Peter Dutton is 'happy to take questions' but doesn't seem to have answers or a plan
Feb 8 2025
ABC News
An election is nearing and Dutton doesn't seem to have a plan
There's always a bit of pomp and circumstance around the meeting of the federal parliament. But in recent years, the number of "traditions" has been growing.
The "traditional" church service before the first meeting of parliament for the year has been a thing for a while. More recently, the "traditional" attendance of leaders and politicians at the Last Post ceremony at the Australian War Memorial the day before parliament sits has become a tradition.
A tradition that is fast fading, however, is accountability. Never have politicians had more opportunities to tout their wares: technology means they can turn up in any corner of the country and be questioned.
Television and radio programs vie to get them on air. Podcasts have become the new fashion for this particular election campaign.
But that doesn't mean politicians actually answer questions. The concept of fronting up and answering questions seems to be lost on some of our leaders, despite the increased opportunities.
Another turbulent week in federal politics
Dutton's media strategy
For the past two and half years, Peter Dutton has been exceptionally selective in the media appearances he makes, defying the "tradition" for decades of opposition leaders using any possible opportunity or platform to be noticed. Instead, he has often only done one or two interviews with friendly questions in a given week.
And, let's face it, it has worked for him until now.
Things have got a bit more edgy in the past month, with an election only a couple of months away.
This week, he appeared on the ABC's Insiders program (as well as his more common appearances on Sky) and did a rare proper press conference at Parliament House.
On Insiders, host David Speers asked the opposition leader six times whether he planned to cut government spending and, if so, by how much and where.
The repeated answer was cutting public servants, though he declined to say which public servants, and which services would be cut, though apparently not in areas that might be politically sensitive like disabilities, human services or veterans affairs (some of the places the current government has increased numbers because the Coalition had left services in such a scandalous state of disrepair as to earn the approbation of at least royal commissions).
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton's Insiders interview
Specifics on cuts remain unknown
Dutton said the Coalition wouldn't be having an independent audit of government spending because "we know what we're doing".
"We're able to hit the ground running".
Asked if that meant voters might not know until after the election where a Dutton government would cut spending, the opposition leader said "we need to sit down and look through an ERC process, which would be the normal course of things. We'll do that in government."
But what was particularly sobering about this rather extraordinary declaration that voters wouldn't know what services the Coalition would cut before it won office, was that it seemed to barely raise a flicker of interest in the media.
Senior journalists were heard dismissing Dutton's statement on the basis that parties always have to have their costings scrutinised before polling day.
Really? Well, that's okay then!
In reality, both sides have become increasingly tardy about actually submitting policy documents for formal costing. The Abbott-led Coalition simply refused to do so altogether in 2010. In 1990, the Peacock-led Coalition didn't have a health policy.
Apart from the Coalition's nuclear policy, the only notable policy to be released recently is its plan for tax-deductible business lunches. It hasn't said how much that will cost but the suggestion is it will be $250 million a year.
The government asked Treasury to cost an identical policy and its estimate was between $1.6 billion and $10 billion a year.
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