It should never have been the case. Peter Dutton, leader of the Coalition opposition, is in with a chance to win the 3 May Australian election.

His cruelty, his pathologies, his insistence that somewhere, inside all of us, is a criminal yearning to get out, have templated his approach to politics. He is the stereotypical cop turned politician, tenanted to paranoia and a full-throated dislike of, as he stated in his maiden parliamentary speech in 2002, such “bodies like the Civil Liberties Council and the Refugee Action Collective”.

Till the very recent narrowing of the polls, Dutton’s Coalition had steamed ahead with inexplicable momentum. The Albanese Government seemed to dawdle and waddle, dither and fret. Policy goals seemed to diminish before Dutton’s neanderthal bashings. There was even a sense that Dutton might do well in a state the federal Liberals have struggled in: Victoria. This is a remarkable shift from previous assessments, many coming from within the Liberal Party, that Dutton was “toxic” in the state.

Party strategists and fallacy-minded commentators seem to think that an unpopular state Labor government will somehow see votes leak to the Coalition. In such an analysis, the Australian voter is reduced to a simpleton, incapable of distinguishing between state and Commonwealth governments.

The simpleton line is, however, something Dutton is willing to exploit. During a January visit to the seat of Aston, he felt confident to pronounce on policies outside the Commonwealth’s domain. “I think Victorians have had a gutful of weak bail laws and the repeat offenders that are cruelling lives and really destroying communities.”

At various turns, Dutton has focused on the only things he knows. Most are seemingly drawn from the Cabinet of Inflated Threats. It is a lamentable reality that fear is often convertible in the voting market. To that end, he has exploited the imaginary China threat (the circumnavigation of Australia by Chinese warships giving him much fodder); the confected spike in antisemitism in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks against Israel on 7 October 2023; and the finding by the High Court that indefinite detention is unlawful and unconstitutional.

The High Court’s ruling led him to accuse the Albanese Government of releasing “hardcore criminals from immigration into the community”, a clear admission of ignorance about the importance of the rule of law. And, just to return to an old favourite, he obsesses about those wicked people smugglers operating to bring illegal boats to Australian shores.

Those are mere trimmings of a particularly unsavoury resumé. When minister for Home Affairs, he made it his business to terrify Australians at various intervals. In January 2018, he declared with false authority that Victorians were “scared to go out to restaurants” on account of “African gang violence”. He accused the then Andrews state government of wrapping “the police force in this politically correct conversation”.

When he has not pursued fear, Dutton has courted fantasy. Establishing a domestic nuclear industry is a crowning glory in that regard. Its cost would be staggering: anywhere between $116 to $600 billion in taxpayer funds while providing a mere 3.7% of Australia’s energy composition in 2050.

In achieving it, the Coalition has dissimulated and deceived while ignoring the legislative impediments at the state level that would make implementing the plan nigh impossible. Even after Coalition pressure on the CSIRO and Australian Energy Market Operator to consider the longevity of nuclear power plants, the GenCost draft report, released on 9 December 2024 by the two agencies was clear: renewables remained less costly in generating electricity relative to nuclear alternatives.

The nuclear fantasy, however, seems less biting of late. Dutton’s budget reply speech on 27 March pares back the nuclear dream by mentioning it only twice: a throwaway line of Australia joining “the other 19 top economies in the world in adopting proven, zero-emissions nuclear power” and a reference to its “high yield of energy and small footprint” which will negate any need to “carpet our parks, prime agricultural land, and coastlines with industrial scale renewables".

Another more recent addition is the vague, problematic National Gas Plan that envisages the creation of an east coast gas reservation. Doing so, claims Dutton, will secure somewhere between 10% to 20% of demand on the east coast. “Gas sold on the domestic market will be de-coupled from overseas markets to protect Australia from international price shocks.”

The proposal was scorned by the cognoscenti in the energy market, with Saul Kavonic, head of energy research at MST Marquee, certain that it would reduce available gas to Australian users while compelling exports to reduce shipments for such markets as Japan. “It may prove a political noose at the subsequent election,” suggests Kavonic in a note to clients obtained by the ABC, painting a grim picture of broken export contracts and gas shortages.

At the last hurdle, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese finally showed the political acumen seemingly lacking during the Voice referendum campaign, his fawning, ill-considered approach to AUKUS, and the squashing of the proposed Environment Protection Agency. He stole any thunder Dutton might have profited from in his budget reply speech by visiting the governor-general at the crack of dawn the following day. But much more than mere tactical manoeuvring will be needed to prevent Dutton from taking the laurels.