Audio Excerpt - Peter Dutton:

“We’re listening to what people have to say, we’ve made a mistake in relation to the policy. We apologise for that and we’ve dealt with it.”

RUBY:

“We made a mistake” are tough words for any politician, but in the heat of an election campaign, they can really hurt.

Audio Excerpt - Peter Dutton:

“…So, work from home…”

Audio Excerpt - Sarah Abo:

“Peter, Peter, Peter, this is more than that. This is quite a backflip, I mean this was one of your signature policies. If you're making this kind of a mistake during an election campaign, how can you be trusted as prime minister?

Audio Excerpt - Peter Dutton:

“Well Sarah, I think if you have a look at my track record over the last 20-odd years…”

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RUBY:

In a spectacular reversal, Peter Dutton has walked back his policy to sack 41,000 public servants saying he’ll now wait for people to quit, and that he’ll no longer force those who remain back into the office.

But it doesn’t just raise questions about sincerity, it also leaves the opposition with a giant black hole when it comes to funding their other election promises.

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Today, Jason Koutsoukis on the panic inside the Coalition, and what it means for Peter Dutton’s leadership.

It’s Tuesday, April 8.

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RUBY:

So Jason, we've just seen the Coalition backflip on a major policy promise only a week into the election campaign, and this was about forcing public servants to go back to the office. So why do you think ultimately the Coalition decided to walk this back?

JASON:

Well, I think this policy was killing the Coalition electorally. And the polling over the last 10 days has showed that this is not just very unpopular in Canberra, but it's unpopular right across the country. As people who work from home in the private sector worry that their employers will decide that if the federal government is forcing workers back to the office, then they will force their own workers back to the office too.

A lot of people have got used to working from home during COVID, they've built their working lives around being able to work from home. It's proved to be very successful for many families, and the idea that Peter Dutton would do something that could threaten those working arrangements has really started to affect the way people will vote in the upcoming election. And I think that's what the coalition is seeing in their polling, and they've decided that they just can't hang on to this policy any longer.

RUBY:

And let's talk more about the second part of this, cuts to the public sector. So Dutton is saying that he does still want 41,000 public servants to leave. But, as you said, not through forced redundancies, through natural attrition and a hiring freeze. So is that even possible? Are there 41,000 workers, Jason, who want to quit?

JASON:

Yeah, great question. And it's hard to see 41,000 people wanting to quit, given that 41,000 people have just been employed or added to the Australian public service ranks right across the country. I guess sacking public servants has been a key part of Peter Dutton's message for the last year and a half. He hasn't just said it once, he said it countless times.

Audio Excerpt - Peter Dutton:

“We will reverse Labor's increase of 41,000 Canberra public servants, because it will save about $7 billion a year... I don't think any Australian can say that their lives are easier in terms of their interactions with government agencies because of 36,000 new public servants being employed in Canberra.”

JASON:

And he's never talked about attrition or hiring freezes, it's always been sacking public servants. And I think the reason he's been saying that is because he thinks it will do well with those middle-class voters struggling with cost-of-living pain in, sort of, outer suburban seats around the country who have this idea that most public servants are just sitting on their bums in Canberra not doing much.

But I think since Elon Musk and Donald Trump started to literally take a chainsaw to the public service in Washington.

Audio Excerpt - Elon Musk:

“This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy…”

JASON:

People have started to feel less certain that this might be a good idea.

Audio Excerpt - Elon Musk:

“Waaaah.”

JASON:

I guess one of the other things that Peter Dutton has been doing is saying that all of these public servants that he's going to be sacking are in Canberra. And Peter Dutton doesn't mind denigrating Canberra, I think that's another thing that he thinks will play well with the voters in outer suburban seats in the bigger cities, but the problem is that most of the public servants who have been added to the ranks of the public service are not actually based in Canberra. These are people who are being employed in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, regional centres like Albury, Wodonga and Wollongong. And these are all key electorates that the Coalition needs to win and I think it's really starting to hurt him.

RUBY:

And you mentioned those comparisons to Trump and Musk, does this about face? Does this tell you that perhaps that is starting to land with voters and perhaps Dutton and his team are becoming worried about being compared?

JASON:

I think absolutely, because everywhere you look right now there are reminders of the havoc that Donald Trump is causing, not just here in Australia but around the world. The Australian stock market is plunging, global stock markets are plunging. The Australian dollar has dropped below 0.60 USD. There's all these reminders that Donald Trump is an agent of chaos and every time people think of Donald Trump, perhaps they're also thinking of how much Peter Dutton has wanted to be like Donald Trump.

Audio Excerpt - Peter Dutton:

“I join with the prime minister and on behalf of the Coalition, I congratulate the 45th President of the United States...”

JASON:

When Donald Trump was elected, Peter Dutton was very quick to say how happy he was about that.

Audio Excerpt - Peter Dutton:

“President Trump is not somebody to be scared of, but somebody that we can work very closely with. And that's exactly what we will do, Mr. Speaker.”

JASON:

He's talked about how much he has agreed with many of the policies that Donald Trump is implementing, and the government has picked up on this. Treasurer Jim Chalmers has called Peter Dutton DOGE-Y Dutton.

Audio Excerpt - Jim Chalmers:

“This is DOGE-Y Dutton. Taking his cues, his instructions, and his policies straight from the U.S…”

JASON:

And I guess this does actually help the prime minister. As one person said to me, Anthony Albanese is the boring guy off the piss who won't crash the car.

And I think this helps the Labor Party project Anthony Albanese as a stable alternative to Peter Dutton. He's not going to create the kind of chaos that Donald Trump is creating and that Peter Dutton might create too if he's allowed to follow in Donald Trump's footsteps.

