What is Peter Dutton’s game plan?
The former Liberal minister Ken Wyatt, the first Indigenous man elected to the House of Representatives and the first to serve in cabinet, quit the party on Thursday.
“Aboriginal people are reaching out to be heard but the Liberals have rejected their invitation,” Mr Wyatt told The West Australian.
Mr Dutton’s decision on Wednesday to actively front a campaign against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament has baffled and outraged dyed-in-the-wool Liberals outside the parliamentary party.
“He is a wise, history-making leader and now with a referendum to win,” Malcolm Turnbull said of Wyatt after his announcement.
Endorsements of Mr Dutton’s position from certain members of his frontbench have been absent, conspicuously meek or phrased in the abstract and circuitous ways that carry meaning only in Canberra.
“I think we need to elevate [the Voice] above divisive, nasty politics and walk together into the future with unity, with purpose, for a united Australia,” rebel Liberal Bridget Archer said.
Her fellow Liberal moderates in the shadow cabinet, such as Marise Payne, Julian Leeser and Simon Birmingham, are among those on the frontbench who are understood to be opponents and were bound by this week’s vote. They did not reply to requests for comment.
“The leader of the federal Liberals is a National,” said moderate stalwart Catherine Cusack, a former NSW MP who quit politics last year and says the party has lurched to the right.
“He has no appeal outside Queensland but is popular (in that state) for sure,” she said.
Rumours of a defection
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stoked rumours of a defection or resignation by saying he knew personally a member of the frontbench who wanted to support the ‘yes’ campaign.
Even among former parliamentarians, only members of Mr Dutton’s national right defended the decision to actively front and campaign for the ‘no’ case when contacted by the TND this week, with former moderate MPs either in favour of the party taking a formal stance against or speaking in favour of the Voice.
Corporate Australia or any significant institutions want no association with the ‘no’ campaign that only this week and in front of MPs like Barnaby Joyce aired the view that marriage between Indigenous people and those of different races was proof reconciliation had made good progress.
Even plausible explanations are difficult to come by for why a party that was founded by a leader from Melbourne would join the ‘no’ campaign that Mr Dutton framed on the Today show as opposition to a “city” referendum.
The party needs to appeal to both outer and inner suburbs, but this is the second time this week Mr Dutton’s focus appears to have shifted to the regions.
Being taken seriously
From a purely personal perspective, joining the ‘no’ camp makes sense for the struggling Opposition Leader who gets the de facto entitlement of being taken seriously by the media – that comes with a referendum and a purpose otherwise absent from the Liberal platform.
Research published last year by the Scanlon Institute showed which voters are embracing the anti-Voice campaign, and why that makes many members of Australia’s most historically successful mainstream party worried.
It found people who oppose the Voice are 16 percentage points below the national average score for accepting other cultures, or “diversity and difference”.
This is a significant outlier.
Support
Whether the voices of reason within the Liberal Party are all talk and no trousers is a perennial subject.
But you can’t say they didn’t warn you.
Long-term damage
Moderate Liberals rang the alarm before they were wiped out last May about a shift to the Republican-style right – too little, too late for some critics.
Mr Dutton is carrying out a plan that has one big selling point for the Opposition Leader, who like most first-term opposition leaders has had no cut-through.
“This could put you onto a winner,” said one former conservative federal MP.
The political game is different since the introduction of teal independent MPs in the inner city who now have well-established media profiles.
They cheered this week as the Liberal Party appeared to be driving off a political cliff.
Another former Liberal MP agreed on Thursday, and said the party’s Victorian and NSW division now regarded those losses as not able to be regained until the latter half of this century, if at all.
