Dutton has set the country back 50 years
From the moment the Liberals lost Aston in a by-election, Peter Dutton had to find a way to keep his job. Why not try and ruin Albanese’s simple plan for a better Australia, by doing what every other lazy wrecker has done? Make it all about race.
Albanese thought the Voice would be uncontroversial, symbolic, and a natural extension of the hand of friendship, from us to the original inhabitants. He failed to understand that Dutton was drowning, and he would be desperate to find a lifebelt. Defeating the Voice was that lifebelt.
Dutton took a while to get around to it, but his statement that the referendum would “re-racialise the country” set it up to fail. Because his statement did exactly what he was pretending to warn us against.
It introduced race to a discussion about disadvantage, and it brought out all the buried resentment and ‘what about me-ism’ inherent in rural and regional Australia.
He was channelling vintage John Howard, the bit where the Mabo and Wik decisions opened the way for ‘the Aborigines’ to swoop in and claim ownership of your house. It is crude, and simple, but it works every time.
Throw in a bit of class envy by talking about ‘the elites’, and the latte sippers, and you will create a tsunami of fear and doubt. How a bunch of Coalition politicians are able to characterise middle class urban Australians as elite is beyond understanding.
Maybe they should try explaining where Gina Rinehart sits in the class structure, or bankers and miners. I occasionally partake of a latte, but no-one has ever invited me to Anthony Pratt’s mansion in Kew.
If Dutton does not survive for long as leader, he could always move to America, where his shamelessness could prove handy in getting Trump re-elected. The recruitment of Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine was relatively simple. Getting Lydia Thorpe on board was pure luck. Who knew she would be against the proposal for a Voice? It turned out she sacrificed ‘the good’ in pursuit of her vision of ‘the perfect’.
Forget that they all seemed to have different agendas, and were individually not electorally potent, but they were all indigenous, and they were against the Voice.
This was probably the most effective tool the No side had. If the very people we were trying to help could not agree, then what was the point? Just another Black squabble, while we are all trying to put food on the table, and pay the mortgage, or the rent. The cynical use of these individuals will reverberate throughout their lives.
Their own people must be, in the main, confused. It is difficult to see their reasoning. Whatever it was, it was devilishly effective.
Analysis will decide what was the greatest factor in the defeat of the referendum, but Black on Black was catastrophic. Everyone I spoke to about the question mentioned it. And it gave otherwise well-meaning voters an easy way out. They could comfortably vote NO without appearing to be racist, even to themselves.
Of course, Dutton was unrelenting. He needed a win, any sort of win, and presumably to protect himself from questions he could not answer, he stopped holding press conferences.
Ken Wyatt has explained several times over the last couple of years, and memorably on the ABC’s Radio National program, that he took a detailed plan for the voice to the Coalition cabinet – twice. Remember he was a minister. So, unbelievably, was Dutton.
So they had it supplied to them, and Ken Wyatt even highlighted the actual pages to read. Apparently Dutton does not read, or he chose to forget. As for the Nationals, what seemed a bad early bet on No turned up trumps. Clearly they knew the well of racism and ignorance in their heartland.
I know this, because I live in a National seat, and the arguments against ranged from the nonsensical (the United Nations will set up homelands, which will be hived off from Australia, and set up as independent republics), to the more nonsensical (they will abolish Australia Day).
Some might have questioned Jacinta Price’s stance on black disadvantage. You know the one, where the ‘blackfellas’ have actually done all right from invasion and dispossession, because they have running water? Don’t forget her statement that “she [Burney] might be able to take a private jet out into a remote community, dripping with Gucci, and tell people in the dirt what’s good for them – but they are in the dark,” Price said. Apparently Linda Burney owns no Gucci clothing.
As for Warren Mundine, he has managed to move from once being president of the ALP, to being the Liberals’ star (unsuccessful) candidate for the seat of Gilmore, in 2019. It seems he left Labor years earlier, when Bob Carr was selected instead of him, to replace Mark Arbib in the Senate.
The unlikely pairing of Dutton and Thorpe is just that, unlikely. Apparently they have never met, and Thorpe has stated he avoids her, if he can. That did not stop the public seeing her as one of the No side’s greatest assets, and Dutton certainly did not continue to discredit her once she became useful to the No side. Her musing about ‘our Albo’ wanting her assassinated was fairly ‘out-there’, but she was useful.
Dutton didn’t have to field many questions on the sheer stupidity of his “if you don’t know, vote No” slogan, although Ray Martin did give him something of a ‘touch-up’. If analysed, it feeds the type of stupidity some in the backblocks suffer from.
