Peter Dutton: the Liberal leader Australia deserves

Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton, right, with PM Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: Kym Smith

On Peter Dutton, let’s start at the start. The man who heaved Cheryl Kernot out of the federal seat of Dickson in 2001, winning a 6 per cent swing for the Liberal Party, earned immediate political cred. In Dutton, local voters found the polar opposite to the former Australian Democrat who deserted her party in favour of Labor, famously posing in a red dress and a feather boa for the cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly. Since then it’s been a steady rise for the 46-year-old Queensland Liberal.

This week, Malcolm Turnbull announced that the Immigration Minister will head up a super-ministry never seen in Australia. The new home office ministry will pull together domestic security with border protection, taking over responsibility for the Australian Federal Police and ASIO.

Others will debate the policy implications of this super-ministry. One thing beyond dispute is that it propels Dutton into a new league, more powerful than fellow cabinet colleagues. It’s said the Prime Minister is buying off a conservative, or at least buying time by placating the head of the party’s conservative wing. Others can chew over that. With the federal government in such dire straits, and cutting to the chase, it’s not a stretch to see Dutton as leader.

Dutton on the campaign trail during the 2001 election in Queensland’s Dickson constituency.

Dutton as leader? After rummaging through profiles, press releases, interviews, news stories, let me count the ways this makes sense. The starting point is that he is not Turnbull or Tony Abbott. That alone draws sighs of relief from despairing Liberals who are deserting fundraisers, some even asking for their money back, ­others withdrawing their membership, and threats of coups in safe seats.

It’s also welcome news for those outside the party who simply want a sensible centre-right Liberal government. And there’s Dutton’s second tick of approval. He’s unashamedly conservative at a time when the Prime Minister has proved himself too arrogant or deluded to invite conservatives back to the Liberal fold.

Dutton didn’t enter politics wading in the usual kiddy gene pool as a pimply faced staffer for a politician. Another tick. He came to it after working as a policeman. His CV reads like Elliot Stabler’s in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit without the hot-headed explosions — worked sex crimes, passionate, saw a side of human misery the rest of us cannot fathom. Misery that he remembers.

His colleagues tell profile writers he’s solid, straightforward, ­laconic, has a strong sense of self, knows right from wrong. Park that for a moment, alongside the fact that John Howard liked him right from the start.

“He held his nerve,” Howard said, after Dutton defeated Kernot, staring down her claims that suggested something dark in his police background, claims so sleazy that Kim Beazley demanded she retract them.

After winning the 2004 election, Howard made the Queensland MP a minister.

Dutton is not sitting in a perennially safe seat like Abbott or Turnbull. Electoral boundary changes that turn a safe seat marginal can keep you honest. Dutton keeps winning his because he seems to know what he stands for, and voters know it too. Park that point too in the “things to remember about Dutton” list, separating him from the milquetoast prime ministers in recent years.

Then there’s Dutton the family man. Laughs with his mum. He’s been in business with his dad. The strong wife who runs a business and a home who tells him if he’s on the phone heading up the driveway to the house after work, please finish the conversation in the car before coming inside to hug the kids. She says he’s sentimental, a reminder that politicians have private lives too. He goes to church on Christmas Eve and calls a spade a bloody shovel when some meddling social engineer tries to remove Christianity from Christmas.

Dutton wears the warrior label well, a rare brand in the Liberal Party these days. He has said there are better things to do in life than read Fairfax newspapers. He has a go at the ABC when it raises its activism from quotidian steaming hot to stark-raving bubbling over. He’s called out Malcolm Fraser’s 1970s immigration policy for not being discerning enough. He’s warned bureaucrats at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal to stop engineering outcomes to suit their politics.

It’s a boon that Dutton is loathed by all the right people. In parliament, boo-hoo Labor MPs say he’s always on the attack. Activist doctors in white coats detested him because as health minister he wanted to save taxpayers money. Dutton believes you can’t keep getting things for free if you can afford to pay for them. It’s called paying your way in the land of common sense. In budget blurb it’s called a Medicare co-payment.

Dutton in police uniform with his grandmother.

Refugee activists describe Dutton as heartless. That’s OK because Dutton sides with most Australians who know that it’s heartless to allow miserable people-smugglers to send people out to their death on rickety boats. With Sarah Hanson-Young describing him as a “fool” for refusing to listen to her, that first, all important, leader’s speech almost writes itself. Something along these lines.

“My name is Peter Dutton. It is a great honour to be elected leader of the Liberal Party of Australia. These have been turbulent times. Today, they come to an end and I will tell you why in one moment.

“Before I do, as new leader of this fine party, let me tell you what I am not. I am not Tony Abbott. I am not Malcolm Turnbull. It’s said I’m not charismatic either. Oh well, I’m not here to win a personality contest. Some say I’m not exciting, a bit dull in fact. Yes, I’ve heard it all: impassive, wooden, deadpan, not just bland in front of a camera, but blank. I’m called Mr Potato Head around Canberra.

“It’s true that I’m not front cover material for GQ magazine either, though maybe there’s a chance after Barnaby made page 48 last week. Alas, only my wife, Kirilly, tells me I’m handsome and I’m not sure I believe her, though I love her more for saying it. I didn’t win the university law medal, didn’t go to Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship to study philosophy or politics. I studied business but only after I saved enough for a deposit, took out a loan and bought my first home. Then I became a policeman and I was proud to be among those fine men and women in blue.

“Here’s what else I am. I’m a proud Australian. I know where I came from, a humble home outside Brisbane in Boondall, with hardworking parents Bruce and Ailsa. I know what I stand for, what the Liberal Party stands for and what we need to do together to make Australia great again. No Apologies to Mr Trump. What’s wrong with seeking greatness? We’ve tried mediocrity. We’ve been too timid. Something has been lost in the last decade or so. Let’s lift the bar. We can’t keep spending as if it doesn’t matter. We can’t keep borrowing money, wrecking our kids’ future.

“I learned about the dignity that comes from hard work as a kid mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, doing shifts in a butcher shop right through school. You earn your money and you should be entitled to keep more of it than you currently do because you know better how to spend it than government.

“When I was health minister, my critics called me the anti-health minister for trying to bring some common sense to the portfolio in order to build a sustainable and caring healthcare system in this country. As immigration minister, I was recently branded the anti-immigration minister (by a Fairfax journo of course) for controlling our borders, for stopping deaths at sea, for building confidence in our migration system.

“What’s next? The anti-prime minister? I’ll wear that too because I’m not afraid to say what too few say: values matter. Values signal where we’ve come from and where we’re headed, providing moral ballast along the way. I’m committed to making common sense more common. I’m going to call out political correctness and social engineers who presume to know you better than you do. And union leaders who are wedded to their own power rather than creating jobs.

“I’ll be checking in on the ABC too. It has a good charter and if it can’t follow it, refusing to represent all Australians, why should taxpayers pay its wages? I won’t be recanting what I said to business leaders: sure, throw your support behind social causes but respect shareholders by doing it on your own dime.

“And let me say something about our taxpayer-funded hum­an rights commissioners. Don’t divide the great nation. And don’t forget the most fundamental right of free speech: human flourishing over the course of Western civilisation didn’t come from censorship or protecting hurt feelings.

“As prime minister, I’m not expecting to be loved. My gorgeous wife and kids love me and that’s all I need. I know what I’m here to do. As prime minister, I will work every day to earn your respect. Thank you.” Tick. Or is it tick tock, given the self-indulgent, self-destruction in the Liberal Party at the hands of Abbott and Turnbull.