‘I have no doubt we will win’: Peter Dutton’s bold declaration on election eve
With a federal election expected to be called any day now, the man who wants to be Australia’s next prime minister tells Frances Whiting in an exclusive interview the ‘underdog’ LNP will win.
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I’m driving about an hour north of inner city Brisbane, where suburbs give way to rolling hills and through the sort of semirural village where you can buy everything from a bag of chicken poo to rusting motor oil signs, past fields of nodding cows and along an unsealed road to get to know a man who is famously considered not easy to get to know.
Here, at the top of the driveway in a tucked away farmhouse is the home of the Leader of the Opposition, Member for Dickson, and the man who would be Australia’s 32nd Prime Minister, Peter Craig Dutton.
Depending on who you talk to, Dutton is either the toughest bloke in Canberra, a steely eyed former copper who eats opponents for breakfast, or a bit of a campfire marshmallow, a bloke whose tough outside belies his soft interior.
Over the next hour or so, there will be glimpses of both as a casually dressed Dutton strolls out on to his veranda, invites me in to sit at his kitchen table, drink some tea, and attempt to find what is known in political circles as his “log cabin story”.
Most politicians have one of these narratives telling of defining moments or events that have shaped them. To wit, Dutton’s opponent for the top job, Anthony Albanese’s log cabin story is that of a son of a single mother growing up in public housing. And while they are steeped in truth, they are also often used to demonstrate a pollie’s “everyman” credentials.
To that end, the always entertaining former Liberal MP, Christopher Pyne once said: “I do not have a log cabin story like so many people in this place (parliament), but I once did have to get my own lemon for a gin and tonic.”
As for Dutton, 54, his log cabin tale perhaps begins with growing up as the eldest of five in the working class suburb of Boondall in Brisbane’s outer northern suburbs, with his father Bruce, a bricklayer and his mother, Ailsa, a stay-at-home mum, and later, professional daycare provider.
Picking up his mug of tea, Dutton travels back to Boondall, and to the childhood that remains deeply etched beneath his skin.
“It was roaming freely, it was backyard cricket, belly diving into the backyard pool … there was a local sawdust mill where we’d ride our bikes though piles of sawdust – Mum was not too happy with that – and the rule was to be home by dark.”
But when Dutton was 10, his parents separated and, as the eldest, he says he felt the weight of keeping his family together as his parents’ marriage fell apart.
“You do feel that responsibility,” Dutton nods. “There is a 10-year gap between me and my youngest sibling, so I was involved as a 10-year-old, 11-year-old, 12-year-old, changing the nappies, pushing the prams, carrying my sister around, so that was the reality of being the eldest – you carry that responsibility.”
Dutton is quick to stress the separation did not cause long-term bitterness.
“Even today, at Christmas, Mum and Dad sit around the same table, they are civil to each other, there’s not that level of acrimony,” he says.
What it did do was draw the Dutton siblings into a tight unit that remains.
“Family is paramount. It is everything to me. (Growing up) our family gatherings were always big events, I had a lot of cousins, and for me it’s very important that my nieces and nephews be involved with our kids. They come here, we get together regularly, it’s been a real priority for us,” he says.
Indeed Dutton has replicated – albeit on a much larger scale – the world he grew up in here on this 130ha property he shares with his wife Kirilly, 51, and (when they are home) sons Harry, 20, and Tom, 19. Dutton also has a daughter from a previous relationship, Rebecca, 22. Prior to the move here in 2023, the family lived on another property, at nearby Camp Mountain.
“Part of the reason we moved on to the acreage when our kids were young was that they were able to roam across five acres, and explore, they could run around and climb trees, but they couldn’t go beyond the gate. I was always very paranoid about our own security while being in parliament.”
The seeds of this self-confessed hypervigilance, however, were sown long before he entered the political arena.
