.

Under Scott Morrison religion took a front seat in Australian politics in a way it never had before, with the evangelical former prime minister taking news cameras inside the Horizon Church to film him singing and praying.

He returned to his church’s stage the day after he led his party to near-decimation in May 2022 to shed tears and quote from the bible in his “last remarks as PM.”

Following Morrison’s departure, religion was restored to its regular place in national politics, present but not omnipresent.

Both Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese, raised Catholic, can ascribe to Christian values, but like many Australians who grew up in religious families, neither would say they are churchgoing adults. Wisely, both have resisted leaning too heavily into their upbringings, and their Easter genuflections were a nod to their adult and child selves.

Both attended a church service on different days over the break. Peter Dutton went to a Maronite church service on Good Friday in Western Sydney along with Mr Morrison and the Labor local member, Cabinet Minister Tony Burke. However, he chose a breakfast barbecue in a park with LNP supporters in the Queensland seat of Blair on Easter Sunday.

The Prime Minister did the reverse. He and his beloved Toto graced a park with Jerome Laxale, in the Labor MP’s marginal seat of Bennelong in northern Sydney on Good Friday. On Easter Sunday the Prime Minister returned to St Mary’s, where he was an altar boy, for mass.

It was as much reverence as anyone expected and wanted from both men over the Holy days.

But the Vatican’s Easter Monday announcement that the 88-year-old ailing Pope Francis had died from a stroke, threw a new religious wildcard dynamic into the election.

The news broke just as Mr Dutton’s travelling media plane took off from Melbourne Airport.

By the time it landed 90 minutes later, both the Prime Minister and Opposition Leader had issued statements mourning the Pope’s death.

As pre-polls opened across Australia on Tuesday morning, both said they would cease political hostilities for the day as they swiftly returned to church, eulogising before the cameras a man neither had ever met.

But the papal truce left Mr Dutton exposed once more.

He had started his day in the Central Tablelands in the NSW city of Orange. The regional town is at the heart of a fierce three-way contest and is a key seat the Coalition is trying to win.

Andrew Gee, the sitting MP, was a National but defected to the crossbench over his party’s No stance on the Indigenous Voice referendum, which 71.2 per cent of voters in Calare rejected, a ten per cent margin higher than the national average.

Feeling vindicated, the Nationals are trying to reclaim the seat, but the local candidate is facing a more potent rival in Kate Hook, a teal independent.

As Rebekah Sharkie, Helen Haines and Cathy McGowan before her demonstrated, it is not just the inner city Liberal seats that are susceptible to progressive, community independent takeovers, but also the regions.

The seat of Calare was once held by former local newsreader Peter Andren, who won after the sitting Labor MP retired in 1996. Then, Mr Andren was a rare crossbencher in the lower house – today, he might be considered an OG teal.

Mr Andren was popular; by 2001, he held the seat by a margin of 75 per cent after preferences, making Calare the second safest in the country.

He was a constant target of the Nationals, but they did not win it until he retired, later losing his battle with cancer.

So Calare voters already have a habit of voting independent and liking the results. There is every reason to think that in a climate where the major parties are on the nose, neither leader is inspiring anyone and both lack big visions for the country in unstable geopolitical times, they might opt for the next-generation independent.

Strategists can’t remember the last time a Liberal party leader campaigned for a National in Calare, so Mr Dutton’s planned campaign stop was as unprecedented as it was revealing.

Ms Hook has been successfully exploiting Mr Dutton’s nuclear ambitions, with a future plant slated to replace the old coal-fired power station at Lithgow.

Mr Dutton would no doubt have been prepared for these questions had he campaigned there but the whole event was canned when the Pope died. He managed a few interviews on breakfast television before diverting to Sydney for the day where he spent an hour at Mr Albanese’s boyhood church and gave 60 seconds of remarks to the media after mass.

The truce won’t last long. The leaders meet for another televised leaders’ debate on Tuesday night, but the wasted day spent on three flights zapped what was already a flickering charge from the Opposition Leader’s flagging campaign.

Momentum, mood or “the vibe” are crucial in contests as is luck, something Mr Dutton has not had much of this campaign.

But nor has he created opportunities to convert real disappointment with Mr Albanese’s first term into clear-cut reasons to vote Liberal

The British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan famously quipped that the greatest challenge to being a statesman was “events, dear boy, events.”

This election, events are suiting Mr Albanese and leaving Mr Dutton looking little more than flotsam.