Dutton delivers his pitch
The opposition leader is focusing firmly on the Australian population's pain points in an effort to contrast the Coalition's plans with Labor's forward-looking Future Made in Australia policy.
Peter Dutton mightn’t be trying to hit the pause button on Australia, but he’s certainly trying to slow things down.
The opposition leader’s budget reply last night was carefully crafted to move the debate away from Australia’s far-flung challenges and generational economic shifts and back towards immediate concerns like the cost of living and the housing affordability crisis.
Dutton is promising Australians he will tap the brakes, not the accelerator, by temporarily slashing immigration numbers and banning foreigners from buying property. And he went to significant lengths to contrast the Albanese government’s decade-long $22.7 billion Future Made in Australia plan (which the Coalition is depicting as a handout for billionaires and will oppose) with the reality of an economy where many are in pain right now.
“People are worried about cost of living, people are worried about the energy system, worried about higher electricity costs, worried about getting into a house and hopefully we reflected a lot of that last night,” Dutton said this morning on 2GB. He has repeatedly declined to go into more detail about the Coalition’s longer-term proposals, such as the specifics of where his government would place nuclear reactors or how it would tackle the structural deficit.
