Dutton hits the right notes in budget reply

His job in a budget-in-reply speech is to hold the government to account, not to govern himself. The time for detailed plans is much closer to the next election.

He started his speech at the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs with food and shelter-always a good place to start an election-style pitch because they are the needs we feel most keenly, and this is where he wants to fight the next 12 months.

So cost of living, housing, and electricity prices were the most enduring themes in his speech.

The answer to housing is to cut permanent immigration by a quarter and cap student placements by an unspecified amount. In this he positioned himself as an opponent of big business, Big Australia, and a champion of average Australians.

For business he promised to roll back Labor's IR changes and reinstate a simple definition of contractor.

He also promised to increase the level for the instant write-off of capital purchases to $30,000, an effective tax cut, particularly for small businesses in a strong growth phase.

Nuclear is his answer to cost of living, correctly pointing out that energy costs jackpot through the production and distribution chain landing as higher prices, and that Labor's "renewable-only" power system cannot produce power which is "cheap and consistent compared to other countries."

Nuclear also provides him a way of talking to Australians about climate change in terms they might find persuasive and believable. Not only does it address CO2 emissions, but it is a technology people can believe he would support.

He also had policies to encourage older Australians to earn top-up income, which addresses both cost of living, and the demographic time bomb of a rapidly aging population.

Another theme of the next 12 months is likely to be opposition to the government's policy of picking winners through its Future Made in Australia policy, which Mr. Dutton positions as social welfare for billionaires.

He promised to wind-back $13.7 billion promised to support "green" hydrogen and critical minerals on the basis that if there is a good enough business case the capital will be readily available.

It's a good image - him grabbing money back out of the wallets of Twiggy Forest and Gina Rinehart. It upends the narrative that the Coalition is the party of privilege, and it reinforces the narrative that he stands for the ordinary person.