I was told to take my own pen into the polling booth, as there was a good chance the Electoral Commission would use an eraser on my vote and change it, if I voted the ‘wrong’ way.
Every question time, there they were, the Liberals’ chorus asking for more detail, for more legal opinions, dividing the country by endlessly referring to the “divisive Canberra Voice”, from the parliament, which is, incidentally, in Canberra.
Nothing about closing the gap. Not much about the fact that it was a body which would be limited to an “advisory” role only. No mention of Howard abolishing ATSIC, or the Northern Territory intervention.
From the sidelines it looked like Albanese ran a terrible campaign. Perhaps he thought that, by being on the side of the angels, the Australian people would open their hearts, sort of like they did for the Matildas, but they didn’t.
Opposition Leader is a thankless task, but for some who think they have a destiny to lead, it is the best place to start.
Peter Dutton appears to be a person who has no idea of how people feel about him. This might be a blessing, because even amongst rusted-on Liberals, I have yet to encounter a Liberal voter who likes Dutton.
As for the other side, the result merely reinforced our perception of the man. So much time in the spotlight, so many terrible causes, so many blunders, so many potshots at his fellow citizens for being ‘woke’.
It now seems clear he has given up on winning back the Teal seats. That means his only path to power is a swing to the right, an appeal to the outer suburbs and the regions, where he hopes he can ride a wave of resentment and anger against the cities, and those ‘elites’.
One can only hope his dance with Trumpism is unsuccessful, because it would import even more racism and ignorance, more disrespect for science and experts, and angry old white men running the place.
Cartoon by Alan Moir (moir.com.au)
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Return to home pageNot if the country doesn’t allow it to happen.
60% voted against “changing the constitution to create a non binding voice to the Australian parliament”. That’s a pretty specific issue. 40% wanted to do it.
In that 60% people voted ‘No” for many reasons. Terror of changing the constitution. The permanence of the change being written into the constitution for one specific group. Twisted into “division” and envy. Fear of treaty and sovereign rights, fed with lies about “losing your home”. Not knowing what may happen in parliament when the Voice came to being legislated. Misinformation and too little clarity. Confusion and uncertainty. Racist attitudes to inigenous Australians including “theyre getting too much”, based on innuendo and lies.
It is wrong to assume all of them now want now to just ignore indigenous Australians and do nothing. Dutton himself promised (for a month or so) to take Recognition without constitutional change to the next election. So even he realizes more still needs to be done. His contortionist positions to scrape up a white supremacist base, cookers and Pentecostals and all, will fail. The Teals have the capacity to wipe him even further off the map come the next election. His own seat is now close to marginal.
Maybe he’s set things back by a year or two. But 50 years? It’s in our hands again. nd not as dire as it is being painted.
The masses have set this country back too.
Yet again fear,lies,and ignorance rule.
The fear regarding the Constitution change being permanent is totally unfounded, because it could always be changed with another Referendum. So it isn’t exactly permanent,just harder to change than Parliament just dumping it.
Also,I expect the next Federal Election to be completely feral,and a race to the bottom. No point with policies,and vision when most people won’t understand them. This type of Federal Election is on the masses.
2025 Federal Election the battle of the slogans?
Poor fellow my country 😪
Wonderful, astute, timely analysis, thank you Mark Buckley.
IMHO it is NOT Dutton that is the problem……………….it is the toxic arseholes in his electorate that keep voting for him!!!!!
If Potty Boy became PM, the country would be unlivable. People too stupid to see it, do not understand that a university education does not make you an elite. And let’s not forget that most university students and graduates who are left-leaning are Arts and Science graduates. Law graduates, nowadays, tend to be split, just like Economics students. And while it’s not as common amongst medical students, since the number of females studying medicine has overtaken the number of males, and since a number of universities offer medicine as a postgraduate course with undergraduate students coming from other disciplines than just science, there have been some left-leaning medical graduates. Trumpism has you hating the people you shouldn’t hate, much like Hitler did.
Something that people need to remember with Potty Boy and Price and Mundine is this. Hitler personally intervened to save an old Jewish comrade-in-arms from the gas chambers not because he was a poor misunderstood man who was too easily led by Himmler and Goebbels, Hitler was ruthless about disposing of anybody who challenged him, heck, he even sacked Hans Frank for a broadcast that annoyed him, he did it because that Jewish comrade-in-arms had fought bravely and he felt he owed him that small act of kindness. Potty Boy is not not a racist, he is a racist, he only used Price and Co. because they were useful to him.
Good read, I would not blame the masses or the voters who rely upon the media to be informed, but unfortunately our ‘medium’, through its actions does not concur?