Instead, it was borne of his time as detective Senior Constable Dutton, serving nine years in the Queensland Police when he left school, resigning in 1999. It’s been said that Dutton left the police after he was involved in a car accident during the pursuit of an escaped prisoner, something Dutton, with a shake of his head at the table, denies.
“All that has been overblown. I didn’t leave because of that accident,” he says.
So, why did he hand in his badge? The answer to that, in part, lies in a far less idyllic landscape than this one.
“When I joined the police I was a fresh-faced 19-year-old kid from Boondall with absolutely no idea about criminal connections,” he says.
“I had no exposure to the dark side of life, and how part of the community lives. I grew years overnight in that job.”
He shifts a little in his chair.
“I remember going to a domestic incident at West End where by the time we were able to knock the door in, this woman was just covered in blood on her kitchen floor, being beaten on the ground. It was just horrible.” There is a long beat. “Just horrible.”
It’s been suggested that Dutton has post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from that time. I ask if he thinks that is so and, if so, how it presents itself?
“Yes, and I think just the fact you don’t forget those images. You don’t. And it affects how you raise your kids. When you walk into a public place, what are you looking at, what are you looking for? That’s how it manifested with me. Where are you sitting? Where are you sitting in a restaurant? For me, yes I think I was not letting those kids out of sight going down to the park …” he says.
Dutton appears visibly affected when recalling some aspects of his policing years, at odds with his hardman image – and his critics would say, also at odds with some of the decisions he has made over his 24 years in parliament.
Elected in 2001, his political mentor, John Howard, elevated a relatively inexperienced Dutton to assistant treasurer in 2006. His ministries have included Workforce Participation, Health and Sport but it has been his tenures as Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2014-2018), Minister for Home Affairs (2017-2021) and Minister for Defence (2021-2022) which have defined both his public legacy and image, something he is acutely aware of.
“The common thing that is said to me when I meet people is, ‘You are not how I thought you would be’, ‘You are not the person I see on TV’, and I get that. I think it’s a combination of all those jobs I’ve had, and the messages you have to deliver in those jobs,” he says.
“It’s the role of a defence minister or home affairs minister or immigration minister where you do have tough decisions to make. I think both descriptions of me are true, but there is a time to be tough when tough decisions are being made – it’s not dissimilar to parenting in some ways.”
So are there any decisions he has made, any policy he has put his signature to, that he has had to grapple with? Anything that keeps him awake at night?
“We have made decisions lifting people out of Kabul. We have made decisions about bringing in women who have been raped and their sisters and aunts enslaved and slaughtered by ISIL (Islamic State), and I have made decisions to deport people and leave their children behind and to allow others to stay. But you make all of those decisions with the best information and facts available to you at the time,” he says.
“For me, you have to start with what’s in the country’s best interests and then what is in the individual’s best interests from there. If you are making decisions on that basis then you sleep as best you can at night. When you are lifting people out of Kabul, do you leave our soldiers on the ground knowing there is going to be a terrorist strike or a car bombing? By lifting our people out, you are leaving others behind, so what’s the easy decision in that scenario?”
He adds: “Sometimes the public only sees a snapshot of what information you have had in making that decision so sometimes it’s hard for people to comprehend why you have made that decision.”
Sometimes, however, perceptions might also lie in the delivery of that information.
A person in Dutton’s team offered their belief that Dutton is an introvert; that part of the reason he might seem to hurry his way through announcements is because the public speaking part of the job is not something he savours.
He nods his head, then delivers a cricket analogy.
“I think I probably am (an introvert), I feel for people who have a natural ability as a sports person but don’t really crave the public attention and there’s no choice for them to have one without the other. In a way, I feel the same, I enjoy the job of making the tough decisions required, but I don’t crave the public’s attention. I’m not a show pony. There’s a Shane Warne, who was a natural performer, and loved the public eye, and then there is a Marnus Labuschagne or a Steve Smith who doesn’t love the spotlight, and I am more in that category,” he says.
