Andrew Bolt: Why Peter Dutton doesn’t need to go full Donald Trump to win
Trump’s explosive start to his second term as US president is making leaders around the West look weak, and Peter Dutton is being told to step up. Here’s why he’s playing cautious.
Andrew Bolt
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I get it. Peter Dutton can’t afford to go full Donald Trump, but the Opposition Leader should at least take some tips.
Trump’s explosive start to his second term as US president is making leaders around the West look weak, and now Dutton is being told to step up.
Some Coalition MPs already want him to do a Trump and pull Australia out of the Paris agreement to cut emissions.
Cumberland councillor Steve Christou tells Dutton to “grow a backbone” and “follow Trump’s lead” by also pulling out of the World Health Organisation, which covered up China’s role in creating the Covid pandemic.
Family First national director Lyle Shelton attacked Dutton for not following other Trump leads, like declaring there were just two genders, male and female: “This is not the sign of good leadership or the strong leadership US voters have rewarded so magnificently.”
And my colleague Rita Panahi yesterday asked why Dutton was “refusing to open his eyes to the political opportunities before him”.
True, I’d hope Dutton would eventually do all this and more, but here are some excuses for Dutton playing cautious for now.
We’re not Americans.
Trump is actually not that popular, and won because his opponent was shocking.
Our mainstream media is dominated by the Left, and we don’t have many big social media platforms of the Trump as a presidential candidate could run as a one-man band; Dutton as a parliamentary leader must deal with the MPs he’s inherited, including cultural Leftists who’d make trouble if he went hard on gender and climate wars.
Plus Trump essentially just had to excite supporters to win, given America has optional voting; Dutton can’t afford to scare middle Australia since everyone must vote.
I could go on, but everything is screaming “caution” at Dutton, when he’s already edging ahead by making Anthony Albanese’s government the target, and not himself.
That said, I can understand the nervousness of conservatives watching Dutton being a very timid Trump.
If he doesn’t promise action now, he won’t have a mandate if elected. And how many Liberal leaders turned out passive and go-with-the-cultural-flow once elected – Malcolm Fraser, Malcolm Turnbull, Scott Morrison …
Still, Dutton could do more before the election, and I suspect he’ll start with letting loose Jacinta Nampijinpa Price on low-risk targets with high cultural rewards.
Price was last month promoted to the opposition’s government efficiency spokesman, much as Trump appointed X boss Elon Musk his own pitbull on government waste.
And here is one Trump example Dutton could safely follow.
This week Musk got Trump to shut USAID, which hands out American aid abroad, complaining it was handing out such absurdly ideological projects such as $1.5m to advance diversity and equity programs in Serbia’s workplaces, $70,000 for a diversity and equity musical in Ireland, and $47,000 for a transgender opera in Colombia.
What a coincidence. Our Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is up to similar nonsense, not just wasting our money but using it to promote a radical Left agenda of identity and indigenous politics.
DFAT is spending $68,000 on a “creative dialogue of stories and dance between Indigenous Moroccan Berber and First Nations … in two Moroccan cities”.
There’s $40,000 for current and former Muslim AFL players Bachar Houli, Adam Saad and Ahmed Saad to hold “sports and leadership workshops” in the United Arab Emirates for 12 AFL Muslim players.
Another $47,000 will go on workshops in Saudi Arabia “to promote gender equity when teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics”.
There’s $60,000 to create two operatic works “in First Nations languages” and stage “landmark First Nations works by Sami (Finnish) composer Ann-Mari Pettersen Magga”.
There’s even $20,000 for a “First Nations cultural exchange project between Australia and Nepal”.
To top it off, DFAT will spend $20,000 to bring Iraqi-born and Swedish-educated artist Hayv Kahraman from her home in the United States to celebrate “Arab arts and culture”, even though she says her work is a “vocabulary of narrative, gender fluidity, and dynamics of non-fixity found in diasporic cultures”, which sounds more LA than Arabic.
Going Trump on such DFAT programs is easy, and Price already wants to sack our First Nations Ambassador.
Sure, we’re not talking multi-millions, but this is also about the hijacking of taxpayers’ money by Leftists in our bureaucracy.
Start on that theme, and where might you go next? The ABC? SBS? Universities? Green schemes? Our gigantic arts bureaucracy?
Dutton doesn’t need to risk going Trump-nuclear to win, but a little Trump will help, and here’s a start.
Originally published as Andrew Bolt: Why Peter Dutton doesn’t need to go full Donald Trump to win
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