Harry Dutton – the 20-year-old apprentice carpenter and son of the opposition leader, Peter Dutton – is struggling to afford his first home.
We didn’t learn this from a journalist or member of the public trawling through his personal affairs, offending the unwritten rule that a politician’s family should be spared the scrutiny necessarily applied to their father, mother or partner.
No, we know this because Harry told us.
A day after he and siblings Bec and Tom featured prominently in the Coalition’s official campaign launch, Harry was in tow as his father started the big sell of a policy designed to make it easier for young people to break into a broken housing market.
The Liberal leader wants to allow first home buyers to deduct mortgage repayments from their income tax because, as he told reporters at a housing construction site on Monday, it “kills him” to hear stories of young, hard-working Australians who save and save and yet can’t afford a home.
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That cohort – as we now know – includes Harry, and Bec, a childcare worker.
“I am saving up for a house and so is my sister, Bec, and a lot of my mates, but as you probably heard, it’s almost impossible to get in, in the current state,” Harry said.
“So I mean we’re saving like mad but it doesn’t look like we’ll get there in the near future.”
Dutton was quickly and predictably confronted with the obvious question: would a father who has reportedly made $30m in property transactions over 35 years give his son a hand?
Dutton ignored the question, perhaps concluding there was little more to gain from Harry’s campaign cameo.
There is also the somewhat awkward possibility that Harry’s aspiration might be bettered achieved under Labor’s election offering, which would allow all first home buyers to buy a home with a 5% deposit without paying mortgage insurance.
So what was the benefit of him showing up?
Whatever the Dutton family’s financial circumstances might be, Harry’s apparent struggle to afford a first home is one many young Australians can empathise with.
Dutton appears to have made a calculated judgment that the risk of exposing his son to the national media was outweighed by the opportunity to show millennials and gen Z – and their worried parents – that he “gets it” and “gets them”.
Separately on Monday, the Liberals released a “diss track” titled Leaving Labor – a homage to the viral feud between rap rivals Kendrick Lamar and Drake.
The tune and Harry’s guest appearance were unrelated, for all we can tell.
But the two deliberate campaign events speak to the Coalition’s attempt to engage younger voters, a powerful, growing (and largely disengaged) cohort that both major parties believe are up for grabs on 3 May.
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Asked about the “diss track” on Monday, Dutton said he hadn’t heard it.
“Harry may have,” he said.
Harry’s cameo served another purpose.
As part of a months-long process to refine Dutton’s image, the very public father-son interaction could help – if only momentarily and only for some – to humanise a man widely viewed as the hard-nosed ex-Queensland cop.
Dutton’s critics will view it as the desperate act of a desperate politician tanking in the polls.
Others aren’t so cynical.
“This is who he [Dutton] is: an intensely focused family man,” says Andrew Carswell, a former senior adviser to former prime minister Scott Morrison, whose wife, Jenny, and children Abbey and Lily featured at times during his election campaigns.
“This is not a leader trying to save his political skin.”
Albanese’s son, Nathan, joined his father and the prime minister’s partner, Jodie Haydon, on stage at Labor’s campaign launch in Perth.
But he has otherwise remained outside public spotlight, where the families of politicians typically are.
Until, of course, they aren’t.
