Caviar and a caravan.
Less than 100 days from an election, that’s what dominated probably the penultimate parliamentary week of this term – questions over finite numbers that both leaders know, but about which they’ve resisted answering questions.
But the last gasps of parliament also point to how Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton will look to run their campaigns once they break free of the shackles of the leather benches in the House of Representatives. While Labor is itching to engage in a proper policy debate, the opposition leader is keen to draw attention anywhere but a policy fight.
Mostly because after nearly three years as Coalition leader, he still doesn’t have that much of his own policy to begin with, and, as we are learning with each passing day, the ones he does announce are built on flimsy detail or simply a “vibe” he says will be fleshed out down the track.
So, to the caviar.
Labor is desperate for Dutton to release policy, so they can start trying to pick it apart. Labor types concede Dutton is driving much of the national debate at the moment, but the light on the horizon they point to is a hope that, once the campaign properly begins, Dutton would wither under the glare of a ravenous media who he has largely avoided to this point (more on that later).
So desperate is the opposition to have a policy to pick apart, Jim Chalmers got his treasury department to whip up some costings of the Coalition’s meals and entertainment policy. That plan, to allow $20,000 in tax deductions for business dining expenses like staff lunches or client dinners, attracted derision and confusion from day one (apparently, now it only covers meals and not entertainment, despite the policy name and repeated assertions in Coalition media releases) but it became the government’s main course this week.
The government says the policy would cost between $1.6 and $10bn. Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor reckons it would be less than $250m, but they’ve declined to release the costings they say the parliamentary budget office has done.
Whatever the number, “That’s a lot of croquembouche. That’s a lot of caviar,” riffed education minister Jason Clare.
There was a half-hearted Coalition attempt in question time on Tuesday to defend the policy, a series of questions to the government about in-house catering budgets for big business, but Labor already has its new favourite line of attack: that Dutton has prioritised a policy about “free lunch for bosses” before releasing major plans to address cost of living, energy bills, inflation or housing.
Which brings us to the caravan.
Dutton, again hammering the national agenda into his preferred shape through sheer repetition, spent the week asking when Albanese had been briefed about the vehicle full of explosives found at Dural, with indications it could have been used in an antisemitic attack.
Never mind that Dutton confirmed he hadn’t actually requested a briefing with federal investigators on the issue, nor that various newspapers reported it was a communications breakdown between police agencies – which could have seen the NSW premier briefed while the prime minister was not.
Somehow bending reality around him, Dutton – the man who made predecessor Scott Morrison’s “on-water matters” his own standard response for not commenting on the most basic of details around the arrival and treatment of asylum seekers – demanded Albanese reveal details of what he was or wasn’t told about a potential terrorist plot.
Albanese refused. It didn’t matter. Dutton’s plan, to again portray the prime minister as indecisive and lacking vigour, played out the way he wanted.
The reason for Dutton’s obsession with this line of attack – whether on antisemitism or more trivial issues like flags, “woke” public servants or whether shops were selling the right plastic merchandise on Australia Day – is obvious.
Without much policy of his own, he doesn’t have a lot to talk about except the country’s leader.
With at most 12 weeks until election day, Dutton and the Coalition have announced little proactive ideas of their own beyond the uncosted nuclear plan that experts point out would not deliver material benefits for at least a decade.
And with the leader facing a five-week official campaign period where he will be tailed by journalists and expected to front press conferences most days, discussion in Canberra has turned to what kind of campaign Dutton will run – because in the glare of the cameras, he will have to either announce some policy or explain why he hasn’t.
For any other party leader, Liberal or Labor, it would be nearly unthinkable even to consider they may not run a standard campaign with a travelling media pack. But there’s a reason Dutton had to be asked that question this week – having ducked the National Press Club his whole leadership, and barely held a Canberra press conference in the last year, whispers had crept around parliament that Dutton might run a truncated campaign of some sort.
“How big a plane would you like? We can negotiate menus,” Dutton joked when asked about the rumour.
“We’ll be there with bells on and talking to you. I wouldn’t get too excited with that Canberra story. I’m very happy to take questions, to speak with you regularly.”
In the transcript of the press conference, Dutton’s office referred to it as an “iconic Canberra bubble question” – as if it was an outrageous question to check whether the opposition leader, who has so far thumbed his nose at traditional political notions of engaging with media and giving opportunities for scrutiny, would engage with media and give opportunities for scrutiny on election eve.
While Dutton rarely makes a blunder in press conferences, his hardman mask rarely slipping, he sometimes finds himself exposed as lacking detail. Pressed on his plan to slash the public service, the opposition leader couldn’t say which jobs he would cut from the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet – the office he seeks to lead after this election – or how he would plan to reduce the Australian public service, whether by hiring freeze or redundancies or by some other method.
“I’ve been clear we’re not having 36,000 additional public servants in Canberra,” he said.
Except the Coalition hasn’t been clear, far from it. And Dutton is running out of time before he will have to start giving proper answers.