Trump’s re-election has enabled Dutton the chance to play his role of a lifetime

Peter Dutton has been lucky, until now, to be campaigning at a time when feelings mattered so much more than facts. Lucky that securing sympathetic coverage and plenty of it came cheap if you amplified people’s grievances and anxieties. Lucky that large sections of the media shrugged if policies didn’t stack up or add up. If they sounded good, that was good enough.

With at least one interest rate cut on the horizon in the lead up to the election, the Coalition’s failure to release a single fully costed, credible economic policy showed both an arrogance that it could skate through untroubled by scrutiny and confidence that people weren’t hung up on solutions because they stopped listening long ago.

The opposition leader probably couldn’t believe his luck when Donald Trump was re-elected.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

But the atmospherics have changed both here and overseas.

The opposition leader probably couldn’t believe his luck when Donald Trump was re-elected. He gushed he was “very happy” about it, no doubt relishing playing his role of a lifetime as Little Sir Echo. He might live to regret that.

Trump made it profitable for leaders to smear or sneer at experts, including scientists, electoral commissioners, intelligence chiefs, economists, the courts or political reporters. Dutton followed his lead.

Dutton, again following Trump’s lead, successfully marketed himself as the strong man of Australian politics, taking that as licence to politicise every occasion – be it his Christmas Day message, Australia Day or way, way down low on whether Penny Wong and Mark Dreyfus should have represented Australia at Auschwitz.

We reached that sorry state when those arguing for a change to Australia Day risked being labelled unpatriotic or accused of loving their country less, while criticism of the Israeli government drew charges of antisemitism or indifference to atrocities committed against Jews.

Wong, whose home was splattered with racist graffiti as a child, has not uttered a single word of criticism of Jewish people, yet Dutton deemed her inappropriate to represent Australia at commemorations for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. He also dissed Dreyfus, the son and grandson of Holocaust survivors. Dreyfus described Dutton’s comments as grotesque. He was right.

On January 26, 1788, white settlers began the process of taking or destroying everything Indigenous Australians possessed – their land, their lives and their culture. And still, we – well, mainly conservative politicians and their acolytes – insisted on rubbing their noses in their loss by demanding they show gratitude every year on that day. And if they protested, they were abused by people in powerful positions occupying the last refuge of scoundrels.

Those of us born in places which have been invaded can empathise with the feelings of Indigenous Australians objecting to January 26. It does not mean we love Australia less. Much as I like every Turkish person I have met – either here, in Cyprus or in Turkey – if I was expected to take part in a ceremony celebrating Turkey’s invasion and continued occupation of Cyprus since 1974, I would not. Could not.

Many Indigenous people, showing considerable grace, have participated on January 26. Yet, the first target for cuts from Dutton’s new shadow minister for government efficiency, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (another echo of Trump) was the piddling, petty $450,000 over three years spent on Welcome to Country ceremonies.

Dutton has been getting away with a lot, including his fatuous assertion that Labor is obsessed with these kinds of culture wars. In fact, they are his forte.

His pledge to cut public servants, particularly so-called diversity hires (announced after Trump blamed diversity hires for the horrendous Washington air disaster), is supposed to raise $24 billion over four years.

He might need every cent of it to fund his ill-advised unwinding of the fringe benefits tax to provide small business owners free lunches. To be fair, Dutton was only 15 when the FBT was introduced in 1986, so he probably wasn’t focused on how hard it was to get it enacted.

Whether his plan costs between $1.6 billion and $10 billion annually, depending on take up, as Treasury has estimated, or $250 million as the opposition claims, it’s still a lousy idea. His refusal to release costings suggests Treasury, using the opposition’s own parameters, is on the money.

Sunday’s appearance on ABC’s Insiders shows why Dutton tries to avoid scrutiny from sharp people asking about policy. He revealed he wouldn’t announce spending cuts until after the election, leaving himself open to multiple scare campaigns and charges that he lacks the confidence to sell his economic policies. Assuming they actually exist.

Dutton also told host David Speers that his nuclear plan would lower energy prices by 44 per cent, only to admit the first plant would not be operational for a decade. That’s if everything goes according to plan, which it won’t. And when it doesn’t, Dutton will no longer be around to answer for it. Another Liberal leader oblivious to the fact we are in the race of our lives.

Little wonder Dutton has spurned the National Press Club. Politicians have found they are less able to control or predict what might happen there. It tests their mettle. Often they fail. There is no substitute for substance, and Dutton has produced too little of it so far. He stumbles on details. He gets nasty.

Dutton’s brutish strategy – which crosses the line into inciting community tensions – has brought the Coalition back from the brink. However, as senior Liberals note, it is not as well-placed at this time in the electoral cycle as other oppositions that have then gone on to win.

Maybe Dutton will defy history. Maybe Australians are so fed up they do want someone who apes Trump.

After the US president’s unhinged press conference on Wednesday, when Trump said he would turn Gaza into the Riviera minus the Palestinians, that seems highly unlikely, though. Especially if they think he might seek Australia’s help to do it.

And if the Reserve Bank cuts interest rates twice (in February, then again in April), and Anthony Albanese calls the election for May – all of which is possible – maybe treating voters like mugs will end as badly in 2025 as it always has in the past.

Niki Savva is a regular columnist and author of The Road to Ruin, Plots and Prayers and Bulldozed, the trilogy chronicling nine years of Coalition rule.

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