Peter Dutton a hard man with the right stuff
As he celebrates two decades in politics, Peter Dutton shows he has soft side too.
When Peter Dutton was elected to parliament 20 years ago, on November 10, 2001, it coincided with John Howard leading the Coalition to a third election victory. The Howard government was at its midpoint, and Dutton would join the ministry three years later.
Dutton’s interest in politics began at high school. His father, Bruce, had a building company that was impacted by the Hawke-Keating government’s high interest rates.
At age 19, he unsuccessfully contested the state seat of Lytton as the Bjelke-Petersen era came to an end. But it was his time as a policeman that most prepared him for a career in politics.
“The prime motivator was driven by events in the police force and the frustration when I had come across a few cases where I thought there was no justice done or a very poor outcome achieved,” Dutton, 50, tells Inquirer.
It might come as a surprise for some to learn that Dutton was a very shy child growing up the son of Bruce and Ailsa Dutton and the eldest with four siblings in the suburbs of Brisbane.
It was not until he worked at a butcher’s shop, while at high school and university, that he was able to be fully at ease with people.
“My confidence with people probably started across that counter in the butcher shop,” he recalls. “In the police, as they say, you see the best and worst on good days and bad. I had some pretty terrible situations and some pretty exhilarating ones, so I think that prepares you for the diversity of interactions you have in politics and gives you a grounding.”
While Dutton has legions of critics on the left of politics, and is routinely attacked on social media for his conservatism, he is liked and respected by his parliamentary colleagues. It makes him a contender for the Liberal leadership, and perhaps also the prime ministership, whenever Scott Morrison steps down.
Holding the immigration, border protection and home affairs ministries (2014-21) did little to burnish his image. He was tough, uncompromising and unremitting. He has no regrets about hard-line immigration policies, but does think he could have better handled the attacks that came his way.
“I came to this game not wanting to sign up for touch but was happy to play tackle,” Dutton says. “I believe in certain values, and prosecute those. I’m a very patriotic person and believe in fighting for what I think is in our country’s best interests. Sometimes you come off second best as a result of that, and equally there are times in which I could have stepped forward and refuted some of it.”
There is a price to be paid for being in politics, and this has intensified with the rise of social media. Most politicians have a thick skin, but being regularly defamed with impunity takes a toll on families. Dutton relishes a political fight, but he is still a husband to Kirilly and father to three teenagers: daughter Rebecca and sons Tom and Harry.
“I have to remind myself that sometimes the public has no idea who a public figure is and that is either the fault of the public figure because he or she has allowed themselves to be defined that way and not pushed back or hasn’t had any regard to that,” Dutton acknowledges. “I have conversations with my mum where she is more irate than I am.”
Is Dutton suggesting he has a softer side? He can come across as a little intimidating, with a tall, broad-frame body and bald head, for those who don’t really know him. He jokes that he has aged “terribly” over the past 20 years. “There is definitely a soft side, but it is well guarded, and probably only seen by those who know me best,” he concedes.
Dutton has served four Liberal prime ministers. Howard elevated him to the ministry with the workforce participation portfolio in 2004 and then as assistant treasurer in 2006.
“He has still got one of the sharpest reads of any political mind,” Dutton says of Howard. “He was able to argue a position with absolute conviction. He was sincere in what he was saying, and was able to bring groups of people behind him.”
Tony Abbott appointed Dutton to the health and sport portfolios after leading the Coalition to power in 2013. Dutton describes Abbott as a ruthless opposition leader and one of smartest people he has met.
“Tony’s greatest legacy was the decisions taken in that initial budget which made us unpopular, made him unpopular, but Tony was also undermined by some missteps of his own and by people who were treacherous in leaking against him,” Dutton says.
When Malcolm Turnbull wrested the prime ministership from Abbott in 2015, Dutton found a prime minister who was charming and smart but lacked authority, judgment and a guiding “political compass” to lead a government effectively. “Malcolm was much further to the left, which is now on display, but every day was a fight for him to keep that in check,” Dutton says. “He was given the opportunity to continue his prime ministership for longer than it probably should have.”
In 2018, Dutton launched a leadership challenge against Turnbull. The government was plunged into turmoil and, when Turnbull eventually resigned, Morrison narrowly defeated Dutton in a leadership ballot.
Dutton has no regrets.
“I regret that I wasn’t able to get another three votes but that is a problem of my own making in not being able to bring enough people together,” he says.
“I honestly believe that we saved the Liberal Party from Malcolm Turnbull, and we saved the country from Bill Shorten.”
Dutton says Turnbull delayed a second ballot by insisting on a spill petition and raising doubts about his eligibility to sit in parliament because he was “buying time” to call a snap election – even though he knew the Coalition would be defeated.
“Malcolm was just a terrible campaigner, very affable when people met him if he wasn’t constantly playing with his phone, but to the broader public it wasn’t a connection that they could make,” Dutton says.
He has only praise for Morrison, who led the Coalition to victory in 2019, and elevated him to the defence portfolio this year.
“He has stabilised the party and he has brought us through an unwinnable election, and he is a formidable campaigner,” Dutton says of Morrison. “We are in safe hands going into the next election and into what I hope is the next term of government.”
But would Dutton rule out a future leadership tilt?
“I don’t see Scott Morrison going anywhere anytime soon,” he says. “But equally, I don’t think there is any sense in being disingenuous about your ambition and particularly when you’ve declared it by running in a leadership ballot. It sounds a little lacking in sincerity to suggest that if the opportunity was there in the future that you wouldn’t be interested.”
For now, Dutton’s focus is on the defence portfolio. He has a big agenda with the Brereton war crimes report, the withdrawal of Australian forces from Afghanistan and the AUKUS partnership. His strategic vision is to be prepared for “the threat of conflict in our own region” and dealing with an assertive China.
“(China’s) been very clear about their intent to go into Taiwan and we need to make sure that there is a high level of preparedness, a greater sense of deterrence by our capability, and that is how I think we put our country in a position of strength,” he says.
“My job is to get the organisation into that frame of mind.”
If China seeks to reclaim Taiwan by force, should Australia be involved in a war to try to stop that happening? “It would be inconceivable that we wouldn’t support the US in an action if the US chose to take that action,” Dutton says. “We should be very frank and honest about that, look at all of the facts and circumstances without pre-committing, and maybe there are circumstances where we wouldn’t take up that option, (but) I can’t conceive of those circumstances.”
Amid claims of betrayal by French President Emmanuel Macron over the cancellation of the $90bn submarine contract to pursue nuclear-powered submarines with the US and UK, and Joe Biden’s assertion it was clumsily handled, Dutton argues it could not have been handled differently.
“The US, the UK and Australia had a group of high-level officials working around the clock on this deal,” he says. “It was choreographed to the minute in terms of when people would be notified by whom, and the sequencing was agreed by the three countries. So that’s an important point to make. There was a ‘no surprises’ arrangement between the three partners.
“If you had informed the French earlier and they had made that public and not respected the advice that we had given them, the Americans probably would have pulled out of the deal with the violent reaction from the French,” he adds. “The French would have approached it like that, knowing that they could upset or unsettle the Americans.”
Dutton sees similarities between the next election and the one that sent him to parliament two decades ago when he won a marginal seat, and the Coalition was returned after having been written off. It, too, was an economic and national security poll.
“The biggest issue is going to be who do you trust to rebuild the economy post-Covid. And then there is in people’s minds a question about who is best able to deal with an uncertain region, who is best able to deliver on AUKUS,” he says. “On those two fronts, I think we have a very strong and compelling argument to put to the Australian people.”
