Last year, some people felt comfortable predicting the winner of the 2025 election campaign was more likely to be Peter Dutton.

Not because he had shown himself to be a formidable campaigner outside his electorate (he hasn’t) or because of his reputation as a policy wonk (he isn’t), but because he had resuscitated the Coalition, mainly by capitalising on Anthony Albanese’s many bloopers and strategic errors.

Illustration by Joe Benke

This year has a very different vibe. Dutton has had a shaky start. He has sounded flat, looked flat-footed and seemed woefully unprepared for a fight he knew was coming on territory he should have already staked out. Meanwhile, Albanese has performed better and Labor has prepared better for the contest.

This is Dutton’s first federal election campaign, possibly the first time in his political life that he will face sustained national scrutiny for weeks. It will be a supreme test of his stamina and reflexes.

That could be a problem for someone who avoids getting bogged down in details of costings or numbers and has habitually disappeared from the media cycle for days, usually when there were adverse stories around. Do that in a campaign and you are done for.

Dutton has made a lot of mistakes – both of commission and omission – since the campaign unofficially began in early January, and the mistakes are beginning to catch up with him. He should have released policies sooner to address the cost of living. He needs to stop jumping into culture wars or parading on obsessions, the latest being the “indoctrination” of schoolkids, but refusing to say how or where that is........

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