Dutton’s faux news training is a key reason why his campaign is struggling

Peter Dutton’s biggest problems in the election campaign so far have come from poorly thought-through policies and his own indiscipline in failing to stay on message. Both are at least partly the result of the echo chamber in which Dutton has immersed himself for the past three years. As opposition leader, Dutton has been highly averse to being challenged by journalists.

According to his transcripts, he’s done just 16 media conferences in Canberra — either full-blown media conferences where he has faced probing by the press gallery, or doorstops which provided fewer opportunities for journalists. And as time has gone on, he’s done fewer and fewer — just three in the last year. He went seven months without doing one in Canberra from July last year to February.



He’s also been reluctant to submit to questioning by the ABC: the total of his interviews and appearances on the national broadcaster (which seems to lead half its political stories with “Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says...

”) over the past nearly three years is just more than 30 — which includes interviews on ABC local radio as well as major television interviews. Then there’s his now-famous habit of hiding from the media after a bungle, or bad news for the Coalition, often leaving shadow ministers to front the media instead. But if Dutton doesn’t like the press gallery or the ABC, it’s clear who he does like: he’s done 26 interviews with right-wing shock-jock Ben Fordham, and spoken more than 50 times on now-retired Ray Hadley’s program.

And he’s appeared on Sky News programs over 80 times, more than his Canberra press conferences and ABC appearances put together. The results of that refusal to allow questioning are now clear. Dutton and his team have been living inside an ideological bubble detached from what the majority of Australians think.

Take his working from home debacle, or the promise to sack tens of thousands of public servants. Both policies, taken directly from Donald Trump, naturally went down a treat with audiences on Australia’s own version of Fox News. But both — especially the attack on working from home — went down like a bomb with voters, and have now been shelved in humiliating backflips.

It was a political version of Sky News’ shitflingers’ lamentation that their own audience was biased after the latter declared Anthony Albanese won the little-watched debate earlier this week. Worse than concocting policies in an alternate reality where Trump is revered is that Dutton just isn’t used to being challenged. He now finds himself having to face journalists every day.

His training for this? Being asked softball questions about how awful Labor is by buffoons like Sharri Markson, rather than explaining his own policies to a sceptical media. As a result, Dutton has no experience in unveiling complex policy to critical journalists (remember his dud nuclear costings, released in December while Dutton was in Queensland, safely away from the press gallery). It’s staggering that even now, key details of his gas reservation policy — which increasingly looks like a cobbled-together, back-of-the-envelope job dreamt up because of heightened expectations around his budget reply — are unclear, including when consumers might ever see the tiddling savings that are supposed to flow from it.

A match-fit politician used to being grilled by sceptical or even hostile journalists — what Labor MPs face every day from News Corp’s and Kerry Stokes’ outlets — understands the need to have key details nailed down, knows what messages they want to emphasise in relation to a policy, knows how to stick to a line, and has wargamed with their staff what could go wrong with an announcement or how it will be portrayed. But if you spend your life being asked to explain in detail how terrible Anthony Albanese is, those skills are left undeveloped. So Dutton is now on a steep learning curve, a lot like Albanese was in 2022, when the people he regarded as his friends in the media suddenly turned into yelling, baying critics.

Liberal MPs will be hoping he’s as quick or a quicker learner than the prime minister. In a highly concentrated campaign already interrupted by holidays and Easter, he has time to turn things around, but not much. Have something to say about this article? Write to us at letters@crikey.

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