The details about how catastrophic things had become in the three years under Anthony Albanese’s Labor Government were alarming enough:

• Real disposable income per capita down by 8.7 per cent, the biggest decline in the developed world.
• Seven consecutive quarters of recession, the longest-running downturn in Australia since World War II.
• More than a million immigrants in two years, 70 per cent more than in any other two-year period in our history, causing a devastating housing crisis.
• The worst collapse in our living standards on record: food up 12 per cent, housing up 14 per cent, rent up 17 per cent, insurance up 19 per cent, underlying electricity up 32 per cent, gas up 34 per cent.
• Productivity down 5.7 per cent, and 27,000 businesses gone bust.
• 36,000 new federal government employees, costing $16b a year.
• Half a billion dollars wasted on the Voice referendum, which only divided the nation.
• And so on.

Dutton’s solutions, however, were cautiously vague. He promised to cut spending and regulations, but for the most part didn’t say precisely how he would do it.

Even when he was specific – such as when he promised to deregister the “modern-day mafia operation” of the CFMEU, sack the DEI hires and “internal communications specialists” from the federal public service and cut the green tape the current government was using to strangle business – his delivery was so understated that he sounded like a country librarian proposing harsher fines for late returns.

It would not have taken much to add a little dramatic emphasis to these admirably bold promises, if only to increase the likelihood of them being reused as soundbites on the news or shared on social media.

It’s unclear who this frustrates more – his supporter or his detractors.

The sanctimonious Leftists at the ABC, The Guardian and Nine newspapers wait in vain for Dutton to reveal the slightest hint of volatility or distemper so they can describe him as a former Queensland cop who wants to do to the Australian public what he no doubt once did to uncooperative suspects.

His latent supporters, meanwhile, just want his style to either reflect the urgency of the task at hand or reveal some entertainingly sardonic relish about putting arguably the worst government in Australia’s history to the sword.

Perhaps there’s another group, which the clipboard-wielders behind the one-way mirrors at the focus group companies have warned him about, the bloc of voters who will vacillate between voting to carpet the countryside with solar panels and switching to nuclear based on which side presents its case in the dullest style and with the least enthusiasm.

Donald Trump has proved that this is not necessarily the case in the US. Is it still the case here?

Australians might have revealed themselves to be depressingly submissive and pessimistic during the lockdowns, but that was five years ago.

My guess is that they have changed since then, and now crave a political message that matches their enormous potential as a nation.

Dutton was alarmed, for example, about the anti-Semitism that has flourished under Albanese, saying it was “truly horrific and unsettling to all Australians”.

WORSE

Worse, Albanese had allowed it to happen for his own “political advantage”.

Political advantage? Let’s be clear: these anti-Semitic people are mostly incompatible with Australian culture and values, but have been allowed to migrate here because they shore up votes in Labor electorates.

This has “not been in our national interest”, Dutton said. Geez, you really think so?

If my feed on X is any indication, there is a tidal wave of unrestrained anger among constituents about this and other immigration-related issues.

It wasn’t long ago that anybody who so much as made a disparaging reference to the ethnicity of a rat-infested restaurant could expect a tap on the shoulder from the Human Rights Commission and a potentially career-threatening record as a heinous racist.

Now that the multicultural experiment is unravelling faster than a Turkish carpet bought off the back of an unregistered ute in a Lakemba carpark, ordinary Australians can finally speak candidly about the downsides of allowing foreign ghettos to form in their cities.

And they do, especially on X. All day.

The anger, particularly since a caravan loaded with enough explosives to cause a massacre was discovered, is palpable.

MILITANT

These people know that militant Islam, cynically brought into this country by Labor and passively endorsed by the Coalition, is to blame, and they are beyond furious.

Dutton, cautious as ever, won’t go there. His manifesto promises to reduce migration but doesn’t dare openly suggest that it might be equally prudent to be more selective about who comes here as well.

A European migrant is, all things considered, more likely to assimilate and contribute than a bloke with a chip on his shoulder about the crusaders who sacked the Holy Land a millennia ago.

Dutton is offering to “get Australia back on track”, which makes it sound as simple as losing weight by ordering Diet Coke with your burger and fries.