AAP: NEW Zealanders watching the Australian election are spotting similarities to the campaign that delivered their centre-right National party government.
It’s become a common Labor attack line – the coalition is getting its election campaign cues from US President Donald Trump.
But it appears Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is taking inspiration from a country closer to home.
From policy and personnel to sloganeering and messaging, Mr Dutton’s election pitch resembles the New Zealand National Party’s 2023 campaign, led by Chris Luxon.
And why not?
Mr Luxon’s run for office was a raging success, with his centre-right party claiming government and bouncing back from a devastating result dished up by Jacinda Ardern’s NZ Labour Party in 2020.
The slogan, Get Australia Back On Track, is a direct rip of Mr Luxon’s Get New Zealand Back On Track, a chant repeated to the point of nausea by blue-clad volunteers in 2023.
That might not be a surprise given the campaign is powered by Topham Guerin, the whiz Auckland team that helped Mr Luxon win office and was lauded by then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson as his “Digi Kiwis” after his 2019 election success.
NZ-based, right-aligned Curia pollster David Farrar says Kiwis watching the Australian election closely are doing a double take.
“Lots of slogans and stuff that National used are being used by the Liberals … I’ve heard people in National joke they should be charging a copyright,” he told AAP.
Policies are also being recycled.
Mr Dutton’s pledge to cut the bureaucracy comes with the same disclaimer used in NZ, that he will spare the “front line” – a promise that seeks to reassure those worried about public services.
Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor has also replicated a National pledge, announcing a new one-stop government shop for investment.
The coalition’s education policies vowing to get children “back to basics” at school use the same language as National, promising to re-write open-ended curriculums with a clear, “knowledge-rich” structure.
Trans-Tasman sharing is not new. The parties regularly offer up staff and rally volunteers to head across the Tasman for election battles, as do the Australian Labor and NZ Labour parties, and the Greens.
Nor is it something the parties are keen to talk about.
The coalition’s campaign did not reply to a request for comment. Nor did Chris Bishop, the National party’s campaign chair and now infrastructure minister – understandable given his need to manage relationships with the Albanese government.
“They’re not actively helping the Libs,” Mr Farrar says of National’s campaign team.
“The (coalition) would have just liked what they saw.”
Luke Malpass, political editor of the Wellington newspaper The Post, said the centre-right parties shared close ties.
“They keep in touch, and the playbook that Christopher Luxon used was for a cost-of-living election that doubled down on themes of government waste, bloated bureaucracy and out-of-control spending causing inflation,” he told AAP.
Michael Swanson, a University of Otago political researcher focusing on opposition parties, said history was repeating.
“There’s an obvious alignment around the state and size of the public service, which was a central part of (National’s) 2023 election,” he said.
“And on the cost-of-living argument … it’s the centre-right saying the centre-left have mismanaged the place.
“That is the line: they don’t know how to manage the economy or how the bureaucracy should work, and we’re here to fix things.”
Underpinning the Liberal-National alignment is a friendship between the two leaders that has been cultivated in recent years.
In April 2024, Mr Dutton made a flying visit to a global gathering of conservatives in Wellington that former prime minister Scott Morrison also attended.
Mr Luxon is also cheerfully disposed to Australia, having lived in Sydney for five years during his 16 years abroad as an executive for Unilever. His children also studied and lived there.
“If I couldn’t be a Kiwi, I’d be an Aussie. Absolutely. I just love the confidence and optimism of the joint,” he told AAP in a 2022 interview.
Mr Dutton and Mr Luxon also share similarities: both are social conservatives who have moderated since becoming leaders and have drawn controversy through their extensive personal property investments.
Naturally, there’s plenty that distinguishes them, too.
Mr Luxon was a first-term MP before winning office on the back of a pitch for more foreign investment and migration; Mr Dutton is a well-known political force who argues for a smaller migrant intake.
“Luxon was politically very fresh and very disciplined in 2023,” Mr Malpass said, something that might not be said of Mr Dutton and his campaign so far.