From feeble policies to gaping holes in logic, Peter Dutton's Budget Reply was a missed opportunity, leaving Labor holding the election aces, writes Stephen Koukoulas.
THE 2025 ELECTION CAMPAIGN is up and running, having been kicked off by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese within 12 hours of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton delivering his Budget in Reply speech last week (27 March 2025).
The speech was a perfect opportunity for Mr Dutton to set out why he and the Coalition were a viable alternative government to that of Mr Albanese and Labor.
It was an opportunity that Mr Dutton missed — and missed badly.
In terms of the hard policy alternative, it was lame.
Halving the petrol excise for a year is ham-fisted and, by definition, it is temporary. The few dollars saved by those who drive an internal combustion engine car will disappear in the middle of 2026 when the excise will double, returning to its current level, adding to the cost of filling a car and other related transport costs.
The Coalition policy on creating a gas reserve for domestic use, rather than export, is difficult to analyse given the modelling behind the decision remains such a secret that even the Liberal’s election campaign manager, James Paterson, has not seen it and therefore cannot articulate how it works and how much it will cost to perhaps lower gas prices.
There are questions about how the gas will be piped around Australia, given that most of the pipes do not currently exist. This is another massive hole in the plan.
Mr Dutton mentioned the Coalition’s already announced rollout of seven nuclear power plants over the next few decades, estimated to cost $600 billion. It remains a policy that can politely be termed “pie in the sky” with little support or, indeed, scientific and analytical support for its viability.
It was a similar issue with plans to cut over 40,000 jobs from the public service and force people to return to the office and no longer work from home. These are policies straight from the play book of U.S. President Donald Trump and are seen to be areas which has seen the Coalition’s poll numbers slump.
Mr Dutton outlined the usual claptrap of cuts to red tape, greater efficiency and getting Australia “back on track”, which are meaningless slogans without any policy reform underpinnings.
Labor holds the aces
Voters show that they are alert to issues and policy ideas that are hot air and those which have some substance behind them.
This is why Labor has a substantial advantage over the Coalition on policy, partly as a result of being the incumbent for the past three years, but also from the policies proposed in the Budget delivered by Treasurer Jim Chalmers.
Permanent income tax cuts, lower prices for pharmaceuticals, affordable childcare, rising real wages, lower government debt, Medicare funding, health care clinics, cuts to university debt, improving housing supply and rental assistance, to name a few, are policies that have been delivered.
Permanent income tax cuts and the start of the interest rate cutting cycle are some of the “big picture” issues that underpin the Government’s economic messaging in a very positive way.
Cost of living remains an issue
There remain a number of voters who remain under financial pressure as a result of the cost of living concerns from 2022 to 2024.
It will take some time, almost certainly until well after the Election, before the fall in inflation and rising wages feed into the “vibe” that the worst of the cost of living concerns have passed and that the increase in real wages is tangible.
The Coalition will campaign on the lingering cost of living issue, there is no doubt, even though its policy agenda, as it stands in relation to cost of living, is wafer thin.
There are still more than four weeks for policies to be rolled out to voters. These are more likely to be micro-policies, specific to particular electorates or small subsets of society. Most of the big picture policy issues are probably already out for the public to see and this has seen poll support move squarely back to Labor in recent weeks.
Mr Dutton missed the chance to outline a policy alternative that was not only good for Australia but also good for the policy debate in the context of the Election.
Stephen Koukoulas is an IA columnist and one of Australia’s leading economic visionaries, past chief economist of Citibank and senior economic advisor to the Prime Minister.
