Quiet Australians just sent a loud message to the Coalition on its far right culture war obsession | David Penberthy

If the Coalition had a path to victory on Saturday it was via loud-mouth drunken uncles the real ‘Quiet Australians’ just told to shut up, writes David Penberthy.

There was a lot of talk last week about the so-called “Quiet Australians”. Peter Dutton was predicting – hoping – that the Quiet Australians would rise up on polling day.

Unfortunately for him, they did. And they’re a hell of a lot quieter than he hoped they would be.

If the Liberal Party had a path to victory, it would have involved a drunken uncle at a family barbecue who bored everyone senseless crapping on about how he felt like an outcast in his own country, how Indigenous people had never had it so good, how the whole world had gone so bloody mad that there’s drag queens reading Possum Magic to the kiddies in public libraries and blokes trying to get into our national women’s swimming team.

The Liberals in their current conservative incarnation seem surprised that they didn’t win or come close to winning.

They labour under this delusion because everyone they know and talk to has this same cultural siege mentality.

Former leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton on his final trip to Canberra. Picture: Peter Barnes

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese arrives onstage after winning a landslide election victory on Saturday. Picture: Saeed Khan/AFP

The election result should be a thunder clap moment for them.

They found out that Australians are simply not that angry. They found out that Australia is not America, neither in temperament nor design.

The reason Donald Trump has won is that he’s herded together every angry, disenfranchised voter into the same spot, and revved them up accordingly.

Crucially, he has done so in a nation that has voluntary voting.

Trump’s angry base was joined last year by an influx of swinging voters who had reached the understandable conclusion that Joe Biden was both senile and incompetent, and didn’t rate his replacement.

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The opposite happened here in Australia last week, and it proves two things.

First, most Australians aren’t up for the us-versus-them toxic aggression which has turned America into the kind of place where old friends and once-loving relatives no longer talk to each other.

Second, in a political system framed around compulsory voting, the low number of angry Australians will always be swamped out by the higher number of laid-back Australians who don’t really care that much about anything.

The results last weekend painted a bleak picture for parties of the far right in One Nation and the Trumpet of the Patriots and a party of the centre right in the Liberals.

Pauline Hanson sounds like a broken record these days, hitting play every three years on all that miserable, paranoid rubbish she first peddled in her maiden speech in 1996.

And as for Clive Palmer, well, wow, how is it that you can spend $100 million on anything and get absolutely bugger all in return?

Remember, the key Trumpet message, run for months in strip advertisements across the front page of every newspaper in the land, was that Australians don’t want to be welcomed in their own country.

And guess what? No-one voted for them.

So what about the Libs?

Having exited the field on economic management by failing to produce any meaningful policies, the Liberals under Dutton effectively went to the Australian people on the following platform: slightly cheaper petrol for a short period of time, and fewer flags at press conferences.

Their hope was that somehow the anti-woke sentiment would carry them over the line – the very basis of Dutton’s nudge-nudge appeal to the so-called Quiet Australians in the dying days.

You could almost see him licking his lips when the welcome to country issue blew up after Anzac Day and when Penny Wong made her clanger about the supposed inevitability of the Voice being implemented within the next 10 years.

But none of it worked.

Why?

The first is that the Liberals confused their ability to win a general election fought on multiple policy fronts with their success fighting a single referendum aimed at achieving one key change – enshrining a Voice to parliament in our constitution.

Dutton’s hope of re-heating that soufflé was always a forlorn one, especially with an increasingly polarising Donald Trump back in the White House in full flight, making quieter Australians regard anyone trying to be even vaguely Trumpian with growing scepticism.

It also made the Libs look desperate and opportunistic.

US President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington on May 7. Picture: Jim Watson/AFP

Senator Jacinta Nampijina Price and husband Colin Lillie wearing MAGA hats on Christmas Day. Picture: Facebook

While Australians had serious concerns with the 2023 referendum at making a profound and permanent change to our constitution, some of the racial stuff that became an issue at this election was paranoid and second-tier.

We know, thanks to the result, that most Australians don’t overly care whether there’s an Aboriginal flag in the background at Albo’s press conferences. If they did, they would have turfed Albo and his flag collection out of office.

We also know that however grating and overdone the welcome to country might be – more I would say by HR departments than any Aboriginal person – most people don’t think it’s such a big deal that it would change their vote either.

That’s the thing about the Quiet Australians. They’re, you know, quiet.

Even if they’re a bit tired of being welcomed to their own country, they’re not going to start heckling some poor Aboriginal bloke who’s conducting a ceremony before a football game.

It would be kind of rude, and really, what enduring harm is being directed our way through being welcomed anyway?

But more’s the point – on what planet does any of this become the basis for good government?

As for the Quiet Australians, the forgotten Australians – well, the only thing that was forgotten at this election was forgotten by the Liberal Party.

They forget that they are meant to be the party which dominates on economic management. They failed to produce any meaningful policies that played to that strength.

All this left was a bunch of opportunistic blather about woke stuff which most people are simply happy to ignore.

The Liberals will remain preoccupied with it at their peril.

Originally published as Quiet Australians just sent a loud message to the Coalition on its far right culture war obsession | David Penberthy