Further, we have had permanent nativist conditioning through media and social narratives, inc. coincidentally the US linked NGO that Carr acts as a patron for, promoting ‘environmental’ and demographic tropes for the past generation on immigrants and population growth.
Presently in the US we can observe chaos in Congress for a new House Speaker includes elements we see here, influence of Koch’s ‘Freedom Caucus’, their grass roots fronts aka Tea Party and Atlas think tanks, while FoxNews’ Hannity, had producers lobbying GOP Reps to vote for RWNJ Jordan…..
Missed by MSM except a short presentation on ABC Drive was this on The Voice from DeSmog:
‘A Secretive Network Is Fighting Indigenous Rights in Australia and Canada, Expert Says. It’s all part of a global playbook from the U.S.-based Atlas Network to protect the profits of fossil fuel and mining companies, argues a Sydney researcher….
The campaign’s main spokespeople are Indigenous – Warren Mundine and Australian Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price – and they have been interviewed frequently in the country’s mainstream media. Yet few Australians are aware of Mundine and Price’s connections to the wider Atlas Network (CIS Sydney directly & while IPA Melbourne), Walker argues.’
It’s the same predictable modus operandi that is missed by local media keeping their gaze inwards; same as Brexit (Atlas think tanks @ Tufton St.) and Trump inducing rage amongst the above median age, regional, less diverse and less educated, to vote against the future and throw younger generations under a bus.
Better, if Dutton, LNP, CIS or media want to reward Price, then a win win would be to parachute into a safe LNP lower house electorate which voted No; love to see the reaction 🙂
“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Voltaire
The respected classical radio announcer whose blog ‘Harrumph’ opens with this epigram voted NO, somewhat ironically. He rather admires Ms Price, and so on.
*****
The No voter profile is elusive.
The sophistry is confounding at times until you stumble across the first lie, and then it becomes a question of drilling down to motive, the usual suspects such as money, power, the quid pro quo, political affiliates, etc.
Tom Switzer, Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Studies – an oxymoron if there was ever one – has given his tuppence worth below. Conservatism at its mendacious, disingenuous best.
Blatant compound whopper: “The cultural elite has long treated Indigenous Australians as ‘victims’ since the British ‘invasion’ in 1788. And there is no question that terrible crimes were committed against our Aboriginal peoples. But although Australia was once a racist place, it does not follow that Aboriginal people are denied equal rights. According to the distinguished historian Geoffrey Blainey, they had the right to vote long before women in Britain.”
Sigh!
My apologies, the quote from Tom Switzer is as follows:
Whopper upon whopper: “The cultural elite has long treated Indigenous Australians as ‘victims’ since the British ‘invasion’ in 1788. And there is no question that terrible crimes were committed against our Aboriginal peoples. But although Australia was once a racist place, it does not follow that Aboriginal people are denied equal rights. According to the distinguished historian Geoffrey Blainey, they had the right to vote long before women in Britain.”
Everything Dutton says or does nudges Australia backwards.
Mundine,judging by his history, is first and foremost, a mercenary,contorting with consumate ease to follow the money,notwithstanding the grease that emanates from his regrettable mouth.As for Price,her lack of self awareness is commensurate with the widescale rejection of her pronouncements by the First Nations people she pretends to represent.
So Geoffrey Blainey tells us Aboriginal people had the right to vote before women in Britain. Oh and Blainey, The Australian 8/9/2023 claimed “Truth-telling body using ‘make believe history’ : that is, a Bruce Pascoe history by Victoria’s indigenous truth-telling commission.
Sutton and Walshe, both historians of Aboriginal existence, and authors of The Dark Emu Debate praised Pascoe (“hunter gatherer plus”).
A film of Dark Emu was also by an Aboriginal group.
A read of Sutton and Walshe would surprise right wing pundits.
Blainey’s point about voting is a tiny matter in Aboriginal history.
Dutton would poke a stick in anyone’s eye just for the hell of it, he is a negative wrecker beyond the pale.
To comments above by Andrew Smith and frances, readers might be interested in the following:
“There was never an evidence base for the coercive policies of the Intervention [2007-2012], or the duplication of aspects of it right around Australia. What was involved instead – and what is involved in the formulations of the family Price — was conviction politics…
…The conviction politics in play in Indigenous Australia do not have any sort of origin in Indigenous ideas or experience, but in the free market politics of bodies such as the Institute of Public Affairs, and the Centre for Independent Studies, which have employed and trained both Mundine and Price and helped them develop and rehearse the arguments, the slogans and the strategies for their campaign…
…They were by far better prepared than the Yes campaigners, even if the Yes team had leaders of far greater experience in Aboriginal politics, programs and policies.”
