Joe Hildebrand: Trump’s comeback gave Dutton politics mainstream legitimacy until the US President went anti-Australian
Peter Dutton could have once read out of Donald Trump’s playbook and coasted to The Lodge – but now the latter’s Messianic veneer has started to crumble, the Opposition leader needs to pivot, writes Joe Hildebrand.
Opinion
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After the landslide US election that stunned the world last November, I said to a senior Labor figure: “You might want to rethink your plans to make Peter Dutton Australia’s Donald Trump!”
He responded with a laugh but I was only half joking.
Australia was still in the depths of the cost of living crisis and Dutton’s strong stands on national security, immigration and Australian values were clearly resonating with a stressed and angry electorate.
Sure enough Labor ended the year at an all-time low since coming to power two-and-a-half years earlier.
But if a week is a long time in politics, three months is an eternity. And like everything else in the world, it’s all about Trump. Like the Good Lord Himself, the Donald giveth and the Donald taketh away.
And so just as Trump’s incredible comeback gave Dutton’s own style of populist and nationalist politics vital mainstream legitimacy, the US President’s erratic, chaotic and anti-Australian decision-making since then has isolated him – and therefore anyone seen to be like him – from the affections of Middle Australia.
To be both clear and fair to Peter Dutton, he is not a mere Mini Me to Trump’s Dr. Evil. He has cleverly and carefully refused to buy into the President’s more lunar lapses, such as his cosying up to Russia and humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
But Dutton’s difficulty is that he is constantly being urged by his right-wing support base to do just that, and sometimes he flies perilously close to the sun.
As the leader of a party founded on the principles of free trade, he should have been the most vociferous critic of Trump’s quasi-socialist tariffs on Australian goods. Instead he argued that he could have got a better deal. Sound familiar?
It’s hardly “Team Australia” and herein lies Dutton’s dilemma.
If he falls in with the government in championing Australia’s national interest or supporting cost of living relief, he risks looking weak and alienating his red-blooded core.
But if he goes on the attack by banging the drum on immigration and national security, and picking fights on the culture war issues his supporters adore, he risks alienating genteel small-l liberals (perhaps now spelt “genTeal”) as well as the soft swinging voters who decide elections in this country.
This is a political quandary you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy — or, to put it more accurately, you absolutely would wish on your worst enemy.
Because Dutton’s true nemesis at this election isn’t the Australian Labor Party, it’s the Australian electoral system itself.
Unlike the vast majority of countries in the world, Australia has compulsory voting — or at least compulsory attendance.
If you don’t show up to get your name crossed off the roll you could face — wait for it! — a $20 fine, not to mention the far greater loss of an overpriced sausage.
Sure, you could just draw a cock and balls, but it generally means that energising voters is a non-starter in election campaigns. They have to come out anyway.
Thus mainstream parties have to burrow deep into the souls of the most apolitical and apathetic citizens and deliver for them. The silent majority, if you will.
This makes Australia one of the most boring and stable democracies in the world, and thank God for that.
And it also means that electrifying people on deeply emotive hot button issues doesn’t sway results. Americans vote on abortion and guns. We vote on economic management and affordable healthcare.
Being boring, familiar and centrist is what wins elections in Australia, as long as you can do it while appearing stable and strong – think Menzies, Howard, Hawke, our three longest serving leaders.
But present as too ideological, too out there, too risky or unstable and middle class suburban voters will run for the hills.
And this is why Labor’s strategy to cast Dutton as Trump has gone from being a terrible idea to a brilliant idea without the idea ever changing. All that has changed is the world.
As long as Trump was a fearless speaker of truth and champion of homespun conservative values, Dutton could have read his playbook word for word and improbably coasted to The Lodge.
But now that the cracks in Trump’s Messianic veneer are starting to crumble, and it becomes increasingly clear that Making America Great Again is coming at the expense of making Australia great again, Dutton needs to pivot.
And given that Dutton’s entire political persona is built on an assured strength and certainty, that pivot is harder to perform than a three-point turn in a stretch limo.
And he has to do it in an ever-narrowing bandwidth between what his most ardent supporters want and what the rest of Australia will tolerate. Is it fair? No, it’s just politics.
The good news is he can now do what the left have always done for all their woes: Blame Donald Trump.
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