MARK RILEY: The Federal election hasn’t been called yet but it’s already getting grubby

There is a certain rattling noise echoing around the corridors of the ministerial wing in Parliament House this week.

It is the sound of Labor operatives rifling through their bottom drawers in search of muck they can hurl at Peter Dutton.

Mind you, the same sound has been heard coming from Opposition suites for several weeks as they look to do the same thing to Anthony Albanese.

We are now probably just days away from an election campaign and the dirt units are in full flight.

With the polls all pointing towards the likelihood of a hung parliament, both sides are searching for anything that might deprive their opponent of support.

And it’s getting personal. Deeply so.

Unlike American presidential campaigns, Australian voters don’t directly elect the prime minister.

Still, our elections are routinely reduced to contests between the leaders.

This one is shaping as a nasty one.

Coalition strategists will zero in on perceptions of Anthony Albanese’s “weakness” as a leader — perceptions Peter Dutton ingrains at every opportunity.

Conversely, Labor’s campaign team sees Dutton’s natural leadership aggression as a voter turn-off, particularly for women voters, and will target that.

It is already getting willing.

The revelations this week that Dutton took a big plunge on bank shares the day before the Rudd government announced the second of its multi-billion-dollar bank guarantees during the global financial crisis — and just days after the Liberals had been privately briefed on the impending bailout — raised serious questions about the Opposition Leader’s integrity.

Dutton rejected them directly and forcefully.

He said he had simply made “astute” investments.

But Labor obviously wasn’t copping that, asking why it was the only time that he had bought and sold bank shares in such quick succession.

“I have always conducted myself with honour,” he told Nat Barr on Seven’s Sunrise yesterday.

Then, more questions emerged about his extensive property dealings.

They, though, appear weak.

Dutton had bought and sold 26 properties in 36 years.

At first blush, that seems a lot.

But the majority of those transactions involved blocks of land he’d part-owned and developed houses on with his builder father in their family business.

That sounds like nothing more than profiting from good planning, wise investment and hard work.

The attack fell flat on its face, as it should have.

But the share dealings got a further lease on life when it emerged that the Treasury official who had worked up the bank bailout was the same disgraced official who concocted the so-called Utegate hoax against the Rudd Government — Godwin Grech.

His mere association with the shares affair instantly transported it to a higher dimension of intrigue.

The privileges committee report into Utegate included a motherlode of emails Grech had sent from his desk at Treasury in 2008 and 2009, trying to ingratiate himself with Liberal figures.

In those, he boasts about being placed in charge of the $4 billion Australian Business Investment Partnership, which became known unofficially as the “Rudd bank”.

It was to partner with the big four banks to underwrite any commercial property projects left stranded by the failure or withdrawal of foreign banks during the crisis.

In the emails, Grech offered to “discuss” the proposal with Coalition figures ahead of the announcement.

It is not clear whether he did.

What is certain is that then-opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull was formally briefed on the plan by the government in early January.

Peter Dutton declared his purchase of big four bank shares on January 23.

The ABIP was announced on January 24.

Bank share prices jumped 21 per cent over the next few weeks.

Dutton declared that he had sold those shares in February and March, no doubt trousering a handsome profit.

And here’s another interesting fact: he sold them just before the opposition voted against the ABIP in the parliament, effectively blocking it.

Coincidence? Peter Dutton says so. He flatly denies having acted with any insider knowledge. And there’s nothing to suggest otherwise.

Although plenty of Labor people are now rifling through their bottom drawers to find something.

Mark Riley is the Seven Network’s political editor