For a man who wants what is the most forward-facing job in Australia, it’s a somewhat surprising admission – and there are more to come, including his prediction for the outcome of the upcoming federal election, widely tipped to be held on April 12.
Asked what he thinks the Liberals’ chances are, Dutton says, “I believe we can win, and I have no doubt we will.”
It’s a bold declaration, and an unusual one. Politicians universally play coy when asked to rate their chances, and are instead quick to claim underdog status. Which Dutton also does, underscoring the declaration with a caveat.
“We are well and truly the underdog, for sure. A first-term government hasn’t lost since 1931, we have a mountain of seats to climb but we have a united team, we have a bigger vision for the country than the government, we have a track record, and I think all of that melds together for us to be successful at the election, but there’s a long way to go,” he says.
Told that his rival for the Lodge, Albanese, once said the idea that he and Dutton don’t like each other is “laughable”, Dutton immediately concurs.
“Yes, I would say the same of Anthony. I think I have a very good relationship with the Prime Minister. I believe a handshake is a handshake, and I believe a private conversation where there is a commitment that what you are talking about remains in the room is honoured and that is what I get from the Prime Minster. I think he is an honourable person to deal with and he’s said the same of me,” he says.
Lest it’s all getting a little too cosy, Dutton throws in “I mean, I think he’s a terrible prime minister, and he thinks I’m a terrible opposition leader, but on a personal level I can have a good conversation with him,” he laughs.
But if Dutton’s relationship with Albanese is apparently warmer than might be expected, it’s safe to say his relationship with the Canberra press pack is decidedly cooler – with a chance of frost.
Since becoming Opposition Leader, Dutton has only fronted the Canberra gallery a few times a year, with one current member of the corps describing his appearances as “rare”. But he was there on February 6, and he’s here today talking at some length, the upcoming federal election seeing pollies of all persuasions engaging more frequently with members of the fourth estate. In the case of Dutton and the Canberra cohort, reluctantly.
“Well, the Canberra pack has become so insular,” he says.
“They live in an environment which is not the environment I live in. It’s not reflective of reality, and I think it is a very different press pack to what it once was. The whole way in which the media industry has been transformed has contributed to this – there’s no ABC reporter applying for a job at News Limited, and there’s no News Limited reporter applying for a job at the Guardian.
“We don’t have the in-depth specialist journalists in the key portfolios we once had, so everyone is now a generalist, everyone is chasing clickbait online.
“We don’t have the very significant journalist figures of the ’60s, the ’70s or ’80s – they have been replaced, in the case of the ABC, they are activists. They have predetermined their story.
Some online publications are an abomination, and they can’t pretend to be quality journalists worthy of the Canberra press pack, and that’s my old-fashioned view of it.
“There are some very substantive journalists in the Canberra gallery but there are a lot who are activists for left-wing publications.’’
So, if Dutton wants a conversation outside of Parliament’s green carpeted halls, who does he talk to? Who is in his inner circle, outside of the Canberra bubble? I offer that he is known, both in political and personal circles, as a man who practises the “pick and stick” method of friendship. He nods.
“That’s to a fault, my friends would say on occasion, it is a loyalty thing. It is a camaraderie trait, part of my policing career as well. Standing by your best friends is a trait I take very seriously in good times and in bad and sometimes even when they don’t deserve it,” he says.
Dutton says he has two wildly different groups of mates.
“One is a group of dear friends I went to school with and I’ve known since Grade 8. We might catch up three or four times a year, we have a WhatsApp group, we have weekends away, we play golf, or they come here for a campfire, we sit around it and have a chat. There’s one in IT, one has a car rental business, they all have just normal jobs, they’re not high-profile people,” he says.
The other group, however, reads like a who’s who of power suiting.
“These are people I’ve known for as long as I’ve been in politics, almost 25 years. They are business people who have become close friends – Stephen Conry, Mark Stockwell, Geoffrey Thomas, James Power, Richard Williams.”
