The key State Peter Dutton is desperately fighting to win back ahead of the election

Federal Liberals believe Peter Dutton is failing to connect with voters prompting fears the expected electoral swing back to the Coalition in one traditionally conservative State at the upcoming poll will now not materialise.

Mr Dutton will spend an extended stretch in WA from today, as the Opposition leader tries to make inroads in the State which turned heavily against the Coalition in the 2022 election.

Party insiders worry that despite a general lack of enthusiasm for Anthony Albanese’s Labor government, Mr Dutton has not been able to cut through on key topics of importance to West Australians, and is failing to capture the imagination of voters wanting leadership on the cost of living and the mining industry.

The Nightly spoke with almost 20 major party insiders, who want Mr Dutton to spend more time in WA to better understand the unique issues in the State.

Mr Dutton is responding to the direct feedback, and from today will embark on a five-day visit to the State. He is expected to return for a major party fundraiser at the end of the month.

While Mr Dutton is popular with party members and the conservative base, Liberal sources say people in “punterland” either don’t know who he is or have a fixed view of the former Queensland cop as hard-edged.

One said that while doorknocking voters, no one mentioned Mr Dutton by name. However, the worst reactions they were getting amounted to polite indifference, in contrast to the outright anti-Liberal aggression of 2022.

“The public is fed up with the Government and politicians more generally — tired of broken promises and the constant bickering,” Durack MP Melissa Price told The Nightly.

Ripe for a Liberal revival

The next Federal Election must be held by mid-May and both sides agree WA will again play a key role in who forms government.

The Liberals lost four seats to Labor — Swan, Tangney, Hasluck and Pearce — and surrendered Curtin to teal independent Kate Chaney as WA turned against the Morrison Government in 2022.

The political and economic environment should be ripe for Mr Dutton to lead a Liberal revival in the west, with cost of living pressures, anger over the shutdown of the live sheep export trade and Nature Positive plan, and an uptick in illegal boat arrivals all weighing against Labor.

Yet internal polling for both major parties has the Liberals still lagging Labor in the State, roughly reflecting published opinion polls.

One Liberal mused pessimistically that everyone thought five seats was its lowest point, but if the independent campaigns in Moore and Forrest picked up speed, the party could drop even lower.

Another said it was vital to learn the lesson from the State Liberals after 2017 and not take any assumed return swing for granted.

Top issue but few answers

WA’s most senior Liberal Michaelia Cash said her colleagues were focused on the top issue for voters, not opinion polls.

“Western Australians’ standards of living have been in sharp decline over the time Labor has been in power,” she said.

“The election, whenever Anthony Albanese is willing to face the electorate, will offer a judgment on this huge decline in living standards.”

Cost of living continues to be the top issue for people, by a long way, as they feel the cumulative effect of two years of higher prices and interest rate rises.

O’Connor MP Rick Wilson said people were “finding it tough to make ends meet” and looking to the Government for relief but “at the moment, all they’re seeing is that pressure going in the wrong direction”.

Yet people in WA were the most likely of any State to pick Labor as the better party to manage the cost of living, according to SEC Newgate’s July Mood of the Nation report.

It showed 35 per cent nominated Labor as better to ease their cost pressures, while just 19 per cent backed the Coalition, the lowest of any State result.

Some Liberals MPs said their party was yet to articulate a clear solution.

“Since the parliamentary recess, the message has got a bit diluted, there’s no real clear message about what the Coalition’s policy is,” said Ian Goodenough, who lost Liberal preselection for his seat of Moore and is expected to run as an independent.

“Cost of living is showing up as the most important issue for people in my electorate but the question is, what’s the solution, what are we going to do? We’ve got to outline a very clear set of measures that we would follow.”

Shadow minister Andrew Hastie noted every seat was a local contest.

“First and foremost we need to have good candidates — which we do — and they need to be able to sell both a personal message and one from the Liberal Party,” he said.

Another colleague thought the party’s messages were dulled because the resources sector had somewhat cushioned WA.

While the economic conditions were challenging, they weren’t yet disastrous.

“One interest rate rise will change that,” they said.

