How Trump’s win has fired up Dutton’s culture war, starting with Australia Day

First Bro Elon Musk has called it a “vibe shift”, and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton reckons it’s a “near revolution”. The backlash from what is lazily called the “woke agenda” has been under way for some time now – Trump’s election is both an expression of it and a boon to it.

Peter Dutton says Australians are fed up being told to be ashamed of their history.Credit: Fairfax Media

Trump’s day one presidential pardoning of thousands of violent criminals – the January 6 Capitol rioters – was a powerful message of un-cancellation, as well as a clear signal of the benefits of being an “ally”. Just not an ally in the way it is traditionally meant by the left.

In Australia, polling published this week showed we are in the midst of a vibe shift of our own. It would have sent a shiver down the spine of all progressive politicians.

According to a Resolve Strategic survey in The Sydney Morning Herald and Age, support for the “Change the Date” movement has collapsed. Two years ago, in January 2023, some 39 per cent of voters said they wanted to change the date of Australia Day from January 26, the anniversary date of the planting of the British flag on the soil of Terra nullius.

The movement to change the date had gathered momentum over the preceding decade as the national conversation about Aboriginal reconciliation evolved.

Some people – especially young people – began to feel uncomfortable about celebrating a day that marked the beginning of colonial settlement, a settlement that brought much death and misery to the continent’s Indigenous inhabitants. January 26 was dubbed “Invasion Day” by some activists.

Youth radio station Triple J changed the date of its Hottest 100 countdown – which had been an Australia Day institution – out of sensitivity to Aboriginal people. Many local councils toned down their Australia Day celebrations or stopped holding new citizenship ceremonies on the day.

Famously, last year, Woolworths took a commercial decision to stop stocking Australia Day merchandise – the Australian flag thongs and Southern Cross stubby holders that some regard as jingoistic tat and others see as part of the harmless fun of a proud national holiday.

But two years and a contentious Voice to parliament referendum defeat later, there has been an extraordinarily stark shift in sentiment. Now, just 24 per cent of people want to change the date of Australia Day, according to the poll. Two years ago, not even half of Australians (47 per cent) wanted to keep the January 26 date for our national holiday.

Now, at 61 per cent, it is a clear majority of people who would like to keep Australia Day right where it is, and where it’s always been (well, since 1935, anyway).

Dutton, who led the charge against Woolworths last year, has proposed enshrining January 26 into law – something 52 per cent of voters support. Dutton clearly believes he is with the zeitgeist, and indications are he is right in that belief.

In an interview on Sky News this week, he said political correctness wasn’t “cutting it” any more, as people struggle with the cost of living.

“I think this is turning, and I think there is going to be a near revolution that comes with the Trump administration,” he said. “In relation to a lot of the woke issues that might be fashionable in universities and at the ABC that just aren’t cutting it around kitchen tables at the moment where people can’t pay their bills.”

Dutton singled out the Voice campaign as an inflexion point, which “allowed people an opportunity to be able to speak again about issues that they felt important to order, including Australia Day”.

He could be right.

It might also be that the Voice campaign (divisive though it was) led most Australians to conclude that practical action on Indigenous disadvantage was preferable to creating an advisory body within the apparatus of government.

The anti-Voice campaign was very successful in painting the proposal as mere symbolism, as opposed to sleeves-rolled-up action.

This effective strategy is now applied broadly to the so-called woke agenda – under the umbrella of which sits everything from Change the Date to trans rights to diversity programs, the display of the Aboriginal flag alongside the Australian one, and any pushback on what Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg regards as the necessary “masculine energy” of workplaces.

The MAGA-led right resurgence has neatly framed this disparate agenda as all window-dressing and symbolism, defined by the non-intuitive manipulation of language and the rejection of the commonsense natural way of things (for example, most people’s honest belief that there are only two genders).

Australia is not America, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has zero appetite for the culture war issues that MAGA Republicans weaponised so well against the US Democrats.

When Dutton made a fuss about Woolworths’ rejection of Australian Day merchandise, Albanese and his senior ministers refused to weigh in. They accused Dutton of focusing on a culture war while the Labor government was trying to bring prices down (with measures including a review of the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct, most of which have been pretty ineffectual).

Dutton is right that most Australians care far more about the cost of living than progressive causes. And the more he talks about it, the more he creates a distraction from the fact that the Coalition has offered no economic or fiscal policy proposals to address inflation.

His assertion that Liberal governments are better at managing costs (which is absolutely true) is undermined by his eye-wateringly expensive, heavily taxpayer-subsidised nuclear policy.

The nuclear policy is an emperor’s new clothes boondoggle, which Coalition frontbenchers are obliged to pretend is a good, viable and very-much-will-totally-happen-we-swear! idea. We will soon find out if voters will embrace the policy as part of the vibe shift Dutton hopes to ride into office.

Whatever happens, the sea-change in attitudes towards progressive ideas is real.

It demands a strategic rethink from progressives, who need to consider how they connect their causes to the textured reality of people’s lives.

Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and columnist.

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