Batter to boat-rocker … and neither Khawaja nor Dutton will back down

Stand by, sports fans, and political observers. It’s all happening.

Last month when the ABC’s Laura Tingle, in quiet conversation at the Sydney Writers Festival, opined that Australia is “a racist country” and accused Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s announced plans to cut migration as “so much dog whistling ... it doesn’t make rational sense”, all hell broke loose.

Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja has criticised Opposition Leader Peter Dutton over remarks he made in reference to Fatima Payman’s resignation from the Labor Party.Credit: Getty Images, James Brickwood

Despite the fact La Tingle enjoyed enormous support for her views, the central premise of her critics was that as a publicly funded journalist she had to remain ruthlessly neutral in her public stances. The ABC advised that she had been “counselled her over the remarks”, while Dutton thundered that Tingle had “outed herself now as somebody who is a partisan, she’s a Greens/Labor supporter. I mean, she’s just now completely destroyed her credibility.”

But, what now?

Usman Khawaja, the man who is likely Australia’s most popular and admired cricketer – with only Pat Cummins to argue the toss – has gone a whole lot further than Tingle did and his remarks on Dutton will create every bit as much of a storm.

The background is that at a press conference on Thursday morning, Dutton made reference to Labor Senator Fatima Payman – who at the time was suspended for having crossed the floor to support a Greens motion recognising a Palestinian state. (She has since resigned from the Labor Party.)

“I think what it does demonstrate” Dutton said, “is that the prime minister, if he’s in a minority government in the next term of parliament, it will include the Greens, it will include the green Teals, it will include Muslim candidates from Western Sydney. It will be a disaster. If you think the Albanese government is bad now, wait for it to be a minority government with the Greens, the green Teals and Muslim independents.”

In response, Khawaja – a cheery, softly spoken man by nature, of generally moderate views, and the first Muslim to play for Australia in a Test match – reached for the long handle.

“As a Muslim who grew up in Western Sydney I find this comment from someone who is running for PM an absolute disgrace,” Khawaja said on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Bigotry at its finest. Fueling Islamophobia from the very top.”

True, Khawaja did not use the word “racist”, as Tingle did, but the purport is exactly the same, when the accusation of “bigotry” is combined with that of “Islamophobia”. For an Australian cricketer of Khawaja’s repute and regard to accuse an alternative prime minister of something so grave as racism, is simply without precedent.

Bear in mind that when, last December, Khawaja wished to write something so mild on his cricket boots as “All lives are equal” and “Freedom is a human right” at a Test match against Pakistan – in presumed reference to the agony of Gaza – he was hauled into line by the International Cricket Council and Cricket Australia. While both cricket bodies do have legal rights over what he displays on his uniform, Khawaja is under no formal or legal obligation to curtail his public remarks at all.

As an Australian in a free country, he may say what he damn well pleases this side of the defamation laws. But the convention is certainly extremely strong that famous cricketers do not make heavyweight comments on political matters. As a breed, Australian cricketers are generally on the conservative side of things. They are batters and bowlers not boat-rockers, and their place in public life is so exalted that John Howard once said that as prime minister he occupied only “the second most important job in Australia” after Australian cricket captain.

That convention has been shattered.

Where to from here? Therein lies the interest.

Khawaja will not back down or walk back his remarks. They’re un-walkable. And that tweet has the air of a man who has had a gutful and has said what he thinks needs to be said.

So will Dutton back down? He obviously cannot agree that Khawaja has got it right. But it is also hard to walk back those remarks that seem to equate to having Muslim independents representing your electorate in western Sydney as a very bad thing.

So Dutton will, presumably, stand by his remarks – unless he says his issue is only the horrors of an Albanese minority government, not Muslim representatives per se. But that will be hard to maintain when Muslim representatives are mentioned in the same scathing breath as Teals and Greens, about whom he is always so pejorative.

Could this then be, perhaps, precisely the kind of controversy that he wants? Is it a Trumpian play, whereby you say a seemingly outrageous thing, and reap the rewards of people who quietly think exactly the same thing? Politically, the odd thing is that just when it looked like the prime minister was at risk of losing a lot of Muslim votes over the suspension of Payman, Dutton’s move seems ill-timed to pick any disaffected Muslim voters up.

We will know more over the next few days. But we are moving into territory that Australia has never been in before. And it really is all happening. Just not in a good way.

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