We're listening to what people have to say. We've made a mistake in relation to the policy. We apologize for that and we've dealt with it.
We made a mistake. Tough words for any politician, but in the heat of an election campaign, they can really hurt.
More than that.
This is the white BACKFLI.
I mean, this was one of your signature policies. If you're making this kind of a mistake during an election campaign, how can you be trusted as Prime Minister?
Well, Sarah, I think if you have a look at my track record over the last twenty year.
In a spectacular reversal, Peter Dutton has walked back his policy to sack forty one thousand public servants, saying he'll now wait for people to quit and that he will no longer force those who remain back into the office. But it doesn't just raise questions about sincerity, it also leaves the opposition with a giant black hole when it comes to funding their other election promises. From Schwartz Media,
I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM Today. Jason Kotsugus on the panic inside the coalition and what it means for Peter Dunn's leadership. It's Tuesday, April eight, So, Jason, we've just seen the Coalition backflip on a major policy promise only a week in to the election campaign, and this was around forcing public servants to go back to the office. So why do you think ultimately the Coalition decided to walk this back.
Well, I think this policy was killing the Coalition electorally, and the polling over the last ten days has showed that this is not just very unpopular in Canberra, but it's unpopular right across the country as people who work from home in the private sector worry that their employers will decide that if the federal government is forcing workers back to the office, then they will force their own workers back to the office too. A lot of people
have got used to working from home during COVID. They've built their working lives around being able to work from home. It's proved to be very successful for many families, and the idea that Peter Dutton would do something that could threaten those working arrangements has really started to affect the way people will vote in the upcoming election, and I think that's what the Coalition is seeing in their polling, and they've decided that they just can't hang on to this policy any longer.
And let's talk more about the second part of this cuts to the public sector. So Dutton is saying that he does still want forty one thousand public servants to leave, but as you said, not through forced redundancies, through natural attrition, and are hiring freeze. So is that even possible? Are there forty one thousand workers Jason who want to quit?
Yeah, great question. It's hard to see forty one thousand people wanting to quit given that forty one thousand people have just been employed or added to the Australian public service ranks right across the country. I guess sacking public servants has been a key part of Peter Dutton's message for the last year and a half. He hasn't just said it once, He's said it countless times.
Well, reverse labors increase of forty one thousand Canbra public servants because it will save about seven billion dollars a year. I don't think any Australian can say that their lives are easier in terms of their interactions with government agencies because of thirty six thousand new public servants being employed in Canberra.
And he's never talked about attrition or hiring freezers. It's always been sacking public servants. And I think the reason he's been saying that is because he thinks it will do well with those middle class voters struggling with cost of living pain in sort of outer suburban seats around the country who have this idea that most public servants are just sitting on their bums in camera not doing much.
But I think since Elon Musk and Donald Trump started to literally take a chainsaw to the public service in Washington, this is.
The chainsaw for bureaucracy.
People have started to feel less certain that this might be a good idea. I guess one of the other things that Peter Dutton has been doing is saying that all of these public servants that he's going to be sacking are in Canberra, and Peter Dutton doesn't mind denigrating Canberra. I think that's another thing that he thinks will play well with the voters in outer suburban seats in the bigger cities. But the problem is that most of the public servants who have been added to the ranks of
the public service are not actually based in Canberra. These are people who are being employed in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, regional centers like Albury, Wodonga and Woollongong, and these are all key electorates that the Coalition needs to win and I think it's really studying to hurt him.
And you mentioned those comparisons to Trump and Musk. Does this about face? Does this tell you that perhaps that is starting to land with vhotos and perhaps Dutton and his team are becoming worried about being compared.
I think absolutely, because everywhere you look right now there are reminders of the havoc that Donald Trump is causing, not just here in Australia but around the world. The Australian stock market is plunging, Global stock markets are plunging, The Australian dollar has dropped below sixty US cents. There's all these reminders that Donald Trump is an agent of chaos.
And every time people think of Donald Trump, perhaps they're also thinking of how much Peter Dutton has wanted to be like Donald Trump.
Joined with the Prime Minister and on behalf of the coalition. I congratulate to the forty fifth President of the United States.
When Donald Trump was elected, Peter Dutton was very quick to say how happy he was about that.
President Trump is not somebody to be scared of, but somebody that we can work very closely with. And that's exactly what we will do, is to Speaker.
He's talked about how much he has agreed with many of the policies that Donald Trump is implementing, and the government has picked up on this. Treasurer Jim Chalmers has called Peter Dutton Dogie Dutton. This is Dogie Dutton taking his cues, his instructions and his policies straight from the US. And I guess this does actually help the Prime Minister. As one person said to me, Anthony Albanezi is the boring guy off the piss who won't crash the car.
And I think this helps the Labor Party project Anthony Obinezi as a stable alternative to Peter Dutton. He's not going to create the kind of chaos that Donald Trump is creating and that Peter Dutton might create too if he's allowed to follow in Donald Trump's footsteps.
Coming up after the break, how many seats does Dutton need to win to keep his job?
Hi, I'm Daniel James seven Am tells stories that need to be told. Our journalism is founded on trust and independence, and now we're increasing our coverage. Every Saturday until the election, will bring you an extra episode to break down the biggest political moments of the week. If you enjoy seven Am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at seven am podcast dot com dot au slash support. Thanks for listening and supporting our work, Jason, it is.
