LATIKA M BOURKE: Peter Dutton’s Budget reply speech goes big on values and cost-of-living

Peter Dutton has surprised his colleagues with some of his off-topic calls of late, like a referendum into deporting dual citizen terrorists and sex offenders.

His Budget reply needed to reassure them that he is focused on the only topics that matter to voters this election — cost of living and housing.

So some might have expected a rabbit or two to be pulled from his political hat.

He announced two major new policies — an immediate cut to the fuel excise and a pledge to reserve up to 20 per cent gas for the east coast market and sell it on the domestic market at a lower than international price.

Opposing Labor’s self-described “modest” tax cuts, he said halving the fuel excise tax would save motorists more, an estimated $14 per week.

“Labor will spend $17 billion of taxpayers’ money to give you back 70 cents a day – in 15 months’ time,” he told the House of Representatives on Thursday night before the parliament rose ahead of the Prime Minister’s trip to Yarralumla to call the election on Friday, likely for May 3.

“Jim Chalmers’ so-called tax cut ‘top up’ is simply a tax cut cop-out,” he said.

“It’s a cruel hoax.”

Labor figures are shocked that a one-time assistant treasurer to Peter Costello is opposing personal income tax cuts.

But they should not be so surprised. Mr Dutton’s speech confirmed that he intends to focus heavily on suburban seats as opposed to trying to woo back wealthier, inner-city voters — the type who vote teal and supported the Voice.

He is aiming for a local version of the realignment seen in the United States and United Kingdom, where traditional working-class voters have switched to culturally conservative right-wing leaders.

Which is why his speech went big on values and vibes, casting himself as a visionary with long-term ideas while Labor retreats to its comfort zone of small-target ideas and vote-buying as Tuesday’s Budget, jammed with cheaper prescriptions, more bulk billing and energy rebates, showed.

“It was a shameless election vote-buying exercise – not a plan for our country’s future,” he said of Tuesday’s Budget.

“It was about saving Prime Minister Albanese – not safeguarding our nation.

“Frankly, it’s insulting.”

Mr Dutton believes voters are cynical about these election goodies and want the structural causes of the cost of living addressed.

His mantra is an echo of when former Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd turned the economic tables on John Howard in 2007, when he declared: “This reckless spending must stop”.

And despite having few concrete policies, Mr Dutton is attempting to cast himself as the visionary against Anthony Albanese’s short-termism and political timidity.

It’s a big ask given Mr Dutton does not approach the election campaign with any of the positive momentum that carried Mr Rudd to a landslide win in 2007.

This is why he spent much of his speech reorienting the focus onto Labor, and often with devastating effect.

He was on his strongest ground as he spoke of how cost of living was affecting people trying to cope.

“I want Australians to be putting items in their shopping trolley, not putting them back on supermarket shelves,” he said.

This will particularly resonate with the many voters who have told pollsters about the humiliation and indignity of this experience.

Mr Dutton called this election a “sliding doors moment for our nation,” saying it mattered more than others in recent history.

“A returned Albanese Government in any form won’t just be another three bleak years,” he said.

“Setbacks will be set in stone.”

He said by contrast his plans to go for nuclear energy that Labor ridicules as a never-never $600 billion waste of time was “one of the most visionary and necessary policies put forward in our country’s history”.

“My intention is to make Australia a mining, agricultural, construction, and manufacturing powerhouse again.”

Mr Dutton has shied away from focusing on the economy, but this is the opposition’s strongest ground and he needs to stick to it if he is to win the majority government he says he can.

He is also right to sense the public’s hunger for direction through extremely turbulent and uncertain times and will need to demonstrate a credible blueprint for how to make Australia a “manufacturing, mining, agriculture and construction powerhouse”.

“This election is as much about leadership as it’s about policy,” Mr Dutton declared.

After a rocky few weeks of unforced errors, including announcing a referendum on deporting dual citizens convicted of child sex abuse offences and terrorism, Mr Dutton’s workmanlike Budget Reply showed how vulnerable the government can be when the conversation is focused on the economy.