‘Clear differences between Scott and myself’: Dutton’s plan for a one-term comeback

Days after Scott Morrison became prime minister in 2018, he had a private conversation with Peter Dutton.

Morrison made two requests of the then-home affairs minister: cancel his weekly appearance with Ray Hadley, the king of talkback radio in Sydney, and cancel the regular lunches that conservatives had held for years in Parliament House’s Monkey Pod room, named after its distinctive wood table.

Dutton refused both requests, but remained in Morrison’s leadership group, just as he had done under Malcolm Turnbull.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

The episode highlighted two points: Morrison’s paranoia about a potential leadership rival, and the fact that Dutton was still his own man, despite losing to Morrison in the leadership contest by five votes.

“He obviously didn’t listen to him, it was a dumb idea,” Hadley told this masthead after learning of the encounter.

The 2GB radio host has spent years talking to Morrison and Dutton, and says there are key differences between the two men.

“Dutton is more real, Dutton is a knockabout. Scott is dictated to by his religious beliefs a lot more than any other politician I’ve known,” he says.

“[Dutton] is not agnostic, he certainly believes in God from my conversations with him. But he is not clapping his hands every Saturday and Sunday at a Pentecostal church.”

Peter Dutton alongside Prime Minister Scott Morrison and wife Jenny during a Parliamentary church service at the St Christopher’s Catholic Cathedral in Manuka, in Canberra in 2019. Credit: Sam Mooy

For those who have been dealing with Dutton for years, the public perception of him as a tough-talking political brawler is worlds away from the man they know. The moderate wing of his own party in 2018 was torn between liking him as a person and believing his public persona was politically unpalatable for progressive voters, so many of them voted for Morrison.

But six months after becoming opposition leader, the former Queensland cop is still yet to shake off this image.

“His public persona is that he’s not terribly warm, he’s a fairly imposing sort of bloke,” Hadley says.

“What I’ve found out as I’ve gotten to know him a bit better is that he is a pretty warm and caring bloke, but I think he has a problem in convincing the public of the warmth and care factor.”

There is no doubt that the public perception of the 52-year-old has been informed by his own actions.

A boom microphone picks up the private conversation of Social Services Minister Scott Morrison, Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton where they joked about rising sea levels, at Parliament House.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

In 2018, he claimed that Victorians were “scared to go out to restaurants” because of African gangs. He refused to support the National Apology to survivors of the Stolen Generations and their families in 2008, which he later accepted was a mistake, and infamously was caught on a boom mic joking about the plight of Pacific island nations facing rising sea levels. In 2011, he sent out a tweet: “You dirty lefties are too easy. Enjoy your weekend.”

Dutton concedes that in his two decades in federal parliament he has always “played tackle as opposed to touch” football.

“That’s because I believe in my core values, and I’ve exercised those consistently. And that can give rise to a perception that maybe is not as holistic as it should be,” he says.

He credits his “hard man” reputation to his time as a police officer, his stint as immigration minister stopping asylum seeker boats, and his outspoken criticism of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

He also jokes that his bald head, a result of alopecia, doesn’t help. “I’d love to have the full head of hair that I had 10 years ago.”

Since the election, some Liberal MPs have argued for the party to tone down its language on China after the party suffered above-average swings in seats with high proportions of Chinese-Australians. Before the election, Dutton repeatedly warned about the increased prospect of a war with China, and suggested that the Chinese Communist Party wanted Labor to win the election.

He says he now regrets that some Australians of Chinese heritage heard a message that they thought was targeted against them, “when the complete opposite was the case”.

“All of our comments were targeted at President Xi and the aggression,” he says. “At the same time, we need to be clear about the celebration of Chinese heritage and culture in our country because they’ve been amazing migrants and wonderful Australians.”

The hard-tackle persona also belies a shrewd politician who has been playing political chess for years and a man who has been able to change his views with the times. It was Dutton who convinced Turnbull to hold a plebiscite into same-sex marriage and then, unlike Morrison, voted for it in parliament.

Peter Dutton addresses the media during a doorstop in 2017.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The plebiscite was criticised by many LGBTQ Australians as an unnecessary and damaging process to enact gay marriage. But Dutton maintains that it was the correct move because it showed the opponents of gay marriage that it was a widely popular change, and has resulted in there being no ongoing movement to repeal it.

“I think it demonstrated a legitimacy and a tolerance. And I think it’s been borne out since because there’s been no quarter of society that’s argued for an undoing of the legislation - really just a universal acceptance,” he says.

“And I think that’s because it was demonstrated to people who were against same-sex marriage that we live in a democracy, the vast majority of people were in favour of same-sex marriage and they supported it on that basis.

“I hope it demonstrates I have an open mind, I don’t discriminate on any basis. I believe very strongly in people being respected and I’ve always lived and practised that and I hope that speaks to something of my character that people may not see on a day-to-day basis.”

So, at a time when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese appears to have an insurmountable lead in all of the major national polls, what is Dutton’s strategy to get back into government in less than three years? And how does the conservative firebrand from suburban Brisbane win back the nine inner-city seats the party lost at the election to the Greens, Labor and teal independents?

Long-time observers of Dutton may be surprised by the way he has approached the leadership in his first six months in the job. So far, despite having nine former Tony Abbott staffers in his office, Dutton has not displayed the total oppositional approach of the former PM.

This is because Dutton believes the government is at the peak of its honeymoon, and it would be counterproductive to go too hard this early.

Dutton wants to crystallise the next election into a referendum on power prices and cost of living on the back of Labor’s key election promise to save Australian families $275 annually on their energy bills by 2025.

His first priority was to unite a fractured party room, partly by showing MPs he is more consultative than Morrison.

