Opinion: Why Peter Dutton will never be prime minister

Allow me to make the boldest call in Australian politics, writes Paul Williams. DO YOU AGREE? VOTE IN OUR POLL

Allow me to make the boldest call in Australian politics: Opposition Leader Peter Dutton will never be prime ­minister.

For reasons examined below, Dutton in 2025 will lead the Liberals to defeat, and he’ll be replaced by deputy leader (and more moderate MP) ­Sussan Ley.

But it didn’t have to be that way. For one, Dutton has earned a degree of respect across the outer suburbs as a ­values-driven conviction politician – even if a little too conservative for capital city Australia.

For another, the Albanese government is vulnerable. Saddled with a tiny parliamentary minority, “sticky” inflation and the likelihood of more interest rate rises (and inevitably job losses), Labor could easily have succumbed to a small-target Coalition at the 2025 election.

But Dutton threw all that away on April 5 this year.

The waves of history usually break on the reefs of broader economic forces, but there are occasions when the sealing of a leader’s fate can be pinpointed to an exact moment. For Liberal prime minister Harold Holt, it was when he rudely interrupted his own backbencher’s first parliamentary speech in 1967. For John Howard, it was in 2007 when he conceded on live television – after dodging the question for years – that he would retire sometime after the next election.

For Dutton, it was in April when he echoed Nationals leader David Littleproud and declared the Liberals would refuse to support the Voice to parliament referendum. Dutton’s woes were compounded when his party kicked it up a gear and actively undermined the referendum with rhetoric more suited to a fraught election campaign. Indeed, no one mentioned “race” until the Opposition described the referendum as “racially divisive”.

That tactic proved effective among voters who misunderstood the context of political “equality” – do we have equality in this country when the gap between rich and poor, rural and urban, educated and uneducated, Indigenous and non-Indigenous is rapidly growing? – but it gave voters, sick of negative politics, another reason to recoil from an already unpopular Dutton.

But Dutton didn’t have to go down this path. Had he agreed to support the referendum – even without actively campaigning for it – pass or fail, the Liberals’ hands would today be clean. The irony is that Dutton (and some Liberal MPs and many Liberal voters) believe a Voice to parliament for First Nations is a good idea. Dutton even wanted a second referendum should he win the next election. But that moment of unity has passed and, while Dutton has won the battle, for several reasons he is destined to lose the war.

First, Dutton’s own personal approval has collapsed since opposing the Voice. In the last Newspoll before declaring his opposition, Dutton’s net approval was minus 13 points. In the most recent Newspoll, it was minus 18 points. When a pollie throws mud, it’s inevitable his own hands get dirty.

Second, the Liberals need 18 seats – and a huge after-preference swing of 6 per cent – to form government. But many of the seats they need to (or should) win back are in capital cities, and held by Greens and Teals who will not be defeated after a single term.

Third, female voters, and voters aged under 35 years, were the prime movers against the Liberals in 2022. It’s no coincidence these same cohorts were the referendum’s strongest Yes voters. Worse, Dutton and the Liberals since 2022 have done nothing to win them back and, by opposing the Voice, have further antagonised them.

Fourth, opposition leaders who oppose a government’s referendum almost always go on to lose the subsequent election. Labor’s Doc Evatt lost every election after opposing Menzies’ bid to ban the Communist Party in 1951, with similar fates awaiting Liberals Billy Snedden and Andrew Peacock. John Howard lost the Liberal leadership to Peacock after he rejected Bob Hawke’s 1988 referendum proposals.

Last, Australian voters give even mediocre governments a second chance. Indeed, it’s been 92 years since a federal government – Labor under Jim Scullin – was defeated after a single term and, even then, it took the onset of the Great Depression to do it.

Peter Dutton, hardworking MP for 22 years and frontbencher for 19, will never be prime minister. But when the Liberals lose the next election, let’s hope their post-defeat report is an honest reflection pinpointing the exact moment an arch-conservative Liberal Party – for short-term political expediency – needlessly blew its chances and ruined its relationship with a moderate Australia.

Dr Paul Williams is an associate professor at Griffith University