All good mates, but does he have a best mate?
“Yes, Kirilly,” he answers without hesitation, then adds, “and she’s my soulmate.”
Peter Dutton and the-then Kirilly Brumby met during the 2001 election, when mutual friends introduced them believing, Kirrily says, “that we might get along”. They did.
Married in 2003, Kirilly would go on to operate two very successful childcare centres (now deregistered) and together they would build a lucrative property portfolio. Since 2020 the couple have offloaded all their real estate holdings (to the tune of $12m) bar this one. Meanwhile, Albanese’s property empire is currently valued at around the $8.8m mark, including a recent purchase of a $4.3m clifftop beach home near the picturesquely named Copacabana Beach on the NSW Central Coast.
All of which is to say that either man could enjoy a post-politics career in real estate.
For now, however, the Duttons are happy here in this bucolic property, and the white-walled farmhouse – presently undergoing a renovation – atop it.
Filled with family photos and original artworks by local artists, Ralph the spoodle getting underfoot, tradies traipsing in and out, and grown-up sons – when they’re home – asking what’s for dinner, for Dutton, it is both geographically and emotionally a world away from politics. At its heart, he says, is Kirilly.
Asked for one word to describe his partner of 22 years, he answers “saintly”, causing Kirilly Dutton to fall about laughing and ask “could you please print that?”
But Dutton is not to be deterred.
“I say saintly because the other words that come to mind are loving, loyal, an amazing mother and wife, and all that embodied has allowed me to have the career that I’ve had. Without her support and her sacrifice I wouldn’t have been able to have the career I have. The greatest blessing in life is to have children who are healthy and happy, and that’s largely because of Kirilly,” he says.
Dutton has not always been so lucky in love, recently speaking publicly on Sky News for the first time about the break-up of his first marriage at 23 years old.
“I picked up my then-wife from a night shift, and she said ‘I don’t love you any more’.” And the later breakdown of his relationship with his daughter Rebecca’s mother. “I was engaged to Rachel, to my daughter’s mum, and Rebecca was conceived in that relationship, and that relationship broke up (and) Kirilly and I met after that.”
As for Kirilly Dutton, her one word for her husband is “dependable”.
“If I have an issue, it’s not the easiest thing to get back here (from Canberra), but he would find a way,” she says.
He has done so, she says, for most of his political career – away in Canberra from Monday to Friday, and at home for the weekends. She also says that there is “a contradiction” in her husband that she enjoys.
“He is quite serious, but also has a great conversation. I depend on him for a laugh, if we have that Friday night at home, and we’re getting takeaway, watching something with the kids, I think they find watching him laugh funnier than the movie itself,” she says.
Is she frustrated by the perceived chasm between this Dutton, kicking back on the couch, cracking jokes with the kids and the public one?
“I wish it could be different. It’s not frustrating to me, but it is nice when people get to see the other side. There is a toughness needed to do this job but I do love it when someone gives you that feedback that says he’s not at all what we expected, that he’s warm and funny,” she says.
As for Dutton, those Friday nights at home are – as much as possible – non-negotiable.
He has headed home at week’s end for most of his political career.
“It would torture me to be in a defence role away six months at a time,” Dutton reflects, “I don’t know how they do it. But I always tried to be back in time for Saturday cricket, Saturday footy, I reckon I got eight out of 10 games a season. They notice if you’re not on the sidelines, I think, they want you there, even if they say it’s embarrassing. For me, the most normal part of my life was watching them season after season, watching them grow as human beings.”
By any measure, a political life is not a normal one, and should the Duttons go all the way to the Lodge, or Kirribilli House, theirs will become less so. The road back to Brisbane could also become a little more complicated.
Prime ministers are expected to reside in one of the office’s official residences, but it is not a requirement. Either way, Kirrily Dutton says a possible move is “not something we have had long conversations about”.
“Brisbane is still our home, our kids are here, our family is here, and our heart is wherever our family is,” she says.
