Dutton narrative shows journos are behind voters

Weeks after an election that showed journalism failing, many still can’t comprehend the result.

Australia's Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton. Picture: AFP

Journalists and news executives from media organisations targeting niche audiences seem unable to understand what other audi­ences are saying: pushing a particular left or right agenda seems to blind them to the views of the wider community.

Only weeks after a federal election that showed journalism failing just as badly here as in Britain and US, many journalists still cannot comprehend the meaning of the result. Too many are willing to believe voters were tricked by dirty campaigning. Amazingly, many of the journalists condemning what they see as unfair conservative scare tactics last month were prepared to ­defend Labor’s Mediscare campaign at the 2016 poll.

The issue of misunderstanding the electorate was highlighted again last week by the polarised ­reporting of the appointment of former NSW premier Kristina ­Keneally as Labor spokeswoman for the home affairs, shadowing minister Peter Dutton.

In the left media, Keneally is regarded as a brilliant, telegenic political powerhouse who will serve it up to Dutton. He is seen as an evil man because he has been part of a policy that stopped the people-smuggling trade.

The Rudd government’s hubris culminated in 1200 drownings and 50,000 arrivals by boat after the Coalition had reduced the number of offshore detainees to four by the November 2007 election. Yet many in the left media have never accepted the facts.

On SkyNews on Sunday night and again on Monday, Paul Murray summed up the case against Keneally — accurately. Keneally has failed upwards at every turn. She secured the worst ALP vote in the NSW party’s history as premier in the 2011 election. She failed to win the federal seat of Bennelong in a by-election for Labor against incumbent John ­Alexander after the citizenship ­fiasco and entered the Senate because of the humiliation of Sam Dastyari.

Finally, as bus captain for former opposition leader Bill Shorten in the May election, Keneally was the “popular” woman speaking for an unpopular leader at doorstops around the nation. Add to all that her long record as a critic of the Coalition on border protection and an astute political observer should conclude she was a very brave captain’s pick by new Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese.

On her first day in the role she proved Murray right, tweeting that the Morrison government was responsible for a trail of asylum-seekers arriving by plane. As if overstayers with visas who had arrived by plane had not been a problem since the days of the Hawke government.

The historical resonances in the Keneally appointment are stark. Dutton overcame a vicious GetUp campaign to increase his margin on May 18, just as he had overcome a nasty whispering campaign by Labor in 2001 to defeat another star Labor recruit from outside the federal party to win his northern Brisbane seat of Dickson for the first time. That recruit? Former Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot.

Like Scott Morrison, another minister who presided over boat turnbacks, Dutton is hated by left journalists because they wilfully refuse to accept the truth most voters understand about people-smugglers. He is also hated by the left of the Coalition for initiating the challenge against sitting prime minister Malcolm Turnbull last August.

Yet history should tell thoughtful journalists Dutton was right to challenge. The election results in regional Queensland make that obvious. He would have been a ­polarising leader and would have cost the Coalition seats in southern Australia had he succeeded the hapless Turnbull, but he paved the way for a successful Morrison ascension. Many journalists still cannot see this.

As recently as last Thursday some were tweeting that raids by federal police against News Corp and ABC reporters showed voters got the election wrong. As if Labor and Coalition governments have not regularly used such tactics against whistleblowers and the media for many decades.

Journalists only need to have a look at the real-world reaction since the election to see why voters were right to reject Labor’s policy agenda.

The housing market has shown tentative signs of recovery. Investors and homebuyers were afraid of the potential effects on house prices should Labor double the capital gains tax and ban negative gearing on investment property.

The slowing in the economy that persuaded the Reserve Bank to cut interest rates last week suggests economists who warned against Labor’s high taxes were correct. Those tax rises would have had a dampening effect on growth at a dangerous time for the domestic economy.

Media and political critics citing Coalition talk of a “retirees tax” to imply voters were misled have not understood many older Australians had talked to their accountants and knew they would be badly affected by Labor’s changes to franking credits. Albanese’s quotes the week after the election confirm many in Labor knew the policy would hurt self-funded retirees on low incomes.

Labor found fertile ground among left journalists and the Twitterati with the idea franking credits were subsidies to rich retirees who pay no tax. Not so. Rich retirees would have been largely unaffected because they do pay tax on all income from investments outside their super and would have retained their credits. Those who would have been worst affected were self-funded retirees on total annual super pension payments of between $30,000 and $50,000 year.

This column during the campaign criticised Labor’s duplicitous position on the proposed central Queensland Adani coalmine. Voters saw through Shorten’s prevarication, trying to support the mine in Queensland while criticising it in Victoria. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and several Labor frontbenchers quickly agreed the position supported by too many activist journalists was wrong and the voters were right about the mine.

It is in Dutton’s portfolio where voters really dodged a bullet. The Coalition’s border protection ­regime had been softened by the so-called medevac bill sponsored by short-lived independent member for Wentworth and Turnbull successor Kerryn Phelps.

Despite many warnings late last year and early this year that asylum-seekers would test a new Labor government’s resolve on boat arrivals should Shorten win the election, the Coalition largely ran dead on the issue in the actual campaign. Last week we learned people-smugglers had indeed decided to test the waters even before election day. Radio 2GB reported six boats were believed to have set off from Sri Lanka and The Australian reported one with 20 passengers had been escorted to Christmas Island by an Australian Border Force vessel. Its passengers had been flown back to Sri Lanka.

Dutton critics should note that, although this happened mid-campaign, Dutton did not discuss it until last week. On Tuesday this paper reported his quotes on the Sri Lankan boat; Keneally was ­reported to be under pressure to promise to dump temporary protection visas.

Albanese on taxes and spending, Chris Bowen on religious freedom, Joel Fitzgibbon on coalmining and long-time former environment minister Tony Burke on emissions reduction policy have all publicly conceded Labor needs to rethink its agenda. Why would so many journalists still defend that agenda, rejected by the voters, the people journalism is meant to serve?