Dutton cut his ACT candidates loose before they even started

Peter Dutton has made it all but impossible for any of his candidates in the ACT to win a seat at the imminent federal election.

Why? APS jobs, that’s why.

The Opposition Leader and his front bench have made an art form over the past year of bashing the Australian Public Service and promising to slash jobs if the Coalition is elected.

To be precise, 36,000 jobs.

He is also threatening to somehow force public servants back into the office five days a week, despite them having an enterprise agreement giving them the flexibility for hybrid work-from-home arrangements.

The Opposition Leader knows there are more federal public servants living and working outside of Canberra than those located in the capital.

But it’s a much-loved Coalition tactic to pretend all public servants live in the ACT to enable the Liberals and Nationals to denigrate Canberra and Canberrans in the chase for votes.

Because, quite simply, Mr Dutton has written off his ACT candidates long ago – before they were even pre-selected.

He knows there is slim chance of an endorsed Liberal candidate getting up in this “Labor town” full of public servants, so he’s quite comfortable with employing a strategy of making the task even more difficult for them.

It’s an impossible ask for Coalition candidates on the ground in Canberra to campaign while their leader is bagging out their constituency ad nauseam.

This is how it’s playing out.

A teenage Liberal candidate (yes, a teenager) has been forced this week to downplay Mr Dutton’s promised assault on the public service by saying no-one in the APS needs to worry about losing their jobs.

Really? No-one has to worry about losing their jobs? No-one in the APS? Really?

So, who’s telling the truth and who’s fudging it here?

Is 19-year-old ANU student William Roche, who also just happens to be a Liberal Party candidate for the seat of Canberra at this coming election, actually calling his federal leader a bit of a fibber?

Is he saying the Opposition Leader is just messing with members of the APS and the Australian voting public when he says there will be mass sackings?

The teenager is using terms such as “natural attrition” to explain how a Coalition government will find efficiencies in the public service.

But that’s not what Mr Dutton, his Shadow Finance Minister Jane Hume and a host of other Coalition A-listers are saying.

They are being extremely explicit about 36,000 jobs in the APS going pretty much straight away – and that’s just for starters.

The Coalition has to do that, Mr Duttons says, so it can pay for its Medicare promises.

Did he not explain this policy to his teenage candidate?

Do the Liberals now have to discipline their teenage man in Canberra for contradicting the federal leader?

The continual ranting about “bludging” public servants and a fat bureaucracy might help the Coalition win some votes around the rest of the country – although it’s just as likely to not help at all (did we mention there are heaps of public servants living in the other states?) – as people are genuinely worried about losing vital frontline services.

But here in the nation’s capital, such rhetoric will only serve to alienate members of the Coalition even further than they are already.

It’s only a handful of seats Mr Dutton can live without and can’t win anyway, so why not employ the much-used and much-loved Canberra-bashing tactic?

And at the same time he can throw his ACT candidates to the wolves, under a bus, in the deep end, and any other much-used and much-loved term to describe their completely dire situation.

Canberrans voted for the Voice anyway so let’s write them off completely, yeah?

It brings us back, however, to the question of who is actually telling the truth about APS job losses.

Is it Mr Dutton or is it his teenage candidate?

Mr Roche’s mum works for DFAT so he must be talking with some authority on the issue. Surely?