Most of us don’t like being abused, harassed or vilified. So much so there are laws that ensure that reported incidents in the workplace and at home can be addressed if reported. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s real job is to convince enough Australians that he would make a better Prime Minister at the next election. What should happen is the opposition leader looks at government policy and either suggests changes or explains what their government would do differently. While you could argue that Dutton and his Coalition Parties have taken the second option – the way they are doing it is to vilify, harass and abuse those who promote alternate viewpoints to the Coalition parties across the country. Let’s look at a couple of examples.
Dutton has suggested that the country’s aging fleet of coal fired power generators would be replaced by nuclear generators in the event of a Dutton Coalition government. He has consistently repudiated the rollout of renewable power, complaining that wind farms are a blight on the landscape, solar storage isn’t scalable and sooner or later the lights will go out because of a lack of power generation which nuclear generation would fix. Well actually – nuclear won’t fix anything.
Prior to even designing a nuclear generation plant there is the small problem that nuclear plants are banned in Australia with the exception of the medical production and research conducted at Lucas Heights in Sydney. As Professor Ian Lowe points out in The Saturday Paper, the ban was implemented by Prime Minister Howard.
Since the ban was actually proposed to the Howard government by the Greens, it beggars belief to think they would support its removal. The premiers of all the states proposed for nuclear power have come out against the scheme. Even Dutton’s Liberal National Party colleagues in Queensland, facing a state election in October, have hastened to distance themselves from the proposal. So there is a formidable legal barrier to the proposal to build nuclear power stations.
While legislation can be changed, it’s unlikely that the Greens would support a repudiation of one of their core beliefs. Then Dutton has to convince the states to overturn their bans. It’s all technically possible, as is winning Lotto this week
Equally as important is that Dutton and his nuclear proponents apparently can’t add up. Dutton’s plan is ten years too late and wont generate enough power. Professor Ian Lowe’s article discusses this and other fundamental flaws.
According to The Guardian,
Peter Dutton has escalated the Coalition’s rhetoric against Palestinians fleeing the Gaza war zone, claiming that none should be allowed to Australia “at the moment” due to an unspecified “national security risk”
Well actually ASIO’s Mike Burgess assured Dutton and the rest of the country that nothing has changed in regard to the assessment of visa applications since Dutton was the Home Affairs Minister. Yet Dutton keeps up the rhetoric – days after Burgess specifically warned politicians to ‘watch their language’ so that existing tensions are not inflamed.
Dutton’s argument that if people come from Gaza they support Hamas is illogical at best. Using the same logic, all Australians supported the Morrison Coalition Government assuming we were living in Australia during the period. Yet, when the compulsory opinion survey better known as an election occurred in 2022, around two thirds of us chose to give their initial support to candidates that didn’t represent the Coalition Government.
ABC News reported this week on the difficulties Federal MP Zali Steggall was faced with to make a speech in the House of Representatives
The OG teal independent has always had an ability to get under the skin of the blokes in the Coalition — it comes with the territory when you win a once blue ribbon Liberal seat from a former prime minister.
But Thursday seemed different, with Steggall at times having to shout to get over the wall of words being levelled at her from the opposition benches.
While not suggesting for a second that other parties in the Parliaments around Australia are paragons of virtue in this regard, the outright disrespect for those that are seen by the Coalition to be representing areas that ‘belong’ to the Coalition across the country is not limited to Federal Parliament. This report is of similar behaviour shown by the LNP majority to an independent Councillor in the Brisbane City Council. This sentence from the news article probably explains the motives
Cr Johnston has had an acrimonious relationship with the LNP-majority council since she quit the party 12 years ago to become an independent.
See the similarities? Like Steggall, Johnston has been elected by the voters in her constituency which the Coalition seems to think they ‘own’. Both Steggall and Johnston has every right to address the forums where they have been elected and reflect the views of their respective communities. No group in any Parliament has all the answers and no group has the right to actively ensure that others with an alternative viewpoint are treated with ignorance and contempt.
As Bernard Keane suggests in Crikey
For politicians like Dutton, whose primary selling point is his “strength” (in contrast to the “weak” Anthony Albanese), a calmer, less inflamed civic life is a disaster; peaceful resolutions of conflicts are a body blow. The political temperature must always be high, there must always be a crisis, one with the highest stakes possible, and we must always be threatened, preferably existentially so.
Dutton is not trying to recreate a better world or clueless – he is the parent that would tell a 6 year old child that was pipped at the post ‘second is the first loser’, rather than they tried their best. He is ultimately responsible for the social unease that is being generated by the ignorant and gullible to groups of people who Dutton is victimising to maintain a fabricated crisis. He is the one that is responsible for the Australia wide scare campaigns against the shift in energy production which is happening around the world. The changes are necessary to mitigate events that will likely adversely affect his and our kids and grandchildren. He has no intention of implementing nuclear power, rather he will allow generators to (in the words of another politician who trades in similar tactics) ‘burn baby burn’. If you want proof, what happened to the second ‘The Voice’ referendum that he ‘promised’ during the bitter and divisive referendum campaign a year ago.
You accept the standard you walk past. Others in the Liberal and National Parties along with the related organisations around Australia can point to Dutton, his ‘shadow ministers’ or the Brisbane LNP Councillors and say ‘it wasn’t me’. But by not publicly calling out the abuse and vilification that is day to day method of operation for the Coalition’s leadership at all levels of government, each member accepts the tactics. Each member of the Coalition parties, from the members of parliament to those that permit advertising material on their fences or stand on street corners come election time and hand out the how to vote cards are equally culpable.
So how do we fix this? Well actually you and I can make a start to changing this culture. If you know a Coalition party member – ask what they are personally doing to change the bullying victimisation, fear mongering and harassment actively supported by their leadership? And when the answer is nothing – ask them why?
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