Admit it. There’s something intoxicating about watching a Barnaby Joyce implosion. For political aficionados, seeing him lie under the night sky murmuring profanities into his mobile phone is a compelling piece of performance art.
So too his previously anonymous deputy leader, heard to be slurring some words at a Senate committee hearing after two glasses of wine at a Tuesday night party room, her denials of drunkenness and subsequently revealed medical issue conjuring another moment of Nationals mayhem.
Booze is news right now in Canberra, with calls for random drug and alcohol testing of politicians – long a standard in other high-risk industries – garnering strong public support in this week’s Guardian Essential Report.
It’s easy to get up on our high horse but if we are honest, all of us – politicians, media and those in the cheap seats – lurch around the public square a bit like we are on the tail end of a trashy night on the turps.
At happy hour the tribes congregate, zeroing in on the weak links; the inner circle roars with laughter, those on the periphery give an embarrassed guffaw while the other patrons just wish they would all shut up.
Peter Dutton is an easy mark: with the charm of an undercover Queensland cop and an inability to express any emotion except faux anger, he is easy to dismiss. I’ve done it myself.
But while most progressives find the opposition leader self-evidently repulsive, the reality is his approval numbers have been steadily increasing over the past 12 months. This week’s report shows Dutton at his highest job approval to date, while still with higher negatives the gap between the two is slimmer than the prime minister’s.
These figures should serve as a wake-up for anyone ready to declare Dutton politically obsolete. Our recent political history is littered with successful opposition leaders whose opponents were convinced they were simply unelectable.
“Little Johnnie” Howard was no match for the maestro Paul Keating until he drove him off an electoral cliff; Kevin 07 was a lightweight unable to stand up to the “union bosses” who would really be running the country; Tony Abbott was dismissed as the “Mad Monk” who was far too extreme to ever be PM.
Even the current prime minister was dismissed as unqualified to lead the nation (small print: “had never held an economic portfolio”), ignoring he had served more than two decades and had been a senior minister and deputy PM.
In contrast, the opposition leaders who never make it to the top job are those whose character traits are surgically dissected by an incumbent prepared to treat them seriously.
John Hewson’s “Fightback” agenda was turned into a toxic treatise; Kim Beazley’s caution and heft were cast as “lack of ticker” that proved he could not protect the borders; Mark Latham’s inexperience parlayed into a threat to home interest rates.
When dismissed as a lightweight to Malcolm Turnbull’s majesty, Bill Shorten nearly pulled off an upset win; but when his policies to address the deep inequities in the tax system were weaponised as a threat to “tax us to death” he fell further short of the ultimate prize.
The lesson? If you see your opponent as a caricature, you are setting them up for victory. It’s only when the punchline is linked to a material impact on the lives of those who vote that the challenge will be defused.
Now the Coalition is leading the ALP in both primary and two-party-preferred plus, maybe it’s time for a sober assessment of Peter Dutton. Let’s start with what he has actually done as opposition leader.
These figures show that Dutton is still a figure lacking full definition, with a critical mass of voters unable to say whether they support or oppose his key decisions.
But he shaped the nation’s zeitgeist with his decision to oppose the voice to parliament, indeed by breaking the political consensus he played a significant role in its defeat. He also appears to have tapped the electorate’s mood in determining that Labor’s repurposed stage-three tax cuts are not a hill worth dying on.
On other issues the jury is still out: Dutton has vigorously opposed renewable energy targets and workplace laws, key policy positions of the Labor government. He has also been eager to embark on culture wars with corporates such as Woolworths (on selling flags in Australia Day) and Qantas (on endorsing the voice).
It is in these areas that inherent contradictions in his political character are rich for the taking: a cultural populist who opposes woke corporates on social issues while defending to the hilt those same companies’ right to exploit their workforce.
Likewise in regional communities, he is greenlighting his National partners opposing the renewable rollout, railing against industrial developments in grid and plant in order to entrench the interests of the fossil fuel industry.
And as living costs see Australians turn inwards, Dutton is seizing the opportunity to re-conjure the sort of border protection panics that previous Coalition leaders have adopted as proxies for concern about the impact of the economic globalisation they support. This week’s poll shows this is a still an itch waiting for a cynical scratching.
With the teal experiment in its first iteration, Western Australia at a high-water mark and Labor’s rural and regionals seats exposed to living costs and the impact of the renewable rollout, there is a credible path to Coalition victory at the next election.
Dutton offers critics so much to work with. His innate negativity belies a lack of conviction in doing anything outside the narrow confines of governing for big business, leaving people exposed to the violence of the free market.
Whether they be renters or workers or communities attempting to transition to renewables, these are compelling arguments for why Dutton’s oafish bellicosity is a threat to the interests of the people who will determine the next government.
But if we never get past making him the butt of our barroom jokes it will be an act of indulgence every bit as egregious as getting sozzled on the taxpayer coin.
The Guardian Essential report The latest poll results are a wake-up call for anyone ready to declare Peter Dutton politically obsolete
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27.02.2024
Admit it. There’s something intoxicating about watching a Barnaby Joyce implosion. For political aficionados, seeing him lie under the night sky murmuring profanities into his mobile phone is a compelling piece of performance art.
So too his previously anonymous deputy leader, heard to be slurring some words at a Senate committee hearing after two glasses of wine at a Tuesday night party room, her denials of drunkenness and subsequently revealed medical issue conjuring another moment of Nationals mayhem.
Booze is news right now in Canberra, with calls for random drug and alcohol testing of politicians – long a standard in other high-risk industries – garnering strong public support in this week’s Guardian Essential Report.
It’s easy to get up on our high horse but if we are honest, all of us – politicians, media and those in the cheap seats – lurch around the public square a bit like we are on the tail end of a trashy night on the turps.
At happy hour the tribes congregate, zeroing in on the weak links; the inner circle roars with laughter, those on the periphery give an embarrassed guffaw while the other patrons just wish they would all shut up.
Peter Dutton is an easy mark: with the charm of an undercover Queensland cop and an inability to express any emotion except faux anger, he is easy to dismiss. I’ve done it myself.
But while most progressives find the opposition leader self-evidently repulsive, the reality is his approval numbers have been steadily increasing over the past 12 months.........
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