As Dutton parades his softer side, let’s not forget how hard he’s played the politics of race

On Thursday, responding to video of repellent comments from two NSW nurses about killing Israelis, Peter Dutton said we had to find out how one “became an Australian citizen and where the failing in the system originated and how we can make sure it doesn’t happen again”.

Very quickly, the fact found its way into the media that the minister for home affairs, at the time that individual became a citizen, had been Dutton himself.

Illustration: Joe BenkeCredit:

Apart from the obvious gotcha, important questions arise, including: which parts of a politician’s history remain relevant over time? Which aspects can they claim, and which should they be permitted to distance themselves from? And, crucially, what is the responsibility of the rest of us – especially the media – in remembering who they have been, rather than just who they currently present themselves to be?

These questions have become particularly important because, with a negligible policy agenda just weeks before an election campaign, Dutton has leant heavily on his history as a minister. The opposition leader often refers to his actions when he was minister for home affairs, recently pointing to decisions he made that “saved us from a number of terrorist attacks”. On economic matters, he likes to point out he was “assistant treasurer to Peter Costello” – a role he played almost 20 years ago at the tail-end of the Howard government.

One issue likely to feature heavily in the coming campaign is Dutton’s record as health minister. (I worked for Labor’s health minister when Dutton was the opposition spokesman.) Labor recently released an ad partly focused on Dutton’s attempt as minister to charge patients a $7 co-payment for GP visits. That proposal was dynamite; it probably still is. Can Labor make it stick?

Dutton is obviously concerned, regularly pointing to bulk-billing statistics which shine a more favourable light on his record. He talks, too, about putting more money into frontline services.

Dutton’s tenure was far from glorious – doctors at the time voted him the worst health minister ever. Mostly, apart from the fees debacle, it was unmemorable. The stats on bulk-billing from his time are fine, no more and no less – which is about all you can say about the Albanese government’s record, too.

But the fees proposal is harder to argue his way out of. We don’t know what role Dutton played, exactly, in developing the idea, but then this brings us back to the question of picking and choosing: if you’re going to promote the ministerial history you’re proud of, don’t you have to stand behind it all?

Perhaps the more significant question around Dutton’s history relates to his approach, over a long period, to the politics of race.

The number of topical, significant events with race at their centre is striking. There was Sam Kerr’s court case. Less noticed – sadly, predictably – is the trial of those accused of murdering Indigenous boy Cassius Turvey.

Then there are a number of incidents relating to Israel and Gaza. The disturbing rise in antisemitism, with frightening crimes. The white supremacist boot camp in Melbourne. The breakdown of our public sphere, with hate speech one problem and the intimidation of journalists and artists another. The Lattouf v ABC hearing.

Last week came the farcical decision by Creative Australia to withdraw Australia’s representatives at the Venice Biennale only days after appointing them, in the face of pressure from the Murdoch press; which came in the same week as The Daily Telegraph’s regrettable participation in an apparent stunt at Cairo Takeaway in inner-city Newtown. It has been suggested the plan was to provoke an antisemitic response; the Telegraph and the man involved deny that.

This is the volatile atmosphere in which the election approaches. Some of these incidents – such as the nurses’ comments – demand responses from our politicians. In this environment, the precise response matters.

And so it was concerning when, on that topic, Dutton chose not simply to stress safety and security, but to point out that citizens receive welfare, free healthcare and education. Was this relevant? Close observers may have heard an echo from 2016, when Dutton criticised refugees for taking jobs despite being illiterate and innumerate: some “would languish in unemployment queues and on Medicare …”

This is the great danger whenever issues around race surface: that they quickly spiral onto other subjects, away from the matter at hand and towards the politics of grievance, the resentment that politicians know can be easily provoked by suggesting somebody is getting something at the expense of Australian voters. And resentment, once provoked, can easily spread. It was telling, on Sunday, to watch Labor copy Dutton’s policy on banning foreigners from buying existing homes.

As Dutton moves to emphasise his softer side, and as 60 Minutes (on Nine, which owns this masthead) screened an episode about “the real Peter Dutton” on Sunday night, I’m reminded of how eagerly the media moved to let Scott Morrison re-invent himself in 2019, as though his past in politics meant nothing. The reality is that leaders take their habits into office: Morrison stayed flim-flam, Abbott ultra-conservative, Albanese small-target. Dutton will, presumably, continue to lean into the politics of race.

You don’t have to go all the way back to his forays on African gangs or Lebanese refugees. In this term, he has spoken of not holding press conferences with the Aboriginal flag displayed and of making councils hold citizenship ceremonies on January 26. He has blamed much on immigration, opposed cultural diversity spending and the Indigenous Voice to parliament. It is naive – or disingenuous – to treat these as isolated policies, each to be evaluated only on its merits; they form a pattern, just as the rhetoric Dutton uses today echoes his rhetoric from 2016.

The responsibility of the media is, as always, to look precisely at what is being said and done, and the context in which that is happening. In this racially charged moment, that responsibility is more important than ever.

Sean Kelly is a regular columnist and a former adviser to prime ministers Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.