Challenger not yet in same league as Abbott

HERE’S Peter Dutton’s first problem: as Prime Minister he’d still be hated for being a Tony Abbott substitute when he doesn’t have Abbott’s strengths.

He is actually the conservative the divided Liberals could live with, but not the best they could have.

Too many Liberal MPs hate Abbott too much to pick the leader more likely to save them.

Too many accuse Abbott of being a wrecker. Too many on the party’s Left fear him for what he is: the party’s most potent conservative.

Abbott knows his time is therefore not now, and is backing Dutton rather than himself.

Other Liberals are also switching their support to the man who seems most like Abbott but isn’t actually called Abbott — to the Home Affairs Minister who is Abbott’s confidant.

Dutton’s enemies have attacked that association from the moment Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s tried — and failed — to destroy Dutton with a surprise leadership ballot that Turnbull won only narrowly.

In Parliament hours later, Deputy Labor leader Tanya Plibersek accused Dutton of “sitting on the lap” of Abbott “like a really scary wooden puppet” with Abbott’s hand “up his back”.

That message is already out on talkback.

“He’s just a stooge for Abbott,” one ABC caller cried yesterday.

But Dutton’s real problem is not that he’s too much like Abbott but not like him enough.

Yes, Dutton is also a plain speaker and a social conservative with the courage to stand against the media Left. But he is yet to show he shares Abbott’s gift for devising bold policies, and the cut-through lines that turns those policies into potent weapons.

It was Abbott who decided, to howls of derision, that the Liberals would “stop the boats”.

Dutton as Home Affairs Minister simply followed Abbott’s plan.

Nor has Dutton yet shown that he has Abbott’s policy breadth.

It is true that Dutton has an impressively broad CV, having served as Assistant Treasurer, Sports Minister, Revenue Minister, Health Minister and Immigration Minister before being given the Home Affairs super-ministry.

But he has not yet shown what he would do that’s different to what the hapless Turnbull is now promising.

On Tuesday he merely hinted he might cut immigration: “We can do more on infrastructure and in particular around the migration program, until the infrastructure can catch up in our capital cities.” Abbott, in contrast, has the cut-through: cut immigration by 80,000 a year.

Dutton was similarly vague about the global warming policies that has triggered the Liberal revolt against Turnbull, saying he wanted to “get the policies and the message right about lowering electricity prices”.

Abbott, in contrast, has the cut-through: tear up the Paris Agreement on global warming that forces us to cut emissions, driving up prices.

Dutton doesn’t seem to have a practical agenda for change. Yesterday he suggested GST be taken off electricity bills, at a huge cost of $2 billion a year. His call for a royal commission into power prices was just a stunt.

More ominously, Dutton has been largely silent on all the controversial issues that have agitated the Liberals’ conservative base — issues on which Abbott has been loud. What has he said to defend free speech or attack identity politics? Would he scrap the Human Rights Commission? Would he cut the ABC?

To be fair to Dutton, he tried to be a team player as a Minister, avoiding talking about issues that weren’t in his own area of responsibility.

So maybe now, free as a backbencher, he will give us all the views and policies he’s had to keep to himself. Maybe he’ll now show he is as powerful and original as Abbott in arguing for them.

But will Dutton even try to match Abbott as the conservative hero?

You see, he has a second problem: he is seen as the grim man who turned back the boats and kept children in detention.

In his first interview after Tuesday’s ballot, Dutton said he wanted to show he was actually nicer than that and “talk about the other side of me the public might not know”.

For instance: “I have a selfdeprecating sense of humour and like a drink like anyone else.”

Uh oh. Would a man on a mission to show he has a heart then promise to slash immigration and scrap the Paris Agreement?

Still, Dutton may yet do just that. His sales job has only just started.

But for now, many conservatives will be asking: if we want Dutton to be more like Abbott, why not have Abbott himself?