[ https://johnmenadue.com/the-voice-has-been-silenced-but-now-we-must-listen/ ]
Him @ his mate Scummo have not contributed any thing of benefit to the people that make up our Australia.
Simply put, they are nothing more than toss pots creating ruin & disharmony in their wake.
I recommend an open season should be set in place to properly address the nothing- burger toss pots that cave
in to to whatever the Yanks want to plunder.
The Lucky Country or the Poxed Paddock? When former imported shitheads like T Switzer come here to earn a living by lying, exaggeration, distortion, propaganda and conservative fictionality, one lives in a dodgy place reduced by being maggoted by the parasites of pose and profiteering. Former colonies created a commonwealth and nation, and they had long histories themselves, were evil imperialists doing a job of as much infamy as glory. THE SCRIBBLERS OF THE CONSTITUTION, AND WHO HAS FOUND IT AND READ IT, ignored long histories, with some murder, theft, torture, agonies, acquisitions, endless humiliation. AND, THE SCRIBBLERS were a dodgy bunch of manipulators, distorters, dealers and depraved dunces, so say many. No Australia legally existed before the known existence of the original occupiers, who did not happen to have some British type title to blocks and paddocks. A disgraceful substandard political poser like Peter Duckwit-Futton should never be there, and should shrivel away. He remains a haemorrhoidal humiliation.
Nampijinpa’s (should she be forced to use her Aboriginal name, or be banned from using it?) comment about running water was ridiculous for two reasons.
Firstly, as one friend of mine told me, she lived in a remote town (I think Coonabarabran) where there was an Aboriginal settlement of houses. The council refused to extend the water into the houses and said they could just collect water from the tap outside.
Secondly, before Europeans, they had plenty of running water — they lived near rivers, streams, and other water sources.
It was the settlers who pushed them off their land away from their water sources and other resources, for their greed.
Many were massacred, many died of smallpox. The dead have no voice, and now they don’t want the living to have a voice either.
Ian, on Lord Vestey’s homestead there were 20 taps for his lawn and garden. The Aboriginal community on the property had just one.
JulianP: On Koch linked CIS again ‘Tom Switzer, Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Studies’, they have also run seminar/webinars with JJ Mearsheimer* (linked to Charles Koch Foundation), a RW ‘tankie’ apologist for Putin’s invasion, and via Koch linked Budapest ‘peace’ events i.e. MCC/Danube Inst., supported by PM ‘mini Putin’ Orban, hoping that Ukraine concedes for Russia to ‘peace all over’ them.
Dirty little Anglo fossil fuel oligarchs’ et al. secret, they also share interests with Putin, Murdoch, Legatum, Tories/GOP, oligarchs etc. in crashing liberal democracy, the EU and strangling NATO vs. preference, like Musk, for corrupt nativist authoritarian regimes with no or minimal organised labour, free media, consumer protections, environmental regulations and taxes, while keeping domestic politics tumultuous, at least keeping media entertained and busy.
Ironically or coincidentally, ‘tankie’ Charles Koch’s Mearsheimer, like others of his ilk, have been published by Pearls & Irritations; I wonder at their submission standards or process?
Interestingly, even at this late stage, there is still confusion in some sectors of the community as to whether the Voice would be legislated (and thus subject to parliamentary change from time to time) or embedded in the Constitution (and thus not able to be changed without a referendum).
The Voice would always have been legislated no matter what the referendum did. The contest was whether the legislation would take place prior to or after a referendum.
The only thing the referendum was going to do was to entrench the Voice as a principle within our constitution : that’s all !
Sludgehammer Spud still has two more years to try and drag us back to the glory years of the Menzies 1950’s, when everything was white with the world, before the next election
David Crisafulli leader of the Qld LNP in a highly cynical move has withdrawn support for reconciliation efforts in Qld previously supported by the LNP on a bipartisan basis. This was headlined by Murdoch newspapers throughout Queensland today (including The Gold Coast Bulletin, Toowoomba Chronicle, Courier Mail, Townsville Bulletin, Cairns post and the Australian). In each case these influential regional publications have sympathetically reported this backflip by the Qld LNP to move away from the reconciliation process as they see it as a popular political move following the failed referendum.
Never underestimate the malignant influence of the Murdoch publications in the regions !
No, he didnt set us back 50yrs, we are where we are because thats where we REALLY are. We are a population that is easily scared. We are easily polarised and wont budge at any cost. High ideals and egalatariasm are just a fantasy of idealists. When it comes to commiting our money where our mouth is, the money dries up. Sure we get a flurry every now and then at disaster time but look how quickly it disappears. just look at how disaster relief is handed our…” we will give $50m for disaster relief up front, available this week….” Then go look at the dirty machiavellian details …….Thats how we do things in the “lucky country”. Thats who we are.
