Peter Dutton looked like he was running on empty – then he refuelled on the Coalition’s latest culture wars

Peter Dutton ‘is prepared to whip up hip-pocket scare campaigns and cultural war issues to signal that inner-city lefties like Albanese and Plibersek are not like the average marginal-seat voter’. Photograph: Jono Searle/AAP

The Coalition’s new tax policy is a bit of a hybrid.

It’s got the new-fangled electric motor: the half-hearted commitment to support Labor’s tax cuts for low- and middle-income earners.

But it’s also got the internal combustion engine: the plan to revive some elements of the stage-three flat tax plan that benefited the rich.

In his grouchy interview on ABC’s 7.30 this week and around the traps in Canberra, opposition leader Peter Dutton looked like a very reluctant hybrid driver. The Coalition backflip to wave through Labor’s tax changes was sealed on Tuesday with an air of “let’s get this over with”.

That left a long-term dilemma about how to design a tax alternative “in line with” the stage-three cuts they’d agreed to gut, and a short-term problem about how to change the narrative this week.

First, there was the effort to focus on Labor’s broken promise and the insinuation that you’re next because the government would not rule out a laundry list of other changes.

Those include: negative gearing, tax treatment of the family home, trusts, franking credits and capital gains tax – a wish list the Greens were happy to pick up and run with as they pressure Labor over the cost of housing.

In question time, Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers counted the minutes as they were asked about everything but Labor’s new $107bn tax cut package.

Then the opposition found a bunch of other diverting pastimes outside the field of tax.

Coalition members inside parliament complained Labor had failed to deliver its projected $275 annual savings for households from renewable energy, while those who joined a dubious anti-renewables rally outside threw up further roadblocks.

The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, said we should “pause” the rollout of large-scale renewables because tearing up agricultural land was “pure insanity”; and was supported by former leader Barnaby Joyce’s complaints about the cost of transmission. Both claims are exaggerated.

The shadow climate and energy minister, Ted O’Brien, busied himself online shopping for new cars. In question time he suggested that the $19,000 price difference between a Mazda in the UK and in Australia (it is more expensive in the UK) was entirely down to fuel efficiency standards – which is a policy Labor has adopted.

On Friday Dutton followed that up with a visit to a Mazda dealership in the byelection seat of Dunkley to complain about Labor’s “new car and ute tax”.

Labor says the yearly cap on the emissions output for new cars sold in Australia will actually save consumers $1,000 in lower petrol bills, prompting a bunfight over the modelling to prove it.

Holding the government to account on claimed savings is fair enough, but is the Coalition really arguing once again that any form of regulation Labor proposes is a tax, even if it collects no revenue?

You bet they are. So let’s revise former Tony Abbott chief of staff Peta Credlin’s admission about the last time the Coalition pulled that trick: “Along comes a carbon tax. It wasn’t a carbon tax, as you know. It was many other things in nomenclature terms but we made it a carbon tax.”

Meanwhile, up in Queensland, there’s a bout of fear and loathing about youth crime, and the Liberal National party’s push to scrap the principle that detention is a last resort for young people. Dutton is ever the Queensland cop and wanted to weigh in. It was the first topic in his usual radio pow-wow with Ray Hadley on Thursday, giving him clear air to argue it is “not just Queenslanders but a lot of Australians who are facing this crime endemic – they want a leader who can stand up”.

The Coalition lent in again during question time: the first question was to Mark Dreyfus about plans to raise the age of criminal responsibility.

So here we have a party leader at a protest, a well-advanced stop in a byelection campaign and a pre-vetted question in parliament. These aren’t the random musings of reactionary characters with offbeat obsessions, they’re deliberate steps to advance a political strategy.

The value to the Coalition isn’t just as a distraction from the tax cut backdown. Take a look at the political map to see the potential of their sideshow-alley strategy.

Misinformation about wind turbines killing whales abounds on social media and community groups in the Illawarra and the Hunter region in New South Wales. The latter is rich in Labor seats on skinny margins and Dutton has visited the region to campaign against renewables.

In Tasmania two weeks ago, Dutton was warning that Tanya Plibersek could take a “political decision” to “destroy the lives and the livelihoods” of people in the small west coast town of Strahan, harming the salmon industry and its “world’s best practice” towards the Maugean skate.

The contrast is clear. The Albanese government is focusing on trying to materially improve people’s lives with low- and middle-income tax cuts and industrial relations changes to improve job security and pay.

Dutton’s path through the suburbs and regions is searching for a combination of issues that can shake enough seats loose to tip the government into minority or out of office.

To do so, he is prepared to whip up hip-pocket scare campaigns and cultural war issues to signal that inner-city lefties like Albanese and Plibersek are not like the average marginal-seat voter.

It seems a long-shot outsider political strategy, but for now it’s giving Dutton petrol in his tank to flee the scene of tax cut defeat.