I’m writing this at lunchtime on Monday. In federal election campaigns, for logistical necessity major policy drops and media opportunities usually are made in the mornings. In order to dominate the day’s news cycle and get the best treatment by the nightly news, party leaders almost always are morning people.

But Monday morning’s been and gone, and from the Liberal-National coalition there’s been nothing positive to announce while opposition leader Peter Dutton’s campaigning in winnable Labor seats in the Hunter Valley of NSW. Rather than taking about his policy drop of the day, however, he’s on the defensive against media questioning of his Budget reply commitment to lowering energy prices by natural gas reservation: the journos want to pin him on a number, and he refuses to be pinned.

Rightly so, but Dutton has been made to look evasive and unsure of his own policy, having nothing new and positive to talk about. That Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Labor are getting away with their disowning the discredited modelling that, in 2002, led Labor to make its disastrous call that power prices would be lowered by an average $275 a year under them, has not been weaponised against the government in the same way the media are pressing Dutton.

For seasoned watchers of federal election campaigns, especially those who have worked in party HQs, the Coalition’s campaign tactics are real head-scratchers – not least when a clutch of opinion polls on Monday confirmed that it’s Labor going from Budget week into the campaign with momentum, not the LNP.

When an election is likely to be tight – and all indications are that, when preferences are considered, it’s tight indeed – momentum matters. The major party campaign machines must do everything they can to seize and hold the initiative, and set the policy and media agenda so their opponents are always responding to them, and kept on the defensive.

As of now, it’s Labor in that position, while the Coalition continues, inexplicably, to hold its announcement fire. Dutton’s excellent Budget reply speech, and the policy announcements it included, have not been followed up with hard campaigning. Instead, they’ve been left dangling for the media to pick over.

And, sitting here in Labor’s black hole state of Victoria, where are the Liberal mainstream and social media adverts tying Albanese to the failed, incompetent and bankrupt state government of Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan? As a late-night YouTube watcher while the Morning Double Shot’s put to bed in London, not one of those irritating ads has been for the Liberals, let alone micro-targeting me as a Victorian.

Sources say the Coalition was prepped and ready for a 33-day election campaign based on the then-presumed 12 April election date. When Cyclone Alfred intervened, and Albanese postponed the election to May, it appears he caught his opponents on the hop – even though a 10 or 17 May election had been presumed, and presumably planned for, since well before the 12 April option arose.

The problem for that sitting pat strategy, however, is that for an April campaign it just doesn’t work. A 12 April election would have had a campaign period largely free of unavoidable distractions like public and school holidays: the run-up to 3 May is anything but.

Here are the key dates that interrupt the actual campaign period:

Term 1 school holidays across the states and territories: 7-28 April.

Easter long weekend: 18-21 April.

Anzac Day long weekend: 25-27 April.

Early voting starts: 22 April.

That’s a lot of the period when Australians will be distracted, their minds on other things than voting and the campaign. And, with millions voting early these days, there’s little point in holding back key policies for a final-week campaign launch, as the Coalition did in 2022 with its super for first home deposits initiative.

What this chaotic timetable means is this week is the only week of the election period not interrupted and disrupted by holidays of one sort of another, or clashing with early voting.

The Big Bang Week for the Coalition is now.

But what have we seen in hard policy from the Coalition since the election was called, and the first weekday effectively crossed off? Nothing. It appears the Coalition campaign hasn’t the agility to deviate from its 12 April strategy, even as Labor surges and the LNP drifts.

They simply can’t afford to keep drifting, even though on paper it’s still early days. The Coalition must seize what’s left of this week. It must announce two or three barbeque-stopper policies that will run well in the media, get voters talking, and put Labor firmly on the back foot. That must apply real pressure on Albanese, who was exposed as a brittle campaigner in 2022, and force errors from him and Labor. They must seize on any gaffes, mistakes and untruths that Labor makes, and make sure minority government-hungry Teals and Greens are targeted as well.

Can the Coalition brains trust please get their act together for the rest of us who support the LNP, have confidence in Dutton, are desperate to see this bumbling, woke, ideological Labor government turfed out, and want to avoid the threat to our prosperity that any minority government will bring. Yes, winning 20-plus seats is one heck of a mountain for Dutton to climb, but while he is trying valiantly, his campaign machine so far is letting him down.

Their supporters need that machine to its game urgently, and make the most of this week to take the election by the scruff of its neck.

Australia needs it even more.

Terry Barnes writes the Morning Double Shot newsletter. He remains a Liberal party member and, as a senior Liberal policy adviser, worked on the 1996, 2004 and 2007 federal election campaigns