One thing that stood out in the result of the Voice referendum is that being totality negative has little chance of winning back Government for Peter Dutton and his Coalition of conservative misfits.
But he seems to think otherwise. He plans that if he can make Albanese look less incompetent than people perceive him to be, then in some peculiar way, he could win the next election.
Sure, Albanese had no choice other than to take the blame for a failed referendum campaign, but thus far, he is doing so with a credible mix of accepting Dutton’s unfairness with the required dignity of one who carries an unjust loss.
Will the loss be of any consequence at the next election? They will both go into it carrying baggage. The Liberal National Parties’ decade of corruption will burden Dutton, and Albanese will shoulder the defeat of the Voice referendum, which has left him a slightly diminished figure. He will also have to overcome the power of Murdoch’s media.
The Prime Minister now also finds reconciliation and Indigenous recognition wrecked for the foreseeable future, but he must do some urgent repair work between now and the upcoming election. His opponents, ostensibly the Liberals, will take every opportunity to take him down with political opportunism and negativity.
Rick Morton described Dutton on “The Voice” last week as “not being a serious person.” I am still defining what that description of the leader of the Opposition does for the reader, but its simplicity sums up the man incredibly well.
The merits of any particular argument seem oblivious to him. His only interest is how much damage his negativity can impact on his opponent. Remind you of Tony Abbott? It does me. Even reminds me of Trump.
Albanese will take the blame for this defeat, but Dutton will carry the more significant long-term failure. In one hit, he has eliminated the possibility of any referendum (including the Australian Republic) being passed well into the future.
That the Prime Minister has to take the blame for the loss is grossly dishonest, given that Dutton always intended to blame whatever proposal Albanese put up.
The same week, The Australian (as reported in Crikey) suggested that:
“Albanese had been insufficiently bipartisan was particularly high-octane nonsense – there is literally nothing that the prime minister could have proposed that would have drawn Coalition support.”
The Prime Minister could have proposed that they give their donations to the Libs at the next election, but the Coalition would not have supported it. That’s because they always had “NO” campaigns in reserve. Campaigns funded by mining magnates and wealthy right-wingers and fueled by malignant racists online.
Sooner or later, a rumour will start that Albanese was gullible (probably by Murdoch), a poor campaigner who produced the wrong question. He, of course, lacked judgment and should have pulled out when he had the chance.
For its part, the YES campaign will be cast as ineffectual, and had it been better and wiser, it might have negated the racism and intolerance of Dutton on the NO side.
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Now, back to Dutton.
Can he overcome his acute unlikability? If he is to have any chance of winning the next election, he must undertake a personality makeover. The only state to show any endorsement of him is Queensland. That’s understandable, given his grouchiness of the authoritarian leader. It’s a Trump style that Australian conservatives seem to be adopting en-masse.
Any damage to Albanese from his part in the YES campaign will have disappeared by the time voters cast their votes. The state of the economy, jobs, the cost of living, our health and how much tax we pay form most of the decision-making in any Federal election. The rest is the likeability of the leader, and there is little of that for Dutton.
And that election remains half a term away. But the recriminations for failure won’t be limited to Labor.
“The damage to Albanese needn’t be permanent. Not a single vote cast at the next federal election will be dictated by perceptions of his poor Yes campaign. Instead they’ll be decided on the same basis as elections are always decided – on economic management, on jobs, on the cost of living, on health, on tax. And that election remains half a term away. But the recriminations for failure won’t be limited to outside Labor. There’ll be plenty of criticism, some scathing, of Albanese from within – and question marks about his political judgment. The referendum result might not be high in voters’ minds at the next election, but the resulting disunity might.”
Dutton may have won the battle with a win that will damage the country for the next fifty years, but he has certainly lost the war. Leaders of the Trumpism ilk possess some ingrained brattish disposition for doing wrong.
They are men who have never really grown up and are never likely to. They also contain personality disorders that see victory through the prism of scaring people, using racism, fear-hate language, invoking resentment and turning unpolitical matters into political arguments. To argue that they are just using robust politics is nonsense.
In the referendum for fairness to Aboriginals, if Albanese provided no detail, Dutton provided no substance. His campaign was:
“… based entirely around a conspiracy theory of an elite plot to do something bad – never really articulated – to white Australians. But he and the No campaign didn’t need substance. It just needed fear, and downward envy, and the repetition of the claim that a Voice was “divisive”, when Australia is now divided more than ever before as a result of its success.”
None of it gave any indication that leadership was being birthed.
He continued down the Trumpian pathway on the Ray Hadley show, telling his friend Ray that:
1) Labor had allowed 105,000 asylum seekers into the country while experts pointed out that 94,260 had turned up on his party’s watch,
2) He thought Albanese was obsessed with drumming up distractions to The Voice,
3) He felt Albanese had “long forgotten about the workers” – making the Liberal party “the party of the Australian worker today.” Odd, then, that the party of the workers is dead set against new legislation providing equal pay for labour hire workers and creating minimum conditions for gig economy workers. The self-declared worker’s champion rationalised this obvious inconsistency by observing these reforms (benefiting workers introduced, paradoxically, by a prime minister who had forgotten the workers) would be “another wet blanket over small business … at a time we can’t afford it.”
Katharine Murphy had some excellent responses to Dutton’s statements. Firstly:
“Dutton was like an exploding fire hydrant, theories and feelings pouring from him. Stand up and fight. Repeat 12 times.”
And this gem:
“This opposition leader makes things up regularly, sometimes several times a day, with growing confidence. He’s fully intent on shaping his own reality, and why wouldn’t he be? Dutton’s accusations and inventions are amplified much more often than they are factchecked, parsed or decoded, because there is so much bollocking and barracking in the public square, people can’t see the bullshit.”
The only conclusion to be reached is that the conservative parties have witnessed and confirmed just how well the tactics of division demonisation work, and conspiracy theories, like Australians, are the victims of an elite plot.
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Leadership combines traits that etch the outlines of life and grow over time. They govern moral choices and demonstrate empathy toward others.
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Although very well known, Peter Dutton isn’t very well-liked. Sullenly negative with a dour spirit, he gives the impression his only interest is in obtaining Government and the power one can derive from it. Examine his history; all you get is negativity with a touch of toughness or bluff.
It would help if he could persuade disengaged voters, but does he have the leadership qualities to win back the necessary teal seats or convince voters the incumbent Prime Minister needs to go?
Opposition Indigenous Australians spokesperson Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has “warned the Prime Minister that he should be looking over his shoulder.” However, history tells us that the defeat of a referendum tends not to result in any lasting damage to the governments that call them.
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My thought for the day
The wisest people I know are the ones who apply reason and logic and leave room for doubt. The most unwise are the fools and fanatics who don’t.
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