ELLEN RANSLEY: Peter Dutton’s first week chaotic and slow but he’s finally stepping on the gas

Peter Dutton ended his first week on the election campaign not far from where he started it, still kicking questions about how much his centrepiece gas policy will benefit households further down the road.

The Opposition Leader’s first week on the road was simultaneously slow and a chaotic flurry of single night stays, replete with at- times puzzling site visits, and lacking agenda-setting announcements — all in the shadow of Donald Trump’s tariffs decision.

There were signs he was stepping on the accelerator on Friday, as he pumped petrol for the first time since the campaign began seven days ago to talk up his fuel excise policy.

He offered up some more details about his East Coast Gas Reservation policy, revealing it would have driven down wholesale prices by 15 per cent, but is still mum on what that will mean for households.

Australians are assured that detail is coming soon. But if Dutton is to shake off the latest poor polling from YouGov, which shows his satisfaction rating has dropped sharply, he will need to quickly gain momentum.

There are still four weeks until May 3, but half the country will have voted by then. There are a little over two weeks until pre-poll opens.

To win Government in his own right, Dutton needs to win a net 18 seats. He could pick up about a dozen from the outer fringes of Melbourne and Sydney, where cost of living is biting hard.

It was interesting then, for him to start the campaign in inner-city Brisbane, where the Liberals stand a good chance of picking two seats back from the Greens.

Some suggest he was playing it safe to try and regain some momentum after a recent dive in the polls. This he continued for much of the week before finishing more focused in Labor’s marginally-held Parramatta.

This election is all about cost-of-living, so it confounded some Liberal sources that he had spent the first three days opting for high-vis vests to spruik his gas policy to talk up the benefits to businesses and manufacturing.

The decision to hold a press conference about the Melbourne Suburban Rail Link at a winery nowhere near the proposed line similarly left many perplexed.

He made his first “cost-of-living” visit in Melbourne’s Donnybrook on Wednesday, sitting down with a family struggling with inflation and mortgage repayments to offer them an easier future. These are the types of voters he needs to win over.

He’d talked about high costs every day, and spruiked his gas policy and fuel excise announcement at any opportunity, but pictures matter.

With little new policy to speak on or about, Dutton’s daily press conferences this week were replete with questions about scant details on his plans for gas, on public service cuts, on migration, and what he defines as the “woke agenda”.

He neutralised a political fight on wage growth by signaling in-principal support to an above-inflation wage increase.

But he caught business by surprise on Thursday where, at a drilling business in Perth, he said the Coalition wouldn’t repeal the “same job, same pay” legislation. On Friday he sidestepped suggestions it was “anti-Liberal”, saying he led a party committed to “managing the economy effectively”.

Dutton attracted accusations of hubris throughout the week, but one that cut through was his declaration he would live in Kiribilli, not the Lodge, if he were to win the Prime Ministership.

The other was his assertion that he could have negotiated a deal with President Trump to protect Australia from tariffs.

One of his best lines all week was his statement of being prepared to pick a “fight” with the President if need be, but within 48 hours it was undermined by his idea of negotiating tactics. Being willing to put more on the table than take things away could wind up working, but it appeared to contradict his earlier strong statement, and using defence as leverage is risky.

For an election that is all about cost of living, much of this will be background noise for many voters, especially considering so much of the electorate is still tuned out.

But after a week where so much of the agenda was being driven by external forces that sometimes took him off script and off message, he was somewhat sharper on Friday as he made pledges for Western Sydney.

For him to pick up the net 18 seats across the country he needs to form a majority Government, his campaign will need to step on the gas and hope his response to internal concerns earlier this week — “you haven’t seen anything yet” — means a gear shift is coming.