He says he believes Liberal MPs have seen “very clear differences between Scott and myself”.

Peter Dutton has been demonstrating his differences from his predecessor Scott Morrison.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“I’ve worked under four leaders. I’ve been on the frontbench of the Liberal Party in government and opposition since 2004,” he says. “I was really shaped by [John] Howard and [Peter] Costello in those early formative years, and I’ve already put forward a very different approach than my predecessor or indeed some before him.”

Dutton says he also learnt from the Liberal Party’s last stint in opposition, when it was consumed by leadership tensions between Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull.

“It’s still very fresh in my mind – the 2007 experience – where you can go to a press conference and … the first three questions are about what’s been leaking and who’s positioning where,” Dutton says.

“We’ve had none of that. And it’s allowed us to get a clearer message out about who we are, what we believe in, and be that credible alternative that I think people will be craving for by the next election.”

It is also widely acknowledged in the party room that with former treasurer Josh Frydenberg losing his seat at the election, there is no obvious challenger to Dutton and he has a clean run at the next poll in 2025.

“We have to reassert who we are so that people see the value proposition and understand that.”

Peter Dutton

Tasmanian Liberal MP Bridget Archer, who last year crossed the floor to support an independent bill for a federal integrity commission, says the test for Dutton will be how he unites the party.

“If you want discipline and unity you need leadership, not control or coercion or pandering to one section of the party – red meat for the base and all that,” she says.

“You actually have to be a credible alternative government and take people along with you. I think he could do that, he certainly has a different leadership style to Scott.

“I find him to be a good communicator, I find him to be more thoughtful, that he listens, and he has more of an ability to see what is coming down the road.”

Archer says the party needs to get back to “sensible, centrist policies”.

“I’ve heard him [Dutton] talk about Liberal Party’s core equities, to stop engaging in the ideological contests and culture wars, and we have to appreciate the world doesn’t look like it once did,” she says.

Archer says there are lessons to be learned from the teal independents who won seats off the Liberals.

“If I look at those women elected to the crossbench, they are very similar to me, to the values I hold. They are liberal-aligned values rather than Labor-aligned. But our brand has been damaged and that’s what we have to change,” she says.

“Climate is the classic example, we have to stop arguing about whether climate change is real. The differentiation [with Labor] should be about how we address it.”

NSW Liberal senator Andrew Bragg, an outspoken moderate voice in the party who was known to not get on with Morrison, says he has found Dutton to be “very accessible, open, collaborative and considerate”.

Bragg says there have already been three “hugely welcome departures from the recent past” in supporting Labor’s childcare package, backing the creation of the National Anti-Corruption Commission and keeping their options open on the Indigenous Voice to parliament.

“The lessons from the federal and Victorian election are quite clear, we need more differentiated economic policies, on tax and super for example,” Bragg says. “We pursued too many marginal issues in the past that made us look like oddballs.”

Andrew Hastie, a close friend and ally of Dutton since being elected to parliament in 2015, says that while Morrison was able to speak to both sides of the party, the fractures from the two leadership changes in government never fully healed.

“I think [Dutton] has taken a broken parliamentary party and he’s stabilised it and he’s been very pastoral over the past six months: doing a lot of listening, keeping people from falling out and gathering everyone together,” Hastie says.

“There’s no point stepping out if you’ve got feet of clay, and so he’s building his internal base here in the parliamentary party.

“Fundamentally he’s a plough horse, not a show horse. He’ll get the job done. In the end, do you want someone flashy or do you want someone who leads quietly by the force of their actions?”

Hastie suggests Dutton is “far more consultative” than Morrison.

“He will take advice, he will even take a rebuke, come back and recalibrate - which is the mark of a good leader,” he says.

Another close ally, Liberal senator James Paterson, says Dutton is “open to feedback, genuinely consultative and everyone gets a decent hearing”.

On the policy front, Dutton and his team are holding fire in many areas - which is similar to Albanese’s approach three years ago.

Albanese and Dutton share more than just a patient approach to opposition politics: both men were in politics for more than two decades before becoming opposition leader and were in Parliament for the stable era of the Howard government. They have also both served as leader of the house, learning the finer points of parliamentary procedure.

Archer says Dutton has an ability to anticipate events and “see what is coming down the road”, a quality that Albanese demonstrated in the last parliament with his insistence that Labor had to be “kicking with the wind in the final quarter”.

And though neither man would rush to admit it, privately they get along quite well, unlike Morrison and Albanese.

Dutton, pictured in 2013 has joked that his bald head, a result of alopecia, doesn’t help: “I’d love to have the full head of hair that I had 10 years ago.”Credit: Andrew Meares

Along with a fight over energy and cost of living, Dutton appears to want to open up a bigger divide with the government on industrial relations, debt and deficit. According to Dutton and those close to him, wealthier voters in teal seats didn’t just desert the Morrison government over progressive issues like climate and integrity, but also because there weren’t any major differences between the Liberal and Labor parties on the economy.

“At the last election we suffered because we didn’t have a product differentiation, or not sufficient,” Dutton says. “And the view was just that Albanese was going to be unelectable and therefore [voters] would default to us, which is what happened in 2019 … But that’s that’s not good enough in 2025.”

He says the Liberal Party is suffering from an “identity crisis” because it has let itself be defined by its opponents including people like businessman Simon Holmes à Court and the teal candidates he backed at the election.

“We have to reassert who we are so that people see the value proposition and understand that.”

Considering he now faces the difficult task of showing Australians he is more than just a hard tackler, does he have any regrets with the way he has engaged with the media and public since being elected to parliament 21 years ago?

“I just don’t think there’s any sense in the living with ‘woulda coulda’ in politics.”