Pretty unusual to hear Peter Dutton publicly apologize to sound so contrite. How do you think that will land with voters?
I think it's very damaging for Peter Dutton because, as you say, it's so rare to hear a politician apologize like this admit that they got something completely wrong. And I think it does really undermine Peter Dutton's campaign because I guess most people will think, well, he's just saying that now to try to corterize the damage that his
policy has been doing to his election campaign. But if he was to win the election, he might just turn around and decide, well, I'll implement all those things I really wanted to implement anyway, and not keep his promise to dump these policies. We know Dutton sincerely believes what he's been saying. Because he's been saying it for so long, to just turn around and quickly try to sort of backtrack is probably going to be unconvincing for many voters.
And I think one of the reasons that a backflip like this is so surprising is because the coalition has had years to work out what they want to fight this election on. So to announce and then retract something in the space of a week points to a lack of strategy. What does it say to you, Jason, about what is actually going on behind the scenes in the coalition right now?
Well, I think they're panicking, that's what's happening behind the scenes, that the polling is so bad that not only will they not win as many seats as they expected, they might not win any seats at all, and we might see Anthony Elberenezi returned with a bigger majority than he
has now. I think that's the sort of things that must be going through the minds of coalition strategists right now for them to do a backflip as big as this one, Because it's not just the symbolism of cutting public servants, it's all the money that they were going to save by doing that and us to fund other
policies like the coalitions planned for nuclear energy. So to pull this policy out it creates all these follow on problems for him because how is he going to pay for all these other promises that he's made if he's not getting the six billion dollars a year in savings that he's promised. And I think a key problem for Peter Dutton is that he's raised the expectation among his
backbench that he really could win this election. And as one Liberal MP told me, we've spent all these years not really doing any hard policy work and that it's really coming back to bite them.
Yeah, that's interesting. So if Dunne and his team have decided that talking about public service cuts and forcing people to work from the office are not topics that will vote well for them, what would this election be fought on? In an ideal world for Dunton if things were going well.
Well, I think Peter Dutton imagine that he would fight this election campaign on all the things that Albanesi has failed to deliver, and top of that list is alleviating the cost of living pain. The first question that Peter Dutton asked of the Prime Minister in this term was would Labour's promise to lower power bills by two hundred and seventy five dollars? Would that promise be delivered?
Where Anthony Albanezi promised at the last election that there would be a two hundred and seventy five dollars decrease in your power bill. Instead there's been a thousand dollars increase in your power bill. But how much higher will your electricity prices go? Under this prime minister?
Every question time just about he gets up and asks the Prime Minister about this promise on power bills. And while Peter Dutton has got a lot of mileage out of that, at the same time he hasn't sort of backed it up with any real kind of policy development. And now that the scrutiny is on Peter Dutton during this election campaign, he has to sort of come up with his own answers about how he would lower cost of living and he doesn't really seem to have the answers.
And you mentioned, Jason that there was at one point this expectation that Dutton might actually be able to win this election, and so seeing that potentially evaporating is now becoming damaging for him, But I wonder how damaging could it be. Will Dutton remain leader if the coalition does lose.
Well, I think the first thing here is that Coalition MPs are talking about who will be leader after the election, and I think that suggests firstly, they don't expect Peter Dutton to win this election, and the question is becoming, well, how many seats does Peter Dutton have to win in order to save and hold on to his leadership.
What's the magic number? Then?
Well, I think the minimum number of seats he has to win is ten. Peter Dutton doesn't have to win the election. This was always going to be a two term strategy, but I think he does need to improve the coalition's position, and just winning back five seats I don't think that's enough. That shows that Peter Dutton is pretty unpopular. But I think if he manages to win ten seats then that does give him a reasonably solid floor from which to launch the campaign for the twenty
twenty eight election. But the way the campaign's going right now, he might not win five seats at all. He might lose a seat or two and go backwards. And if that happens then I think Peter Dutton's leadership really will be on life support. One thing that Peter Dutton has going for him is that there's no real alternative yet as to who would lead the coalition. There are people like Susan Lee, the deputy leader, Dan Tee, and the Immigration spokesman. They're often sort of talked about as possible
alternative leaders. The defense spokesperson Andrew Hasty from Western Australia, I think, is another one that could be seen as a potential leader, But right now real obvious alternative. And I think if Peter Dutton does perform very badly in this election campaign, he'll probably still hang onto the leadership for another year. It won't happen immediately.
Well, Jason, thank you so much for your time. It's been great to chat.
Thanks Rby, always enjoy talking with you.
Also in the news today, Treasurer Jim Chalmers has said he doesn't think our economy will fall into a recession in the face of Trump's tariffs. The Treasury's own modeling of the expected impacts forecast the economy will be affected
more modestly than other nations, while still expecting slower growth. Meanwhile, the Australian dollar has fallen to its lowest value under the US dollar since before the pandemic, dropping from sixty four US since last Wednesday to just under sixty cents, and a New South Wales's Upper House inquiry into the fake caravan terrorism plot has revealed that a senior New South Wales police officer was asked to sign a non disclosure agreement after being informed by the AFP that the
plot was fake. The inquiry is investigating whether the state Parliament was misled before rushing through hate speech and anti protest laws. The laws were passed on February twenty, with the terrorism plot not publicly discredited until February twenty one. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. See you tomorrow.