Peter Dutton’s long-awaited military spending plan was supposed to be the Coalition’s chance to shift the election debate onto the former defence minister’s favoured terrain.
Instead, Dutton ran into yet more questions about his preparation for the election contest as he revealed the plan in a hot defence manufacturing factory in Perth on Wednesday, raising further questions over what his own MPs privately describe as a thin and rushed policy agenda.
“Leaving policies so late is a tactic that belongs in the Howard era, and we haven’t learnt our lesson from last time when Morrison’s super-for-housing policy should have come earlier,” one opposition minister, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss internal party matters, said. “We needed to offer more than just saying we’re not Labor, and we’ve so far failed.”