@Teiresias:
Yes, I’m with you there.
Your point re Switzer/Blainey’s being a ‘tiny matter in Aboriginal history’, however, prompts me to reply that distortions of history are never a small matter for any of us. Yet historical revisionism may not be on the radar for indigenous leaders the CIS has recruited, assuming their main focus is looking forwards.
I’ve not checked, but I imagine that historian Blainey would unlikely be making a ‘point about voting’ than giving an account of who got full suffrage and when.
After 50 years of suffragism in Britain, women over 30 were given the vote in 1918. Aboriginal people won full suffrage in 1962, after partial voting rights had been granted in three states.
So Switzer’s waffle is disingenuous, based on bits and bobs of voting rights around the county which Aboriginal people had been granted well before 1918. So perhaps it was pedantry on my part to give an example of how Switzer not only distorts the truth but doesn’t care that he does, when I might have troubled to find more shining examples.
From the very first, post-election’22, Dutton was determined to find something which would provide him with a ‘win’ against a then-popular Albo. This issue was it. He doesn’t give a stuff about First Nations people and will exploit anyone like a Mundine, Price or Thorpe to further his ends. The question on the referendum slip could not have been simpler but Dutton’s mob muddied the waters brilliantly so that most were distracted or utterly uninterested in becoming educated on the matter at hand. Dutton’s crew are without conscience when it comes to getting a ‘win’. Bugger the country, if necessary. A shameful performance in a time where shame has zero influence.
Frances, thank youI
It might seem just a little matter, but British politics has always been a pitifully restricted environment, occupied by by royal blood from across Europe. Indigenous Australians were never recognised for a long time – and as we now see, not much recognised now.
There are people who know a great deal about Indigenous history and are discovering more and more. For example, between 2014 and 2218 there was a great deal of study of caves south of Mount Tom Price, believed to have been inhabited by Indigenous people for 32,000 years.
The Juukan Gorge was found to have been inhabited for 46,000 years. Rio Tint destroyed the caves in May, 2020!
Think about the Higgins-Lehrmann rape incident in Parliament House in March, 2019. The whole matter was riddled with corruption for years, involving politicians, journalists etc off every rank and flavour, and in the end it ended when a jurist had notes from a rape trial.
Caput. Finished!
We are being diddled by experts of cunning and practised
skills, DAILY.
I see The Spud does not like and can’t handle strong women. His preference is, no doubt, silent, submissive and in the kitchen. They should get the Mad Monk or Scummo to give him pointers on what to do.
@2.41pm.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2023/oct/19/richard-marles-china-taiwan-question-time-anthony-albanese-peter-dutton-indigenous-voice-cost-of-living
Well said Mark !! The only good thing about Dutton is he is in opposition, and I pray to whatever that it stays that way.
I’m with Andy56 entirely. That is exactly where we are, and the referendum just exposed it brilliantly!
I am a bit upset about aboriginal people going into “mourning” and all that. No need! Identify your enemies, especially those within your own tribe! Once you had Jacinta Price and Warren (Mundine) on the “No” side, the vote was lost. Nothing else was required. I was almost convinced to vote “No” myself! It sounded completely logical to me, in spite of the lies being trotted out in support.
Services Australia allow delegates to make formal review decisions. However, only an authorised review officer can conduct a formal review, not a delegate. I raised the issue of legality of such reports with Services Australia, Australian Council of Social Services (ACOSS), Anthony Albanese, Mark Dreyfus and many others. None of them made a comment about that. A few senators even did not acknowledge the receipt of my complaint. Do they treat other jobseekers like that? Or I am the only one who deserves that? Is there at least one government official who will hold Services Australia accountable?
Why, isn’t it obvious? They are the next best thing Australia has to a true aristocracy. They are Australia’s very own aspirational Bunyip aristocracy!
Now, Mark, you better go and apologise for your disrespectful insolence towards your social and commercial betters. Don’t forget to bow repeatedly. And tug your forelock!
You and your likes do not get invited to the abodes of the rich and deserving. The only way you will ever be admitted is as a menial making deliveries, or cleaning and repairing the place, or mowing the lawn. And then only through the tradesman’s entrance at the rear of the manor!
It’s called “egalitarianism”. In its true blue Aussie convict heritage definition.
Roswell:
That’s because he leads a ragtag bunch of, not just conservative, but out-and-out reactionary bovver boys n’ gals. Neo-liberalism came about when classic liberalism met steam punk, and they had a baby.