Dutton has set the country back 50 years

Mark Buckley

1 year ago

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.