C’mon, Dutt Dutt!

Rowan Dean I 19 April 2025 I Spectator Australia

The Coalition can still win. That is the lesson of recent elections in Australia (where the polls have frequently been wrong) and the lesson of the recent US presidential election (where the media’s insistence that the Democrats had it in the bag was also wrong).

The Coalition can still win. That is also a statement of hope over experience, due to the fact that a first-term government has not been thrown out in Australia since the 1930s. Yet there is a first time for everything, and it may well be that the Albanese government has grossly underestimated just how unpopular it is with the vast majority of Australians, who are quietly seething just waiting to get into the polling booths and express their anger in the most effective way available to them. This is, after all, one of the worst and most uninspiring governments in our history.

The Coalition can still win. Governments have two main jobs. To keep the country safe and to keep the economy buoyant. When it comes to the former, Australians have had to endure the ignominy of Chinese warships mocking us off our shores and as for the latter, well, we are a trillion dollars in debt and the cost of living has turned from an irritant into a crisis. Treasurer Jim Chalmers has shown himself to be a hopeless fantasist and egotist (who early on proclaimed he was ‘reinventing capitalism,) with only the slimmest grasp of the most basic economic concepts.

The Coalition can still win. If there is one thing that the election of Donald Trump proved beyond a shadow of doubt, it is that common sense is the most valuable of political currencies. Regardless of where you stand on various specific issues, it is inarguable that Mr Trump succeeded in presenting and selling his political solutions on the basis of everyday common sense. The average voter can still be won over through an appeal to common sense. Although, foolishly, the Coalition has not fought this election on so-called ‘culture wars’, it is still not too late to pull several talkback topics out of the campaign hat. Australia’s most credible common-touch politician, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, should be out front and centre..

The Coalition can still win. Every day we learn of more businesses, many iconic, going under, due to this woeful economy.

The Coalition can still win. With Russia making aggressive noises about plans to base naval vessels on our doorstep, now is the perfect time to put Andrew Hastie on the front line of the election campaign. Who better than a former SAS officer to come to the defence of this nation, and to outline how to protect ourselves from the terrifying threats in the years ahead? Indeed, this could be Mr Dutton’s Tampa moment, one that swings the entire dynamic of the election in his favour.

The Coalition can still win. There are numerous known unknowns in this election, none more so than the fate of the Teals. Having romped in with such stunning electoral success at the last election, based on their fraudulent pretence of being ‘Liberals who care about climate change’, these virtue-signalling and largely clueless women have severely distorted the political landscape, denying the Liberals key seats and bolstering Labor in government. Their green-clad voting record in parliament is shameful, and their links to the rapacious renewables industry disingenuous in the extreme. In normal circumstances, they would probably hold on to most of their key seats.

But the events of 7 October and the Teals’ appalling response to that atrocity – going so far as to lobby Penny Wong to reinstate funding to the Hamas-affiliated Unrwa – should see a mass desertion of the Jewish vote in several key contests. With luck, the Liberals’ Ro Knox and Amelie Hamer will enter the new parliament. The Liberal party cannot win this election unless a majority of the Teal seats are reclaimed. With many voters in those seats probably now having second thoughts about them, a collapse of the Teal vote could be the Easter surprise waiting to be unwrapped in this election.

The Coalition can still win. No matter how effectively the Prime Minister may think he is performing on the campaign trail, nothing can disguise the simple fact that he leads a truly unappealing and incompetent group of cabinet ministers. For very good reason, most of these are being kept well away from the campaign trail and the TV studios. The most obnoxious of all is, of course, the lamentable and hapless Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, whose net zero obsessions are devastating beauty spots and landscapes across the nation and out to sea, and whose one-eyed fanaticism is comparable with the worst Eastern European commissars during the last century.

Also ‘missing in action’ from the hustings is Foreign Minister Penny Wong, whose anti-Israel actions and words have indubitably encouraged much of the horrific post-7 October left-wing antisemitism that is now disgracefully viewed by the rest of the world as endemic in this nation.

The Coalition can still win. Pull out of the economy-destroying Paris Agreement. Abandon net zero. Slash immigration dramatically. Stand up to Russia and China.

Gout Gout is currently our most inspirational sprinter. He’d know what to do. Dig in. Go hard. Pull out all the stops. Be imaginative. Be brave. Defy the naysayers. Show no mercy. Save your very best for the final sprint.

C’mon, Dutt Dutt! You can do it.

Author: Rowan Dean