With the wreckage of the Coalition’s disastrous 2025 election campaign still smouldering, a consensus began to crystallise in Canberra.
It went like this: Peter Dutton’s campaign had been too shambolic to seriously threaten Labor, and he was simply too right wing for mainstream Australia.
“It was almost as if we were running out of new people to offend,” was the summation of former Liberal frontbencher George Brandis.
Just over a year on, and Canberra is fixated on an even more right-wing figure, with even less experience in national campaigns.
