The Labor Party email looked suspiciously like mischief. On 10 April national secretary Paul Erickson sent a dispatch to the party’s supporters suggesting new research showed opposition leader Peter Dutton could lose his outer-Brisbane seat of Dickson. Badged as “breaking” news, the message was a brazen fundraising pitch to Labor voters around the country to “chip in” and amplify the party’s campaign “right across” the electorate.
During a campaign-trail news conference in Perth the next day, Dutton was asked about his grip on the seat he’s held since 2001. He was ready.
“I’ve never taken my seat for granted and I’ve worked hard every day,” he assured the journalist who was citing the parade of senior ministers turning up in Dickson to campaign alongside third-time Labor contender Ali France. It was Dutton himself who brought up the fundraising email.
“They’re carpet bombing, saying ‘donate to the Labor Party’ to get rid of me,” he said. “It’s a PR stunt. They’ve used some second-rate polling arrangement to suit their narrative to fundraise.”
Dutton insisted he was fine and, what’s more, that different polling suggested the Liberals could take the seats of Brisbane and Ryan back from the Greens and win Blair and even Lilley from Labor. He spoke confidently about the mood in his home state.
“I think Queensland is onto Anthony Albanese in a big way and they know that he’s been a disaster for Queensland and for our country,” he said. “And if he wants to spend every dollar he’s got in Queensland or in Dickson, bring it on.”
Electoral mind games are as old as democracy, and with so much at stake everybody’s into them. The intriguing thing about these shenanigans is that both sides are a little bit right. The Liberals are a chance of taking at least one of either Ryan or Brisbane and are also devoting attention and resources to Labor-held Blair, although flipping it is a tough challenge. Lilley, held by minister Anika Wells, is even more of a stretch.
Erickson’s email was certainly designed to drum up donations and fuel speculation about the Liberal leader’s vulnerability. At the same time, with an official margin of just 1.7 per cent making it Queensland’s most narrowly held federal seat, Dickson is at least theoretically winnable for Labor.
Even accounting for the presumed extra percentage that being a party leader tends to add to an incumbent’s on-paper margin, some in Labor insist there’s a genuine — albeit small — chance that, this time, they could snatch the seat. Liberals dismiss this prospect as vanishingly small.
Still, as Joseph Heller observed in his novel Catch-22, just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. In other words, even though it’s highly unlikely to happen, it could.
That’s underscored by the noted procession of frontbenchers who’ve cycled through the outer Brisbane electorate to promote France — the candidate, not the country — in the past week or so, including Tanya Plibersek, Penny Wong, Chris Bowen and Katy Gallagher. Parties don’t devote resources to a seat for no reason. But is the stated reason the real one or is something else going on?
Well, both.
That sliver of plausibility about Dutton’s possible fate is why starting the conversation is so valuable to Labor. It’s not just about winning the seat.
If Labor can get some momentum behind the idea that Dutton could be ousted — just enough for pressure on his margin to start showing up in some kind of polling even a tiny bit — it can introduce a whole new scare to the national campaign: what if the Coalition wins government but Dutton loses? Who’s the prime minister then? Angus Taylor? Sussan Ley?
It’s a weapon Labor has wielded before at the state level, in that case against then Queensland Liberal National leader Campbell Newman, and it appears to be positioning to do it again, seeking to use any concerns about Dutton to leverage even greater doubts about those around him.
Labor would be thrilled if it won Dickson. The defeat of John Howard and Tony Abbott, an incumbent and a former prime minister, proved that these things can happen. So does Morrison government minister Ben Morton’s shock defeat in his West Australian seat of Tangney on election night 2022 after he’d spent most of the campaign traversing the country with Morrison instead of back home with his own constituents. But all three lost after years in government, not in opposition.
Labor has detected increased cynicism about Dutton in Dickson since he flew to a fundraiser in Sydney rather than stay among his people as Cyclone Alfred approached. So this is not a phoney bid.
But there’s a bigger goal that makes the speculation itself worth fuelling. If talking up Dutton’s demise makes would-be Liberal voters hesitate elsewhere at the prospect of electing a prime minister Taylor or Ley and helps keep the Coalition in opposition, that’s the real prize.
To be clear, the Liberals aren’t concerned about the seat of Dickson, at least not at this stage. But the risk of succumbing to the other Labor agenda explains why Dutton was out of the blocks so fast last week, highlighting Labor’s fundraising pitch and branding all the speculation firmly as a stunt. He needs to scotch it, pronto.
These tactical battles around Dutton’s own seat are emblematic of the kind of contest we’re witnessing as polling day approaches.
This is no linear election. Except possibly in Victoria, where there is a more general sense that voters may be ready to punish federal Labor for state Labor’s sins, election 2025 is not expected to be one of those uniform-swing events.
This means while the published polls can certainly indicate a trend — currently in Labor’s favour — they shouldn’t be read as gospel on what’s happening across the country. It ain’t over, not by a long shot.
This election campaign is a seat-by-seat proposition. Many may change hands on 3 May but that won’t automatically result in a big net shift one way or the other. It’s messy, and these final two weeks will be fascinating.
Dutton and his team have made some big campaign mistakes but they aren’t necessarily fatal. Albanese made big blunders during the 2022 campaign and still triumphed, albeit against a clearly unpopular prime minister and a government that had been in office in various incarnations for nine years.
Albanese is fortunate Dutton overreached so badly this week on whether Russia wanted to establish a military base in Indonesia and Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie dreamed up an anti-Dutton conspiracy involving Russia and China, missteps for which both had to apologise. Those own goals allowed Albanese to highlight one of his key themes, that the other side isn’t ready to govern.
They also helped cover Albanese’s own slip-ups. His evasiveness on the future of negative gearing and the cost of energy has also provided ammunition for the Coalition’s assertion that he is slippery and untruthful. The louder these messages get in coming days, the more you’ll know they are striking a chord.
As we enter the final weeks, keep an eye out for more Labor attacks on key members of Dutton’s team along with the standard sledges against the leader himself. Also watch who says what about Dickson and if either leader shows up there. All of that combined will be the best guide to whether this particular Labor game plan has any legs. •
