There's no insurance for policy on the run

Peter Dutton could have been still riding high on the wave of good polling numbers suggesting The Lodge is within his reach, but instead, he’s spitting sand out of his mouth after being dumped on the beach of bewilderment over his own policy-on-the-run comments.

Pollster YouGov’s latest survey suggests the Opposition Leader might well be in a position to form minority government after this year’s election if he can coax two or three crossbenchers into supporting the Coalition.

It’s just another poll, and there will be many more published before the only poll that counts comes around on election day.

With an election so close, however, the numbers would have buoyed Coalition ranks so eager to get back on the Treasury benches.

It would be an impressive victory indeed, to displace a one-term Labor government.

One-term federal governments are very rare in Australian politics, the most recent being in 1931 when Labor’s James Scullin was toppled in the midst of the Great Depression.

Dutton would have Australians believe the nation’s economic circumstances are almost as dire and require a change of government.

Cost of living has been his mantra for some time because he believes such scaremongering will work on the electorate.

So when polling indicates that he might be onto something, it’s cause for celebration, even if only behind closed doors, so as not to invite the curse of hubris.

But the Opposition Leader brought that party to a crashing halt on the weekend with some nonsensical rambling about tearing up the insurance sector.

Dutton used a number of interviews to put the idea out there that he intends to carve up the insurance industry just like he plans to break up supermarket and hardware chains.

Insurance premiums are getting out of control, he insists, and he’s going to do something about it.

“There are, obviously, reinsurance issues, some of which are outside of our country’s control, but we need competition, we need depth in the insurance pool and we need to make sure that we’re not being ripped off by insurance companies,” he said during one interview.

“As we’ve done with the supermarkets, where we have threatened divestment if consumers are being ripped off; similarly, in the insurance market, we will intervene to make sure that consumers get a fair go.”

The insurance industry’s response was an immediate ‘good luck with that’ and commentary to the effect that divestiture is not a silver bullet for rising insurance premiums.

That’s fine; Dutton can deal with that kind of talk.

But it’s the response from within his own ranks that have wounded the Opposition Leader.

None of his frontbench backed him up on the issue when asked about it because they didn’t know about it.

It’s obvious Dutton didn’t take his brainstorm of an idea to his shadow cabinet before he took it to the media.

Nationals leader David Littleproud put paid to the idea during a Radio National interview on Monday (17 February) when he made it clear that Dutton’s policy idea wasn’t put to the Coalition’s joint party room because – wait for it – “it’s not a policy”.

“It would be unfair to say that was a policy announced by Peter Dutton,” Littleproud added.

“What he said was, don’t underestimate our determination to look to pull policy levers that we have in other industries.”

OK, that’s as clear as mud – which was muddied further by Dutton’s subsequent obfuscation over whether he had indeed put the plan to the party.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers put it quite succinctly when he noted that without the Nationals, the Coalition has no policy.

“We know that because David Littleproud shafted the leader of his party this morning,” Chalmers said during a press conference on Monday.

“So Peter Dutton’s so-called policy didn’t last 24 hours.”

Dutton’s thought bubble also led to further questions about his grand nuclear plan for the nation and whether insurance had been factored into the costs of the scheme.

Apparently not. You don’t have to think about these things when you make policy on the run.

Can we get back to talking about the polling numbers, anyone?