RUBY:

Coming up after the break, how many seats does Dutton need to win to keep his job?

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RUBY:

Jason it is pretty unusual to hear Peter Dutton publicly apologise, to sound so contrite, how do you think that will land with voters?

JASON:

I think it's very damaging for Peter Dutton because, as you say, it's so rare to hear a politician apologise like this, admit that they got something completely wrong. And I think that it does really undermine Peter Dutton's campaign because I guess most people will think, well he's just saying that now to try to cauterise the damage that his policy has been doing to his election campaign. But if he was to win the election he might just turn around and decide, well, I'll implement all those things I really wanted to implement anyway, and not just keep his promise to dump these policies.

We know Dutton sincerely believes what he's been saying because he's been saying it for so long, and to just turn it around and quickly try to sort of backtrack is probably going to be unconvincing for many voters.

RUBY:

And I think one of the reasons that a backflip like this is so surprising is because the Coalition has had years to work out what they want to fight this election on, so to announce and then retract something in the space of a week points to a lack of strategy. What does it say, to you Jason, about what is actually going on behind the scenes in the Coalition right now?

JASON:

Well, I think they're panicking. That's what's happening behind the scenes, that the polling is so bad that not only will they not win as many seats as they expected, they might not win any seats at all and we might see Anthony Albanese returned with a bigger majority than he has now. I think that's the sort of things that must be going through the minds of Coalition strategists right now for them to do a backflip as big as this one because it's not just the symbolism of cutting public servants, it's all the money that they were going to save by doing that and used to fund other policies like the Coalition's plan for nuclear energy. So to pull this policy out, it creates all these follow-on problems for him because how is he going to pay for all these other promises that he's made if he's not getting the $6 billion a year in savings that he promised?

And I think a key problem for Peter Dutton is that he's raised the expectation among his back bench that he really could win this election. And as one Liberal MP told me, we've spent all these years not really doing any hard policy work and now it’s really coming back to bite them.

RUBY:

Yeah that's interesting, so if Dutton and his team have decided that talking about public service cuts and forcing people to work from the office are not topics that will bode well for them, what would this election be fought on in an ideal world for Dutton if things were going well?

JASON:

Well I think Peter Dutton imagined that he would fight this election campaign on all the things that Albanese has failed to deliver, and top of that list is alleviating the cost of living pain. The first question that Peter Dutton asked of the prime minister in this term was, would Labor's promise to lower power bills, by $275, would that promise be delivered?

Audio Excerpt - Peter Dutton:

“Where Anthony Albanese promised at the last election that there would be a $275 decrease in your power bill, instead there's been a $1000 increase in your power bill, but how much higher will your electricity prices go under this prime minister?”

JASON:

Every question time just about, he gets up and asks the prime minister about this promise on power bills. And while Peter Dutton has got a lot of mileage out of that, at the same time he hasn't sort of backed it up with any real kind of policy development. And now that the scrutiny is on Peter Dutton during this election campaign, he has to sort of come up with his own answers about how he would lower cost of living and he doesn't really seem to have the answers.

RUBY:

And you mentioned, Jason, that there was at one point this expectation that Dutton might actually be able to win this election and so seeing, you know, that potentially evaporating is now becoming damaging for him. But I wonder how damaging could it be? Will Dutton remain leader if the Coalition does lose?

JASON:

Well, I think the first thing here is that Coalition MPs are talking about who will be leader after the election. And I think that suggests, firstly, they don't expect Peter Dutton to win this election. And the question is becoming, well, how many seats does Peter Dutton and have to win in order to save and hold on to his leadership?

RUBY:

What's the magic number then?

JASON:

Well, I think the minimum number of seats he has to win is 10. Peter Dutton doesn't have to win the election. This was always going to be a two-term strategy. But I think he does need to improve the Coalition's position and just winning back five seats, I don't think that's enough. That shows that Peter Dutton is pretty unpopular. But I think if he manages to win 10 seats, then that does give him a reasonably solid floor from which to launch the campaign for the 2028 election.

But the way the campaign's going right now he might not win five seats at all, he might lose a seat or two and go backwards. And if that happens, then I think Peter Dutton's leadership really will be on life support.

One thing that Peter Dutton has going for him is that there's no real alternative yet as to who would lead the coalition. There are people like Sussan Ley, the deputy leader. Dan Tehan, the immigration spokesman. They're often sort of talked about as possible alternative leaders. The defence spokesperson, Andrew Hastie from Western Australia, I think is another one that could be seen as a potential leader, but right now there's no real obvious alternative. And I think if Peter Dutton does perform very badly in this election campaign, he'll probably still hang on to the leadership for another year. It won't happen immediately.

RUBY:

Well Jason, thank you so much for your time. It's been great to chat.

JASON:

Thanks Ruby, I always enjoy talking with you.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said he doesn’t think our economy will fall into a recession in the face of Trump’s tariffs.

The Treasury’s own modelling of the expected impacts forecast the economy will be affected more modestly than other nations, while still expecting slower growth.

Meanwhile the Australian dollar has fallen to its lowest value under the US dollar since before the pandemic, dropping from $0.64 USD last Wednesday to just under $0.60 USD.

And, a New South Wales upper house inquiry into the fake caravan terrorism plot has revealed that a senior New South Wales Police officer was asked to sign a non disclosure agreement after being informed by the AFP that the plot was fake.

The inquiry is investigating whether the state parliament was misled before rushing through hate speech and anti-protest laws. The laws were passed on February 20, with the terrorism plot not publicly discredited until February 21.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am, see you tomorrow.

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