Anyone who thinks Peter Dutton is going to play nice and back the Yes case for constitutional reform on Indigenous recognition is kidding themselves.
The opposition leader stopped even thinking about laying down bipartisan cards before Christmas. Since new year he’s been dealing himself a hand as dark as the lowest cards in the spades and clubs suits.
To understand why Dutton is all but certain to back in the No case, look no further than his political backstory in the Queensland LNP and his recent time as the parliamentary and political hard man for Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison.
The Queensland LNP is the junkyard dog of Australian politics, fenced out back and trained to go quickly and fiercely against an opponent. If the LNP has the upper hand it can flourish. However, internal contradictions of a merged political entity have kept it out of office for all but five of the past 33 years at a state level — a socially conservative former National Party based outside Queensland’s south-east and a metropolitan Liberal wing in a capital city that’s more and more part of what journalist George Megalogenis calls “new Australia”.
At a federal level the inverse works for myriad reasons. Queensland Labor keeps scoring the lowest vote share in the nation. From this, Dutton has learnt the lessons of tearing down, not building up, and always seeking out the soft political flesh.
There’s also an instinctive side to Dutton that has no time for the progressive forces in Labor and beyond. He taunts “lefties” on social media, he famously walked out on the apology to the Stolen Generations (later saying he “regretted” it) and he kicked off a campaign against “wokeness” in the military during his stint as defence minister.
After Malcolm Turnbull appointed him immigration and border protection minister in 2014 — following the ousting of Tony Abbott as prime minister — the Queenslander went to Sydney and spent a few days with his new boss. He had one overarching piece of advice: follow the hardest of hard lines on asylum seekers. “Turn back every boat, do not let one want-to-be refugee land or get easy access to the community,” the new minister said, according to Coalition sources at the time.
None of this might appear to have much to do with Indigenous recognition but it maps the psychological landscape Dutton brings to the first big political battle he’s joined. He has picked this fight because he thinks he can win it and he wants an early victory over Anthony Albanese, a prime minister who towers over himself in all the polling metrics.
The danger is this could cause rash behaviour (who can forget an over-eager Turnbull coming a cropper on the “utegate” scandal when Kevin Rudd was prime minister) but if he succeeds he’ll cement his position as a Liberal leader who can defeat Labor on an issue the PM has nominated a personal mission.
Albanese, who has inexplicably and foolishly painted the looming referendum as an election campaign, will have lost some political gloss with the broad electorate but, more vitally, will be seen by progressives as unable to deliver on a totemic issue.
A loss on the referendum would also give Dutton political lifeblood and oxygen just as he is grasping for straws.
What those who think Dutton has a lot of room to move ignore is that he and the Coalition are losing on the issues that matter. In fact they’re not even looking for consensus territory. Outside this fight, they are not just failing to make headway on the economic front, they’re going backwards — as last week’s polling demonstrated — and they can’t prosecute a case on energy pricing.
After railing against the government’s gas price cap and voting against it, just last week they criticised Labor for not introducing it sooner. That redefines confusion.
The damage done by policy failures on programs such as Medicare and housing is too recent for the Liberals to make any effective criticism, and Morrison left behind nothing that merits pride or acknowledgment.
Morrison is another problem the Liberals have refused to deal with. They won’t disown him (with the honourable exception among former ministers of Queenslander Karen Andrews) and no one is moving to make him get out of Parliament early.
In Britain, former prime minister Boris Johnson is refusing to go away — having his portrait unveiled at the Conservative Party’s spiritual London club and making an unofficial official visit to Kyiv for example, which has fed speculation he’s eyeing a comeback should his shattered party descend further into the political mire.
His stickiness in British politics has caused journalists to adopt the phrase “long Boris”, a condition said to manifest in the lingering impact of what was a brutal assault on the government’s immune system.
The question should be asked whether we’re seeing a bit of “long Scott” in Australia, with the smashed reputation of the former prime minister continuing to damage his party’s standing and leaving the political equivalent of old kippers for his successors to deal with.
Dutton is trying to pick his way through all of this, pushed along by his nativist instincts to go the full Abbott on Albanese while trying to have a veneer of good intentions (he says, like all Australians, he wants what’s best for Indigenous people).
It’s a half-smart, both-sides-of-the-street play that pays on winning but doesn’t necessarily leave Dutton out of pocket if he loses.
The chance of the referendum succeeding looks to be in danger now, but Dutton hasn’t won the battle and the government has a reservoir of goodwill in its corner.
All of this sharpens the motivation for Dutton’s increasingly negative stance. If he can win this battle, he will have a platform from which to attack the government on a number of fronts, will be seen as a winner by many in the community and be regarded as a champion of “common sense”.
It’s a bullshit argument and Dutton knows it. He might just be cynical enough to pull it off. He has almost nothing to lose.
Can Peter Dutton pull a rabbit out of his tattered hat? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
