Peter Dutton portrays himself as a strong leader, capable of standing up to bullies abroad while contrasting himself to weak leaders at home. His stentorian posturing is underpinned by a grimly reactionary imagination. Meanwhile, Anthony Albanese quibbles and stalls as he tries unsuccessfully to fend off Trump’s tariffs, plaintively offering up access to Australia’s rare minerals as a bribe to get the transactional Trump on-side.
Dutton
It’s time to interrogate the accusatory tone and stolid persona that Dutton presents to the Australian people, in the belief that his tough-guy conceit will win him the prime ministership. As the election looms, there are two matters in particular that voters need to know about Dutton. First, precisely how astute was he as a minister, especially in the chaotic Morrison Government? Second, what exactly are his policies for securing Australia’s economy and its strategic position regionally and globally as the United States retreats into isolationism?
From 2004 to 2022, Dutton held a number of ministerial portfolios in the Howard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison Governments. As minister for health from 2013 to 2014, he managed to offend many in the medical professions. For four years (2014-2018) he was minister for immigration and border protection, adding home affairs to his responsibilities from 2017 to 2021. As Dr Abul Rizvi has shown — on this site and elsewhere — Dutton’s record in dealing with immigration and border security was notable for creating problems rather than resolving them. Along with his mate, Michael Pezzullo, he made the gargantuan home affairs department into a bureaucratic maze from which nothing of policy value could exit.
As a cabinet minister, he was involved in the catastrophic Robodebt scandal. Early in 2021, he was made minister for defence in the Morrison Government just as the invidious AUKUS deal was being hatched by the US and UK, allowing Morrison (and Dutton as his sidekick) to bask in what they thought was its glory, unaware that they were being played for fools.
In short, Dutton’s ministerial career was a notably undistinguished one. His politics throughout were the politics of reaction, never progressive or original in terms of the policies he devised or implemented. He has maintained this approach since becoming Opposition Leader, evidenced for example in his bizarre claim that he could have dissuaded Trump from imposing tariffs on Australian aluminium and steel. That claim is the equivalent of Trump’s claim that he could end Russia’s war against Ukraine within the first 24 hours after he became president. In both cases, the claims are absurdly false.
In preparing for the election, Dutton is avoiding spelling out his policies for dealing with what he identifies as the number one issue on voters’ minds: cost of living pressures. He’s right about what voters are thinking (so is everyone), but he’s offering no detail on how he will provide genuine relief across the board. Meanwhile, he continues to strongly support the hugely expensive AUKUS pipe dream, as well as promising to create eye-watering costly nuclear energy generation capacity across the country. He drops in a few populist flourishes along the way, such as cutting the public service, outlawing working from home measures (despite their significance for women and the fact that they are improving productivity rates), refusing to stand in front of the flags of Indigenous Australians, and regulating that Australian Day citizenship ceremonies must be held on 26 January.
Dutton is certainly no statesman. He’s a political pugilist with a thick hide and a small political imagination. These are not the attributes of a strong leader. They point to a restricted intellect, a moral compass gone awry, and a vindictive mindset. As increasing numbers of voters are coming to realise, Dutton is a mini-version of Donald Trump.
Albanese
As prime minister, Anthony Albanese has been a huge disappointment. His dull persona, his inadequacy as an orator, his obsessive fear of being wedged by Dutton, by the Murdoch mob, and his fear of offending business interests (for example, the gambling industry), have turned him into a grey shadow instead of the inspiring leader voters had been hoping for. And they still are hoping, while looking outside the mainstream political parties.
The problem is that Albanese has always been a Labor apparatchik, when what the country is crying out for is a new kind of leader who can articulate a vision for the country’s future, free from the strictures imposed by outmoded party rules and traditions. The decline in support for the mainstream political parties is continuing apace, even as the Labor and Liberal parties become more detached from — or uncaring of — what emerging generations of younger voters are focusing on.
The worst mistake Albanese has made is to unequivocally support the absurdity of the AUKUS agreement. An intelligent leader would have hedged his bets on AUKUS, commissioning a major public review of its origins, its true costs, and its reliability in terms of delivering on its promises of nuclear powered submarines from America – if and whenever they become available. That review should also have considered options other than those that AUKUS proposes.
Then there is the sad fact that Albanese had to be dragged kicking and screaming to go back on his promise to maintain the ignominious Stage-3 stack cuts that he inherited from the moribund Morrison Government. Fortunately, there were wiser heads in the governments’ ranks that finally obliged Albanese to reform the cuts, making them more equitable and progressive.
Albanese’s compromise with Dutton over the creation of the widely desired National Anti-Corruption Commission has resulted in what should have been a very strong public body into an insipid and secretive agency, as demonstrated by its mishandling of the Robodebt affair. And now (and again in cahoots with Dutton) he has passed a law that will disadvantage funding of independent candidates, while bolstering the coffers of the mainstream parties. Apparatchiks do as apparatchiks do.
Clearly, in the midst of the bedlam that Trump’s America is unleashing on the world, Australia is startlingly bereft of capable and inspiring leaders who will act fiercely and fearlessly in the national interest, rather than conforming to petty partisan politics. It’s time for a fresh generation of leaders to step forward. The lot we are now burdened with have long past their use-by date.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.
Dr Allan Patience is an honorary fellow in political science in the University of Melbourne.