Greg Sheridan: Tough guys who stop boats start to win votes

Peter Dutton arrives for Question Time. Picture: Kym Smith

Peter Dutton has become the leadership alternative for the government for one overwhelming reason — because he was immigration minister and then minister for home affairs.

Dutton is a formidable and successful politician and deserves the success he has experienced. However, although yesterday he lamented a little that being in the border security portfolios has made his image very much that of the tough guy, in fact it has also made him the real alternative.

Immigration, in fact, despite its alleged difficulties, is the one portfolio that now leads inevitably to promotion for a conservative.

This used to be the Treasury. This ran across both Labor and the Coalition. Paul Keating was the alternative to prime minister Bob Hawke. John Howard’s stint as treasurer made him leadership material. Treasurer Peter Costello was the alternative to Howard.

But since Scott Morrison stopped the boats, immigration has been the magic portfolio for conservatives. This is because under Morrison and Dutton, it was the portfolio for stopping the boats.

The political dynamics of the portfolio may change again as the public is becoming unhappy with the size of the legal immigration program. But the public’s opposition to illegal immigration by boats remains overwhelming.

That is why the portfolio is so unhappy for Labor politicians. They have to promise secure borders as well, otherwise Labor could not be elected. But that means they must pursue, grudgingly, Coalition policy against all the instincts of their rank-and-file party membership, the non-government organisations that normally support Labor and indeed the publicly expressed sentiments, even, of many of their parliamentary colleagues.

Liberal immigration and home affairs ministers, on the other hand, can vigorously, and without ambiguity, pursue a policy their base loves and the public supports overwhelmingly, even if many in the media, academia and the NGOs hate it.

The other, perhaps deeper, point is that strong borders are something a government can achieve through political will and administrative competence.

The charisma of conservative leaders, as opposed to social democrats, most often arises from the effective use of power. Winston Churchill remains the Platonic ideal of conservative political leadership and his key attribute was strength, especially against conventional wisdom, as when he was opposing appeasement, which was popular in the 1930s.

It was common in the past for conservative governments to implement often tough policies that may even have been initially unpopular. If these policies worked, people would respect the conservative government as a result. The charisma came from taking action, doing it competently and getting a result. Because of the perverse way our political system has evolved, no government can do that any more because they cannot get tough legislation through the Senate.

They can act independently and decisively in very few areas, and certainly very few areas that affect the lives or even the views of ordinary people. Securing the borders, stopping the boats, ending unauthorised arrivals — that is something that a government can do.

It is too easy to forget just what a big achievement that was when Scott Morrison brought it off and it is the reason Morrison became a central player in the Liberal Party and is now Treasurer.

Dutton was not a particular star as health minister and when he became immigration minister Malcolm Turnbull left him off the National Security Committee of cabinet. But Dutton has certainly made the most of his opportunity. He took the modern path to the table of top players.