Dutton has told his troops to prepare for an early election. Are they up to it?

Peter Dutton will never be universally liked. He doesn’t care. To become prime minister, he needs to win 76 seats in the House of Representatives, not nationwide acclaim.

The opposition leader – who will never use 100 words where 10 will suffice and rarely leaves anyone wondering what he thinks – is something of a loner. Unlike predecessors Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, for example, he is not surrounded by a host of acolytes, boosters and fixers. As one colleague puts it, “Dutton doesn’t have a tight group of bromancers”.

Colleagues say while it is possible to change his mind in a shadow cabinet meeting or on a major decision if an argument is well-made, he trusts his own judgment after 23 years in parliament.

Dutton’s small inner circle includes chief of staff Alex Dalgleish, deputy COS Tom Fleming, press secretaries Nicole Chant and Adrian Barrett and senior advisers Sam Jackson-Hope and Christian Hayes. Eight of his staff once worked for Abbott – and he has, so far, approached the job of opposition leader in a similar way, from regular radio spots with 2GB’s Ray Hadley to a negative campaign against Labor’s climate policy.

Dutton’s patient approach seems to be working. The most recent Resolve Political Monitor underscores his slow climb in the estimation of voters. For the first time, he now leads Albanese, 36 per cent to 35 per cent, as preferred prime minister.

Labor’s primary vote has fallen to just 28 per cent, compared with 36 per cent for the Coalition, and the opposition now enjoys a big 40 per cent to 24 per cent lead on who is best placed to manage the economy. The first details of Dutton’s policy to introduce nuclear power in Australia have been well received according to the Resolve poll, too.

The former police officer, a veteran politician, has placed a premium on unity and it has paid off – so far. Now that he has ordered them to brace for an early election as soon as spring, his team will be tested.

This is how his team works.

The inner circle

James Paterson has enjoyed a meteoric rise from the backbench to opposition home affairs spokesman under Dutton. One of the hardest-working members of the Coalition, he is blessed with a baby face and a killer instinct. Still just 36, Paterson has landed significant blows on the Labor government. A former staffer at the libertarian Institute of Public Affairs, he can surprise with his views on certain issues – he’s a constitutional conservative and a monarchist but he was a supporter of same-sex marriage. But it’s Paterson’s role as shadow cabinet secretary, a position previously occupied by veteran former senator Marise Payne, that elevates the Victorian senator’s importance. It means Paterson plays a crucial part in helping shepherd policy development, and it ensures he has Dutton’s ear and trust.

Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor is a colours-to-the-mast conservative who speaks for the leader in the NSW branch of the party. Dutton trusts Taylor to give him a line of sight on the machinations of the heavily factionalised NSW division. Taylor’s faction, the NSW Right, has been a divided mess in recent years, but the dumping of sitting Centre Right faction senator Hollie Hughes in favour of conservative Jess Collins, who controversially had a letter of recommendation from Taylor, suggests it might finally be getting its act together.

Conversely, the fact that Taylor moved against a frontbench colleague and successfully steered another factional ally, Simon Kennedy, into the seat of Cook, will not have gone unnoticed by Dutton, who is aware that Taylor has ambitions to lead the party himself one day. Dutton’s recent “he’s not incompetent” comment about Taylor was seen internally as a shot across Taylor’s bows. But factional tensions aside, Taylor has Dutton’s confidence on the economy and the pair work closely together in shadow cabinet and on the shadow expenditure review committee.

The covert influencers

Victorian MP Michael Sukkar has one of the biggest portfolio loads of any shadow minister, taking care of social services, the NDIS, housing and homelessness. He is also Dutton’s eyes and ears in Victoria. As a colleague of the pair observes, “he relies on Sukkar for a sense check on what will fly in a Melbourne marginal seat”. Sukkar is the day-to-day leader of Dutton’s Right faction (leaders can’t afford to be too involved in the daily cut and thrust) and he is one of the organisers of its “It’s Right on the Night” annual dinner. (The moderates’ annual knees-up is called the Black Hand dinner.) Like Paterson, Sukkar has high-level strategic and policy input and he is prepared to jump on a grenade for his leader.

Michaelia Cash is another covert influencer in the Dutton shadow cabinet. While her portfolio of shadow attorney-general is important, it is not one that generally lends itself to day-to-day political attacks, although employment and workplace relations gives her more leeway. Cash is also Dutton’s point person on the ground in Western Australia, where the Liberals lost their stranglehold at the last election. Though not as close to Dutton as former finance minister and fellow West Australian Mathias Cormann was, she’s in the leadership group and she is another conservative whom Dutton trusts.

The message carriers

While they’re not personally close to Dutton, foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham and deputy leader Sussan Ley, along with finance spokeswoman and fellow moderate Jane Hume, are three of the opposition’s most important message carriers. The three make regular appearances on morning TV and radio; they can speak across a range of portfolios and they are seen, internally, as key to winning back some of the people who abandoned the Liberal Party to vote for so-called teal independents at the last election. Hume is particularly impressive and she is seen inside the party as a talented MP on the rise. She speaks directly, relishes public debate and while she is not a factional warrior, she has not been afraid to publicly advance the case for centrist policy positions or to push back against far-right positions. Hume helped lead the party’s post 2022 election review and played a big part in setting up the Margaret Guilfoyle Network for professional women, a group designed to reach professional women whose support for the party has dwindled.

Ley – who, like Taylor, has ambitions to lead the party one day – is a factional moderate with links to NSW Centre Right powerbroker Alex Hawke through key staff in her office. She has staked out a role in which she concentrates on visiting teal seats, a crucial group of seats for the Coalition to reclaim if it is to return to government. Ley has not been afraid to take the occasional controversial position nor to publicly defend her leader, even when it has attracted some political heat.

Running their own show

Defence spokesman Andrew Hastie and immigration spokesman Dan Tehan are two of the most talented members of the shadow frontbench, though they approach their portfolios very differently.

Tehan gets along well with Dutton but he is not in the leader’s circle of trust; he has leadership ambitions, after all. Nevertheless, the Victorian MP has been key to the opposition’s attack on Labor over its response to the High Court’s NZYQ decision that indefinite immigration detention was unlawful. A country Liberal MP, a former diplomat and a former cabinet minister, Tehan is a straight talker who runs his own race.

Hastie is the opposite of some of Dutton’s more politically minded frontbench: he keeps a relatively low profile in the defence portfolio and goes out of his way not to politicise an issue unless it’s really necessary. A safe pair of hands, he and Dutton are personally close, but the former SAS captain is in danger of being typecast as someone interested only in defence and national security, which is far from correct. He’s recently completed a graduate certificate in economics from Harvard and whether the Coalition wins or loses the next election, it would not be surprising to see him seek a new portfolio to broaden his resume. Hastie is seen by some as a future party leader.

The attack dog

Queensland MP Phil Thompson is Dutton’s parliamentary question time attack dog and rabble-rouser. The assistant defence spokesman, a defence force veteran, is positioned squarely behind the opposition leader in the House of Representatives and can often be seen geeing up his colleagues in the chamber. Thompson relishes throwing rhetorical bombs and doesn’t shy away from overstepping the line, just slightly, to ensure he lands a blow. Outside the theatre of question time, Thompson is an important link between the backbench and the leader.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.