Dutton taking pointers, but Coalition wary of going full Trump

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says there is a parallel between the voters who rejected the Democrats in the US presidential election and Australians angry about the cost of living, as he seeks to tie Anthony Albanese’s record on inflation and immigration to Kamala Harris’ defeat.

“Part of the problem in the United States was that people didn’t believe that the government was listening to them when they couldn’t pay their bills,” Dutton said on Nine’s Today show on Friday.

US President-elect Donald Trump and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.Credit: AP, Alex Ellinghausen

“They just felt a real disconnect … To be honest, there’s an eerie parallel with what’s happening here in Australia.”

“The migration issues there were very real in the election and I think they’re going to be real in the upcoming election here because this is just a disaster.”

While Dutton’s conservative instincts align with some of the Republican playbook, his political track record suggests he will avoid the excesses of Trump’s rhetoric and attacks on institutions, even if Dutton’s Australia-first stance opens him up to claims of populism.

The opposition leader is already using the Trump victory to reinforce his messages on the economy and immigration, while Coalition MPs are debating whether the Republicans’ anti-elite focus could work in the Australian election, which must be held by May next year.

The mood was buoyant at a pre-scheduled Coalition drinks event in the office of the party’s chief whip on Wednesday night in Canberra, at which some staffers wore red ties to support the Republican Party.

There is consensus in the Coalition that the US result proves how hard it is for ruling parties to convince voters of economic credentials after years of elevated prices, but that unity does not extend to all opposition MPs being keen to take on more strident anti-woke rhetoric and policy.

A day before the US result, Dutton showed colleagues he wanted to avoid being dragged into fringe issues when he ordered the joint party room to ditch a push for a national debate on abortion.

“It was the clearest signal I’ve seen him send to the right-wingers to say ‘pull your head in’. It also showed the level of authority he had internally,” one experienced MP said of Dutton’s comments, made weeks after Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price put a spotlight on abortion.

Contrasting himself with Albanese, who in 2017 said Trump “scared the shit” out of him, Dutton this week said Trump was “not somebody to be scared of”. Trump’s win will solidify Liberal hopes that rocky geopolitical and economic circumstances suit a strongman.

Dutton’s casting of Albanese as weak and bumbling is as relentless as Labor’s portrayal of Dutton as divisive.

“I think more than ever we need America to be strong, and there’s a great deal of uncertainty in the world, and I think that’s part of the reason people voted Donald Trump in because they saw him as a stronger leader, not as a weaker one,” Dutton told 2GB’s Ray Hadley on Thursday.

“I think there are a lot of people in Australia who’d really see the prime minister as being very weak, the country heading in the wrong direction, and that will all feed into the next election.”

According to key moderate MP Andrew Bragg, the party’s housing affordability spokesman, compulsory voting in Australia and a more stable society meant the Coalition should avoid extremes.

Bragg said the party’s housing and economic plans would be paramount, as some MPs agitate for the Coalition to do more work to tear down Labor’s economic narrative.

“Australia is centrist in nature. We don’t need to drive people to the ballot box. Extreme positions are generally punished … It is the economic offering which is most important,” Bragg said.

But influential conservative MPs feel Trump’s victory should kill off any stigma about putting forward views that challenge progressive social causes.

Former Nationals minister Keith Pitt said Trump’s campaign, which ran ads attacking left-wing views on gender and sex, showed people were sick of “woke elitism” and “being told what to think and say”.

“A bold proposition from the Coalition could be rewarded by the electorate at the next election. We should start with regulating welcome to country [ceremonies] to make them culturally significant,” he said.

In his 2GB interview, Dutton mentioned gender pronouns for the first time this term.

“I think when I see a government that is more interested in pronouns than they are people, it starts to become a real problem,” he said.

LNP member Garth Hamilton, who is close to Dutton, said the US result showed going negative against Dutton as a challenger would not be enough to keep Albanese in power.

“It gives me confidence that Dutton will survive Labor’s constant personal attacks. It’s no longer so easy to cancel a conservative,” he said. “People want a choice of policy. They want to know what you stand for.”

Conservative historian Niall Ferguson said high rates of migration this century had sparked fierce debates in Western nations about cultural identity.

Conservative leaders in other countries, including New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and opposition leaders Pierre Poilievre in Canada and Kemi Badenoch in the UK, are also focused on migration levels.

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