Right now, that family is a little scattered. Eldest son Harry is in his first year of a carpentry apprenticeship, Tom is taking a gap year and working on a property in Western Queensland and Rebecca is recently returned from an extended backpacking stint overseas.
“She works in childcare, and she is an amazing girl,” Dutton says of his daughter.
“We’ve never had a day’s problem with Bec, she is very easy going, and she has never said a bad word about anyone.”
The Duttons, like every high-profile family, have had to protect their children from public and media scrutiny, particularly in the age of social media. For Kirilly, that meant, when they were younger, handing in their phones at 7pm each night. She laughs.
“It wasn’t popular. They’d say ‘oh but I need to get up for such and such’, and I’d say ‘well, they do have alarm clocks still, you can buy them at Kmart’,” she says.
She also says she misses those days. “I think (parenting) gets harder in some ways as they become older, the conversations we have with them now are about things like gentleness, resilience and support.”
Has the family spoken about what a change in their father’s political status might mean? How things in this already busy household might become even busier?
“Honestly, I just don’t see how it could get any busier. I don’t think it would be a massive life change, people have said to me (should Dutton take the top job) ‘oh, he’ll be so much busier’, but there’s only the same hours in a week,” she says.
And should Dutton’s political fortunes change, what sort of changes might that also mean for the nation?
Dutton, who counts John Howard as his political north star, and the “gold standard” for prime ministership, lists what he sees as the three most pressing issues facing Australia.
“Cost of living – I’ve never seen anything like it around housing, electricity bills, mortgage repayment, insurance and, increasingly, security is a big issue. People are worried about domestic violence, knife violence, youth crime, war in Europe, what might happen with Taiwan, there is a lot of uncertainty around,” he says.
“I agree with the Prime Minister when he said we are living in the most precarious period since World War II, he is exactly right. And the third area is who is going to provide the best opportunity for our country to see blue sky again?”
Given that he recently announced should he become prime minIster, he would not stand beside the Indigenous flag when fronting the press, and his strong “no” position in The Voice referendum, it seems pertinent to ask how that blue sky might look to Indigenous Australians.
“I believe Indigenous Australians are equal to every other Australian. There are people in Alice Springs at the moment – Indigenous and non-indigenous – who are living in abject poverty with inadequate health and education services and without the job prospects that we take for granted in a capital city,” he says.
“It kills me to think a young girl is more likely to be sexually assaulted in Alice Springs than (Brisbane suburb) Aspley. It kills me. So why are we treating people differently? I think every Australian is equal. I think we have an amazing history and heritage of Indigenous people in this country, but we also have an amazing migrant story that we don’t celebrate enough.
“To my mind, every Australian is equal and that is why I have found the whole anti-Semitism debate so scarring. I cannot believe that we are treating people differently because of their religion or their heritage – I don’t abide that for a minute.”
There’s no doubt that whoever is Australia’s 32nd prime minister, they will represent Australia on a world stage that indeed feels increasingly precarious, or as one political pundit recently put it “a global shit show”. Why would anyone want to take it on? Why does Dutton?
“I am a very patriotic person, I do believe we live in a great country. I have travelled around the world before and after (entering) politicsand I think we have so much that is worth fighting for and defending,” he says.
He says that growing up in Boondall, politics was discussed around the kitchen table, first piquing his interest, and his latter years in policing leading him to “understand if you wanted to change things, you had to be part of the parliamentary process”.
Now sitting at his own, rustic kitchen table, this place and this man seem worlds away from the brutal and bloody political arena.
Later, as he waves me off with a cheery “thanks so much for coming”, and Kirilly tells me where to get the best coffee in “town”, it occurs to me that I didn’t entirely find out Peter Dutton’s log cabin story, because his real log cabin, the place that defines him and shapes him, is right here, far from the madding crowd.
Originally published as ‘I have no doubt we will win’: Peter Dutton’s bold declaration on election eve
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