Everyone, even The Australian, is over Peter Dutton

When you lose the fan club at The Australian, a Coalition leader is in serious trouble. After Andrew Hastie was let out of witness protection last week to stand next to Peter Dutton for the Coalition’s Defence Policy announcement – which, like most of the Coalition’s policy announcements was more a promise to chuck money at something than an explanation of actual priorities – Greg Sheridan described the event as “shrouded in the most cack-handed amateurism in delivery, messaging and substance you could possibly imagine”. At the Sorrento Writers’ Festival this weekend, Paul Kelly was scathing about both the lack of policy work under Dutton’s leadership and their shallow talent pool. They are at risk of one of the worst results ever, he said, and should the Coalition perform as badly as expected and deserved on Saturday there is no natural or worthy successor in the party room.

Everyone other than the man himself always thought Dutton an unlikely leader. Haunted by his carefully cultivated Hard Man reputation, the Coalition’s campaign launch was yet another attempt to rebrand him – the fourth iteration of the “not-a-monster” narrative first attempted during his failed coup against Malcolm Turnbull that delivered us Prime Minister Scott Morrison. He was, he said then, pleased to finally stand before the press and smile, something at which he certainly seemed unpracticed, baring his teeth in the odd grimace subsequently trotted out during his second relaunch when elected Opposition Leader, and during his third earlier this year during a sit-down with go-to image makeover guy Karl Stefanovic.

The latest attempted overhaul came via his launch video, in which, after the obligatory appearance from a John Howard now indistinguishable from Mr Magoo, his offspring – all “saving madly” for house deposits – spoke diffidently with filial piety of the Dad they know. A teary Dutton surprised Australians with his claim to have the “emotional gene”, a vulnerability, he confessed coyly, he is sad to have to hide. Particularly discombobulated by his claims of empathy were those he’s ruthlessly exploited to advance his political prospects. It’s a long list. The Sudanese community in Melbourne who Dutton claimed spawned gangs that left people afraid to leave their houses. The Lebanese community in Sydney who he said should never have been allowed into Australia in the first place. Australia’s Muslim community who he baselessly accused of withholding pertinent information about terrorists from the AFP. Refugee rape survivors who sought abortions as a try-on. Our First Nations who he equates to dysfunction and violence, undeserving of Apology or Voice. Palestinians fleeing genocide who were blanketly accused of supporting Hamas. 

Dutton’s deployment of any and every issue, person, community or country as opportunistic political ammunition has been incessant. As Defence Minister, he compared China to Nazi Germany and misused classified intelligence, attracting rare criticism from ASIO boss Mike Burgess. More recently he hyped the infamous Dural Caravan Hoax as a security disaster for which Albanese was responsible. During the campaign he verballed the Indonesian President. In the dying days of his campaign and potentially his political career, he reaches for the familiar and punches down once more on our First Nations, booing neo-Nazis providing cover for his disrespect.

Despite all the rebrands and rictus grins, it is this relentless, reckless rhetoric that defines Dutton’s 24 years in politics. And now those squawking chickens have flown right home to roost. Distractions, division and the blinkered binaries of a Queensland copper were always a precarious platform from which to launch a prime ministerial bid but who would have predicted Dutton would have literally nothing else at the ready when the election was finally called? His successful exploitation of the Voice referendum, that decision to turn a potentially transformative moment in Australian history into a destructive short-term vehicle for his own political ambition, inspired the laughable false confidence that an appeal to dark fears was all it would take to secure the top job.

“Are you better off that you were three years ago?”, repeats Dutton like a mantra, convinced an answer in the negative will see the Government turfed out. But in her regular interviews with wide cross-sections of the electorate, Redbridge’s Alex Fein encounters a sophisticated understanding of the issues facing the country. There is, she says, a recognition of a new age of global uncertainty and volatility and, whilst disappointed with the timidity of the Albanese Government, they are not impressed by the paucity of Dutton’s offerings. How would he make things better over the next three years, they ask.

Beyond promises of money secured from cuts he won’t outline, and a nuclear policy comprising a list of sites he won’t visit and a fucktonne of magical thinking, he has only wild hysterical rhetoric about the risk to civilisation posed by the cautious Middle Management Prime Ministership of Albanese. Meanwhile the real risk to civilization grifting malevolently in the White House has cast a long shadow and Dutton’s instinctive embrace of a simpatico strongman proved ill-conceived. Early admiration for the “big thinking” Trump gave way to disavowals: “I don’t know him. I’ve not met him”.

The Australian population would be forgiven for saying the same about most of Dutton’s front bench. With the notable exception of official campaign spokespeople Pup Paterson and Jane Hume, and the odd MAGA moment from Jacinta Nampijinpa Price that included mocking efforts to increase breastfeeding by Indigenous mothers, the Shadow Ministry have been reduced to background extras, perhaps preserving their political capital for the post-election reckoning (hello Andrew Hastie) or because Party HQ seeks to limit further gaffes (hello Bridget McKenzie) or simply to hope the electorate forgets they exist (hello Barnaby). Housing spokesman Michael Sukkar’s ill-tempered 7:30 debate with Minister Clare O’Neill went so off the rails Sarah Ferguson invoked his mother to stem his constant interruptions. In desperation, Michaelia “big Trump energy” Cash has ratcheted up the fear factor with the promise Daddy Dutton will “keep Australia safe” via a crackdown on “drugs and thugs”, the centrepiece of a thrown together package the same national child sex offender disclosure scheme Dutton promised when Minister for Home Affairs (the “exact details” are still “to be worked through”). 

Insiders often reported that the public perception of Josh Frydenberg and Peter Dutton was always comically inverted, that Dutton’s Hard Man persona hides an affable charm and Frydenberg’s reputation for congeniality belies a brittle glass jaw. A journalist friend swears Dutton has an enjoyably dark sense of humour. His family seems to love him. But Dutton should be judged on his past words and actions, his future policy offerings and the team he has behind him, none of which were inventions of the “Hate Media”. No soft focus video can change the fact that all are unworthy of the office he seeks.