He’s cute. He’s tall. He’s got gorgeous eyes. And a stunning smile. I didn’t say a name, but he popped in your head, didn’t he? That’s right, I’m talking about Peter Dutton, the heir-apparent to a Liberal Party shattered and broken after the weekend’s electoral rout.
Make no mistake, the election result was an unmitigated disaster for the Liberals, and one that has forced them into a painful crossroads. Their moderate faction was decimated by teal independents, who swept through wealthy inner-city territory like a turtleneck-wearing barbarian army from the steppe. They were rejected by Chinese Australian voters, who were obviously turned off by the sabre-rattling at Beijing and helped hand seats like Bennelong and Chisholm to Labor. Scott Morrison’s ham-fisted effort to ignite a suburban culture war by preselecting a weirdo Twitter transphobe in Tony Abbott’s old seat fell painfully flat.
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They even managed to alienate our strange cousins from the west, with Western Australia – once the country’s most reliable conservative bastion – turning deep red. Western Australia being a top-to-bottom Labor state would have been unthinkable even a few years ago, and yet the Liberals have managed it. (Among his myriad bumbles, ScoMo’s boneheaded decision to back Clive Palmer’s lawsuit against the state really stands out as particularly stupid.)
In conjunction with strong wins by the Greens in Brisbane, the inclement victory of climate hunk David Pocock in the ACT, and the failure of Clive Palmer’s nine-figure ad spend to move the needle much at all, it’s pretty evident that Australia not only booted the Liberals out but demanded more progressive representation instead. The party is now faced with a big decision: Do they tack closer to the centre, in an effort to claw back the well-heeled bleeding hearts who abandoned them and their project? Or do they listen to the crew of mutants at Sky News and fly rightward, carving a new electoral path through the suburbs and bringing the One Nation and United Australia Party wingnuts back into their tent?
Whatever the solution, they’ve clearly picked the guy to implement it: Peter Dutton. He is set to run for Liberal leadership unchallenged, which would make him the first party leader from outside Sydney since 1995, the first from Queensland, and definitely the first to strongly resemble a character from one of those unsettling claymation shows they used to broadcast on ABC Kids just before the six o’ clock news.
Now, you might be thinking – quite reasonably – that the elevation of Dutton surely implies a lurch to the right. After all, he spent the last decade or so of Coalition rule pitching himself as a right-wing hard man willing to do the nasty work that keeps the wheels of society spinning. He was the guy who reorganised our various customs and border agencies into the quasi-military Border Force, enthusiastically used deportations as a weapon, and has treated the Defence Minister role as a stage to beat the drums of war against China.
His social views are a matter of public record. He boycotted the apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008. He described Malcolm Fraser’s decision to allow Lebanese Muslim refugees into the country in the 1970s as a mistake. He alleged that Victorians were scared to go out for dinner because of marauding African criminals. He called the two children of the Murugappan family of Biloela “anchor babies” – importing a loaded term from the American immigration wars. He claimed refugee women were faking rape claims to get out of mandatory detention. He cancelled allegedly “woke” morning teas held in the defence department. Despite privately conceding same-sex marriage was inevitable and helping Malcolm Turnbull navigate its legalisation, he was publicly against it, telling pro-marriage equality CEOs to “stick to their knitting”, saying they “shouldn’t shove their views down our throats”
That’s just a random sampling. Or we could look to his maiden speech in 2002, in which he railed against criminals who “barely justify their existence in our sometimes over tolerant society”, and rattled off a list of things he believed regular Aussies were sick of, including “the Civil Liberties Council and the Refugee Action Collective” and “the dictatorship of the trade union movement”.
It’s clear the guy is quite conservative, or at least believes there has been political capital in acting like he is. Until now.
Now that it looks like he’ll have to appeal to a broader swathe of the Australian population-including people who were squeamish enough about today’s Liberal Party to defect to squishy teal independents-the Dutton rehabilitation tour has begun in the media. This time, it’s slightly more sophisticated than a similarly coordinated effort in 2019, when his wife took to the pages of the Courier Mail to argue that he was “not a monster”. (If your partner wouldn’t do the same, dump them pronto.)
This time, the media strategy has been a little less in your face, as Dutton attempts to soften his image. After it became clear Dutton was The Guy, reports emerged he was telling the remaining moderates in the Liberal caucus that he would be a pragmatic, sensible leader, and would not lead a “Trumpian” move to the right. Then came the papering over his previous record, with Dutton arguing that he had been mischaracterised by Twitter and “left wing news sites”, which take his comments out of context. He also said his previous portfolios had required him to act tough, and he was excited to show Australia his softer side.
“I have held portfolios in government and opposition, including defence, home affairs, health, finance, assistant treasurer, sport and employment,” he told 2GB on Thursday morning.
“I hope now, in moving from such tough portfolios, the Australian public can see the rest of my character.” As everyone knows, it pays to be a brutal, unfeeling kneecapper when running cruel portfolios like… health.
Dutton’s wife, Kirrilly, also returned to offer some additional commentary beyond her “not a monster” designation, describing Pete as having a “dry and witty” sense of humour and “an incredible compassion”.
Then Dutton pulled out the big guns. After Labor MP Tanya Plibersek compared him physically to Voldemort-prompting a rebuke from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and then an apology-he went on the offensive. Appearing on Ray Hadley’s show on 2GB, Dutton said he wasn’t “the prettiest bloke on the block” and argued that his trademark look was the result of a diagnosed skin ailment. This led to a frankly phenomenal news.com.au headline: “Peter Dutton officially launches Liberal leadership campaign, reveals skin condition”. (It’s good to get all your news out at once.)
The same media and political establishment who were more than happy to assist Dutton in looking like a relentless right-wing hardarse when it benefitted him and his portfolio are now likely to fall in lockstep behind him in this project of rehabilitation.
“Sure, he’s a tough political operator, but he’s relaxed, pragmatic, and socially liberal, Liberal MPs say,” writes Aaron Patrick in the AFR today. In the SMH, he was described as having a “pragmatic approach to policy as a social, rather than religious, conservative”. He’s not the “hard-nosed ultra right-winger” people think he is, says fellow MP Warren Entsch.
All of these things may be true, and his muscular conservatism during his time in parliament and cabinet might have been red meat for the base rather than an accurate reflection of his true puppy dog personality. But if that was a performance, then so is this. Dutton isn’t an idiot-he knows that the least risky path to victory is in convincing the traditional Liberal base that he is less objectionable than Scott Morrison, and that means moderating his public image. That project has officially begun.
Perhaps we can look to the wise words of Peter Dutton himself, from many moons and prime ministers ago:
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