The election is upon us. So if you were looking for a word to describe what Mr Dutton and the Coalition are offering the voters what would you choose? For me, I think I’d go with ‘faint-hearted’. This Liberal party election platform isn’t going to set anyone’s heart alight with excitement, is it? I think this is a big mistake. The Dutton advisors are too poll-driven. Too small-target. Too keen to try to please institutions (think the ABC) and people who will never support or vote for them. It’s as though Team Dutton wants to re-run the Morrison strategy (2022, not 2019) or the Crisafulli approach – which, sure, works once every three or four elections but delivers you a mandate for next to nothing in a situation where Australia needs a mighty course correction pronto. So ‘faint-hearted’ is the kind way of putting this.

Start with immigration. This is an issue that could win Mr Dutton the election all by itself. Parties promising huge cuts in immigration to the voters are getting historic results in Europe. More and more economic studies are coming to the conclusion that big-scale immigration does not make the locals richer – that’s the line we’ve been fed for eons and it’s wrong. Sure, highly skilled immigrants increase per capita GDP. But low-skilled and family reunification ones do not. People largely sense that. Meanwhile all this near-record immigration delivers increased traffic and over-burdened infrastructure. It is a huge factor in driving housing costs beyond the reach of the non-affluent young (meaning that big cuts to the intake will do more for the young than fiddling with superannuation to let chunks be taken out early to buy a house – a policy that will just drive up house prices further anyway). Then there are all the cultural issues. Let’s be honest. Australia for the past couple of decades has run an immigration scheme under which many of those welcomed in do not share our core values. No honest person denies that this is the biggest cause of the shocking antisemitism we’re seeing. Relatedly, these failures in multiculturalism – the ones driven by its implicit embrace of identity politics and, later on, grievance politics – force our supine politicians to go down the path of speech suppression. They fear letting citizens speak what is often the truth about the failures of some of the political caste’s past policies. And the Libs are not really any longer a pro-free-speech party anyway, are they?

We’re also bringing in some people who marvel at our super-generous welfare entitlements. And are happy to take them. By all means bring in hard-working Vietnamese who hold two jobs and bring with them an incredible work ethic. It’s another matter when groups go straight on the dole. And when we see multi-generational immigrant welfare families.

So in response to the world’s highest per capita immigration Ponzi scheme the Coalition does what? It promises a meagre 25-per-cent cut in immigration. Seriously? Are they that in hock to the universities and chamber of commerce types who, respectively, are basically selling visas and want cheap labour? Even purely in political terms it would have been far better to promise a 50-per-cent cut. The slogans then write themselves: ‘We’re going to halve immigration!’ And that builds in a bit of fat because I have huge doubts that the Coalition will be able to deliver even on this enervated 25-per-cent pledge once in government. The bureaucracy will do everything it can to keep numbers as high as possible. This was a sure thing that the Coalition has let slip through its fingers.

Remember, it’s also in the context of Australia having had seven quarters of GDP per person decline. At the level of the individual, all of us have been getting a lot poorer. We are worse off than in 2022. Running the ‘Let’s let in only three-quarters of the millions Albo did’ doesn’t do it for me. You? And the 25-per-cent cut pledge looks so insipid you have to wonder who makes these calls.

Then there’s the incoherence in the messages the Coalition is sending as regards energy and electricity prices. Yes, Team Dutton is totally correct in promising to get big gas projects approved and pumping out our gas. Yes, nuclear works and delivers baseload power in a way that wind, solar and hydrogen simply never will. Being against nuclear while dwelling in some climate catastrophism worldview is barmy. So supporting nuclear is a good idea. So is digging up as much coal as we can, not least because we’re fast approaching a state of affairs where the only world-class things this country still does are mining and farming. But all of those promises, while on the money, are essentially incoherent when Australia is still committed to net zero and the Paris Accord. These international undertakings are premised on the world coming to an end due to man-made carbon dioxide emissions. You simply cannot walk the tightrope of purporting to agree with the doomsters and at the same time wanting to do things that will significantly lower energy costs – by bringing the supposed doom nearer. Look Team Dutton, Trump’s pledge to kill net zero gained him all sorts of votes. Down here in Oz it is easy to point out that, with China building a couple of coal power stations every week and India and the US ignoring net zero, all the billions in renewables subsidies are now straight-up impoverishing performance art. Wankery. Its only remaining justification is the bizarre belief that Australia will be a moral beacon to other countries to impoverish themselves without making a jot of difference to the world’s temperatures.

You would have thought Dutton et al. would have learned from watching Tony Abbott in opposition taking positions the ABC and Fairfax loathed. Look, I get that the Coalition is hampered on the economic front due to the dire state of our books. And I get that it’s hard for the Libs to pretend to be fiscally sane when, during the Covid years, they spent more to prop up Morrison’s disgraceful lockdown thuggery than Labor is spending. (The resulting asset inflation from that, by the way, has transferred more wealth from young to old than anything the woeful Chalmers has done.) And sure, a Labor government would have been even worse than Lockdown Scott. But the fact remains that today’s Libs cannot pretend to be Maggie Thatcher. But thus far, their faint-heartedness when faced with the dire circumstances of this country has been mind-boggling. Go big now Peter, the way you should have done from the day after the failed Voice referendum.

I’ve been saying it for years. Every single Liberal party advisor needs to be fired. No bravery, no big picture policies, just tinkering and small targets. Dutton can still get over the line but he’ll have a mandate for next to nothing. Come on! Pull your fingers out, Libs, and go big. Or at least bigger.