Labor argues the Liberals’ attempts to attack the Government on the cost of living are undermined by the fact Mr Dutton’s team consistently voted against measures designed to alleviate it.

I will stand up for WA: Dutton

Mr Dutton’s visit this weekend is his 16th to WA since the election.

Ahead of the trip, he took aim at Mr Albanese for implementing policies that “harm WA” as he promised to stand up for the State.

“Whether it was his 18-month campaign on The Voice, which wasted $450 million and divided the country, or his decisions to kill the sheep export industry and destroy WA jobs, or his demonising of the gas sector, this is a government that is turning its back on WA,” he said.

“We’ve got to get our country back on track after two years of bad Labor decisions and a government that’s focused on the wrong priorities.

“I’ve been a regular visitor to WA, and I’m looking forward to being back in the coming weeks to outline more of the Coalition’s positive plans for WA and our nation because we just can’t afford another three years of an anti-WA Albanese government.”

A great ‘fit’ but no cut-through

Multiple Federal and State MPs and Liberal insiders contacted by The Nightly said voters were complaining about Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Labor.

But that grumbling had not yet translated into anger.

This plays out in polling: net satisfaction with Mr Albanese was sitting at -8 points in the recent quarterly Newspoll aggregate for WA, but Mr Dutton’s was on -14 points.

Mr Albanese was still ahead on the preferred prime minister measure, although an equal-high one in five people in WA said they didn’t have a preference.

One federal Liberal said those numbers show West Australians had not yet warmed to Mr Dutton.

“He’s a great fit for WA but has to spend more time here and get that cut-through,” they said, speaking anonymously to talk frankly about the situation.

Tellingly, federal Labor is not concerned about WA, with insiders bemused by predictions of a dire drop away for them in the State. Even Liberals concede Labor is not panicking.

A senior Labor source said Mr Dutton was a formidable political opponent who could not be taken for granted.

However, they saw little evidence the Opposition leader was desperately trying to regain seats in the State.

There is a growing perception among Mr Dutton’s opponents and some business leaders that his “pro-mining” stance is more about his ties with Gina Rinehart than a broader understanding of WA.

Patrick Gorman, who was WA Labor’s secretary before being elected, said he found it hard to believe Mr Dutton cared about the State before becoming leader.

“Mr Dutton was not a regular visitor to our State when he was in government and he was not a friend. His opposition in cabinet to the WA GST deal proves this,” he said.

Another Labor insider said the Liberals were battling three issues in WA: Mr Dutton’s low likability, the weakness of the party’s State brand, and a lack of heavy hitters in Canberra.

Mr Goodenough said there was no doubt “it is going to be difficult for the party in WA”, putting some of the problems down to “internal dynamics”.

The Liberals have Curtin and Tangney in their sights as must-wins.

But in other seats where strategists were talking up Liberal prospects earlier in the year — Hasluck, Swan and Pearce — candidates are not yet on the ground.

The consensus is the party needs to lift its primary vote across key seats to at least 40 per cent or risk losing on preferences.

This could be complicated in Moore with a wide field splintering the vote between a community independent, Mr Goodenough, Liberal, Labor, Greens, One Nation and any fresh incarnation of Clive Palmer’s party.

The new seat of Bullwinkel has a nominal margin favouring Labor, but both major parties and the Nationals — who will field former State leader Mia Davies — all think they can win it.

The Liberal ‘correction’ will take a long time

Redbridge pollster Kos Samaras said it was reasonable to expect the State to return to its natural inclinations to vote conservative but that Scott Morrison’s leadership had broken the bond between WA and the Coalition.

“There’ll be a correction but it’s going to take a long time for that to be repaired,” he said.

However, he thought Mr Dutton was “the type of leader that could probably talk to them”, although cautioned the key was months and months of communications discipline.

Martin Drum, a politics professor at Notre Dame University, said it was likely the State brand was holding the Federal Liberals back as well.

“They also don’t have a lot of champions here,” he said.

This point is echoed by some federal Liberals, one of whom said people looked at them as part of the same mob and judged them to be a “spent force”.