26 properties in 35 years: Peter Dutton’s extensive property portfolio revealed

Peter Dutton has made $30 million of property transactions across 26 pieces of real estate over 35 years, making him one of the country’s wealthiest-ever contenders for prime minister as the major parties battle to convince voters they can fix Australia’s housing affordability crisis.

Since buying his first home at 19, Dutton has made property purchases totalling $12 million and sales of $18.8 million in transactions that he has frequently declared to parliament late, partially, and in two cases, not at all.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese faced criticism for buying a $4.3 million clifftop home last year but an analysis of Dutton’s transactions show he has been a far more active investor, owning childcare centres along with dozens of residential properties.

The Dutton family’s purchases, which also include a shopping plaza, have long been held in family companies, trust funds and a self-managed superannuation scheme, obscuring the full extent of their net worth because such private vehicles do not disclose their assets.

But in the years since Dutton emerged as a contender to be prime minister, his family have closed several of their financial vehicles and sold a host of properties, including a $6 million Gold Coast home in 2021.

That leaves Dutton, who owned five properties simultaneously at his peak, with just one: a 68-hectare farm in Dayboro, Queensland, which he bought for $2.1 million in August 2020.

While Australia has had wealthy prime ministers before, including technology investor Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd, whose wife Therese Rein owned an employment services business that sold for $160 million, Dutton’s holdings show how far he has come.

The opposition leader’s extensive buying and selling of property shapes as one of the political Rorschach tests of the 2025 election.

Do voters believe he is a wealthy man who hides his wealth and defends negative gearing and capital gains tax out of self-interest?

Or is Dutton the son of a bricklayer made good, who pulled double shifts running childcare centres and working as a Queensland police officer to become prosperous over years of work?

Dutton’s office declined to comment. But the opposition leader has spoken of his pride in saving to purchase his first home and vowed to introduce policies to make it easier for Australians to replicate his success, including letting first home buyers access $50,000 of their superannuation.

“An issue close to my heart is restoring the dream of homeownership,” Dutton told supporters in January.

An analysis of property records, parliamentary registers, corporate records and data from real estate websites going back to 1990 has revealed multiple details about the opposition leader’s wealth and side career as a property investor.

Over his lifetime, Dutton has purchased 10 properties by himself, one with his wife, Kirilly, and 13 with his father, Bruce, who also had a building company. Two more were with his first wife, Susan Britton, to whom Dutton was married in his early 20s. A pair of friends, Deborah Needham and Jason McGarry, joined the then-couple in one of those purchases.

In addition, a company and associated trust called RHT – named for the Duttons’ children Rebecca, Harry and Tom – has previously owned a shopping plaza in Townsville and several childcare centres.

When he entered parliament in 2001, Dutton was paid about $92,000 as a backbencher but earns more than $430,000 a year today as opposition leader.

This masthead’s analysis shows multiple errors in Dutton’s declarations on parliament’s transparency register, which MPs are required to update within 30 days after any change in their holdings.

A comparison of Dutton’s declarations with the listed purchase and sale dates on property tracking websites – which do not necessarily reflect the exact legal sale date – suggests he was late informing parliament 15 times. Two properties that Dutton sold in Ashgrove, Brisbane, in mid-2005 were not declared sold until June 2007.

On two occasions, Dutton failed to declare the sale of a property completely: an investment property in Mt Cotton, Queensland, that he sold in October 2002 and a former family home in Albany Creek, Brisbane, that he sold in April 2004.

In all, Dutton has purchased $12,040,450 worth of property and sold $18,819,500 worth of property and businesses, either jointly or by himself, for a gross profit of $6,779,050. That does not take into account the cost of tax, renovations, maintenance, stamp duty or professionals’ fees or the benefit of any rent Dutton would have received.

The opposition leader has long been a critic of changes to family trusts, negative gearing or capital gains rules that can favour property investors, listing them among Greens policies that would put Australia into a “dark age” at a rally last month.

Over decades, Dutton has made extensive use of a company he shared with his father Bruce called Dutton Holdings to buy and sell property and businesses, including three childcare centres purchased before the younger Dutton entered parliament. Dutton also owned website homerenovations.com.au and KD Investments, both of which did not trade while the family owned them.

Dutton’s wife, Kirilly, through investment vehicles RHT Investments, RHT Family Trust and self-managed super fund PK Super, has also invested in property in Brisbane, Townsville and owned a childcare business.

Dutton was once a director and shareholder of RHT Investments but stepped down in March 2010. He remained a beneficiary of the RHT trust until 2019, but parliamentary disclosures suggest that is no longer the case. From November 2008 to March 2024, the couple held an equal shareholding in PK Super, until it was deregistered.

By August 2016, Dutton had grown his holdings to five properties, including the family home in Camp Mountain and investment properties on Moreton Island, Palm Beach, Spring Hill in Queensland and a flat in the ACT. But from 2019, Dutton has liquidated most of his assets and shut Dutton Holdings, the investment vehicle he shared with his father.

That has included the sale of six properties – his Camp Mountain family home ($1.8 million), the Palm Beach investment ($6 million), an apartment in the Brisbane CBD ($3.47 million), a flat in Spring Hill ($482,000), an ACT apartment (price undisclosed) and a beach house on Moreton Island (price undisclosed) – for a total of at least $11.7 million.

While Dutton has favoured property for years, the veteran MP was a keen share trader for a six-month period between October 2008 and March 2009. As the global financial crisis spread around the world, the then-opposition health spokesman made 24 trades of blue-chip shares including BHP, Qantas, ANZ, Westpac, NAB, Commonwealth Bank and Westfield.

Dutton regularly declared the equities on the parliamentary transparency register, though he did not declare – and was not required to – the number or value of shares traded.

Some of the bank share purchases were declared, though not necessarily purchased, the day before the then-Labor government unveiled a bank bailout. Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said in parliament on Tuesday that Dutton had questions to answer.

“It’s just a coincidence, was it?” Gallagher said. “That a lot of shares were bought the day before a bank bailout? A happy coincidence.”

Liberal senators in the hearing with Gallagher, including finance spokeswoman Jane Hume, rejected her claims as a smear. “Say it outside the room [where you are not protected from defamation claims],” Hume said. “It’s grubby. You’re so grubby. Say it outside this room.”

Employment Minister Murray Watt did so, going on ABC TV on Tuesday afternoon to demand “transparency”.

Like Dutton, Albanese has slimmed down his property portfolio in recent years and now owns the Copacabana house and his family home in Sydney, having sold three properties after his divorce from first wife Carmel Tebbutt.

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