Federal election 2025: Peter Dutton revs up for cross-country blitz of Labor seats in final week

Peter Dutton will make a final-week blitz of seats in every State, including hitting several seats held by teals, as he insists the Coalition can still win majority government at Saturday’s election.

The Opposition Leader will visit up to 28 key seats, mostly held by Labor.

Targets include the new WA seat of Bullwinkel; outer-suburban Melbourne electorates Hawke, Aston, Gorton and Dunkley; Paterson and Dobell on the NSW Central Coast; Moreton in Queensland; and Lyons in Tasmania.

The national hit list also includes six seats Mr Dutton has not visited throughout the rest of the campaign: teal-held Goldstein and Kooyong in Melbourne and Mackellar in Sydney, along with Labor’s Gilmore and Bennelong in NSW and Boothby in SA.

The avoidance so far of some of these seats which are on razor-thin margins — such as Bennelong, which is held by Labor but notionally Liberal after the boundaries were redrawn — has left observers scratching their heads.

Liberal insiders are promising the week will be a “sea of blue, bustling rallies and front-line campaigning”.

Mr Dutton faced multiple questions yesterday about his campaign strategy as polls continue to show the Coalition has lost ground throughout the election.

A Redbridge poll tracking 20 marginal seats showed the Coalition’s primary vote at 34 per cent, still below where it was in 2022, having fallen over the past month while Labor’s remained steady at 35 per cent. It put the two-party preferred result at 54.5-45.5 in Labor’s favour.

“The Coalition’s campaign has clearly hit a wall,” Redbridge director Kos Samaras said of the results.

“For me, Labor’s massive lead amongst diverse communities is the real ominous sign for the Coalition given the two swing States of NSW and Victoria are the most diverse.”

Separate research from SEC Newgate showed a sharp increase since February in people nominating Labor as the better party to manage the cost of living, and Mr Albanese ahead of Mr Dutton as the preferred leader to manage every one of 17 issues canvassed.

But the Opposition Leader declared there were many votes still up for grabs.

“As we know, something like one in three Australians ... are undecided or soft voters at the moment,” he told reporters in Cairns.

“That is a historically high number in Federal elections, and it shows that people are weighing up their options.”

Cairns is in the marginal seat of Leichhardt, which Labor is heavily targeting after the retirement of long-time Liberal MP Warren Entsch.

“I think there are many Australians in outer metropolitan areas who feel that this prime minister hasn’t been honest, that he’s out of his depth, that he has prioritised the interests of Green voters in the inner-city Sydney and Melbourne, many of whom are quite affluent, and he’s abandoned people in regions and in the outer suburbs,” Mr Dutton said.