Just when Dutton is winning, he sounds like a sore loser

Peter Dutton should have sounded like a winner this week when he walked into question time after theconfirmed his gains against Anthony Albanese. The opposition leader trails the prime minister on most key measures, but he is no longer the pitiful laggard he was a year ago. The numbers highlighted the way he has steadily climbed into contention.

Some of his Coalition colleagues know it’s a problem. They think the leader needs an attack dog by his side to do the ugly work of tearing down an enemy. The trouble is that none of the Liberals seem to want to do the job.And the big Labor move this week, to reveal a sudden change to migration law, only made the opposition angrier. The government told Dutton about the law on Monday night but did not reveal the bill until Tuesday morning.

For all the messy tactics, Albanese does not look weak. Many voters will agree with two central elements of the bill. First, that Australian authorities should be able to impose criminal penalties against people who are not refugees but refuse to co-operate in being deported. Second, that the immigration minister should be able to rule that visitors will not be accepted from a particular country.

Voters turned against the Coalition, as well, by cutting its primary vote from 37 to 35 per cent. Even so, Dutton is in a better position today than he was one year ago. He has a poor net performance rating, just like Albanese, but he has gained on other measures. The result is a recovery in the Labor agenda, even if it is not showing up in the polling. While it is true that the latest numbers suggest Albanese is heading towards a hung parliament at the next election, that decision point is at least a year away. That means predictions about a minority government are as sketchy as the chatter about election timing.

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