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Peter Dutton is racist. Here’s the proof
Politics
Tamunofiniarisa , ,
Peter Dutton is racist. Here’s the proof

Politics tamfitronics

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Politics tamfitronics Crikey

Politics tamfitronics Crikey

Here’s the proof

Crikey’s series explores Dutton’s history of racism as well as the role racism has played on both sides of politics since the 1970s.

Race and racism have long played a role in Australian politics. Malcolm Fraser was attacked by Labor for extending humanitarian migration to South Vietnamese refugees. John Howard sought to weaponise Asian migration in the 1980s. In the wake of 9/11 and Tampa, the Howard government made a virtue of its tough line on asylum seekers and Australians of Muslim background, while Howard’s refusal to engage with Indigenous peoples came to characterise his prime ministership. The rise of the Islamic State once again saw Australia’s Muslim community targeted by Coalition politicians. The Gillard government made a virtue of its crackdown on temporary migrants.

But Peter Dutton stands out as the most plainly racist Australian political leader since the White Australia policy. Here’s the proof below.

Boycott of Stolen Generations Apology

February 13, 2008

Dutton walks out of Parliament rather than hear the Apology to the Stolen Generations by then prime minister Kevin Rudd.

Dutton says he “made a mistake” in his decision to boycott the Apology when elected Liberal leader in May 2022.1 Dutton repeats his apology on the 15th anniversary of the Apology to the Stolen Generations in 2023.2

Comments on Wilson Tuckey’s observations about Indigenous peoples

March 15, 2010

Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey said acknowledgements of Traditional Owners were a “farce”, that some Indigenous peoples who perform Welcome To Country ceremonies were “grossly overweight”, that the “best” Indigenous peoples had got out of Australia was a “population of 300,000 people”, and that the 1967 referendum was “the worst thing that’s happened for Aboriginal people in history”.1

Dutton said of Tuckey’s comments: “I don’t have any issue with what Wilson said frankly or his right to say it.”2

Comments on refugees

May 17, 2016

On Sky News, Dutton says about refugees: “They won’t be numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English … These people would be taking Australian jobs, there’s no question about that … For many of them that would be unemployed, they would languish in unemployment queues and on Medicare and the rest of it, so there would be huge cost and there’s no sense in sugar-coating that, that’s the scenario.”1

Criticism of the Fraser government for bringing in “Lebanese-Muslim” refugees

November 2016

On November 18, 2016, Dutton said: “The reality is Malcolm Fraser did make mistakes in bringing some people inin the 1970s, and we’re seeing that today.”1

On November 21, pressed to identify which “people” he was referring to, Dutton said, “The advice I have is that out of the last 33 people who have been charged with terrorist-related offences in this country, 22 of those people are from second- and third-generation Lebanese-Muslim background.”2

In August 2023, Dutton referred to those comments as “comments that I shouldn’t have made … I’ve apologised for that. But again, when you’re in the thrust of it and in the thick of it, we were dealing with people who had been radicalised and many of them shared a background and that’s sort of the factual reality of what we were dealing with.”3

Twelve months later, Lebanese-Australian community leaders said they were unaware of any apology from Dutton.4

Comments on “Armani refugees”

September 28, 2017

Dutton says about refugees travelling to the United States under a deal with the Obama/Trump administrations: “There are a lot of people that haven’t come out of war-ravaged areas, they’re economic refugees — they got on a boat, paid a people smuggler a lot of money … Somebody once said to me that the world’s biggest collection of Armani jeans and handbags [is] up on Nauru waiting for people to collect when they depart.“1

Each person sent to the US under the deal had been found to be entitled to humanitarian visas.

Comments on “African gangs”

January 3, 2018

Dutton says, “People are scared to go out to restaurants of a [sic] night time because they are followed home by these gangs … Of course it’s African gang violence.”1

Comments on white South African farmers

March 2018

On March 14, 2018, Dutton says that White South African farmers “deserve special attention” and “need help from a civilised country like ours”.1

On March 15, Dutton asks Home Affairs to “look at ways that we can provide some assistance” to white South African farmers. “We could provide more visas for people potentially in the humanitarian program … If people are being persecuted, regardless of whether it’s because of religion or the colour of their skin or whatever, we need to provide assistance where we can.”

He added that South Africans “work hard, they integrate well into Australian society, they contribute to make us a better country and they’re the sorts of migrants that we want to bring into our country.“

Comments on “Sudanese gangs”

July 22, 2018

Dutton says, “There is a major law and order problem in Victoria and more people are going to be hurt until the rule of law is enforced by the Victorian government. We don’t have these problems with Sudanese gangs in NSW or Queensland.”1

Criticism of Muslim community leaders for harming counter-terrorism efforts

November 11, 2018

In the wake of the fatal Bourke St attack by Hassan Khalif Shire Ali, Dutton says, “But it is a time for community members to step up … We need to be realistic about the threat and the idea that community leaders would have information, but withhold it from the police or intelligence agencies is unacceptable.”1

After the attack, it emerges Shire Ali was well-known to police and ASIO, had had his passport cancelled, and after an AFP assessment was determined as not posing a threat to national security and was not monitored. There is no evidence information about him was withheld.2

Claims the Chinese government is backing Labor

February 10, 2022

Dutton tells Parliament, referring to Anthony Albanese, “We now see evidence, Mr Speaker, that the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese government, has also made a decision about who they’re going to back in the next federal election, Mr Speaker, and that is open and that is obvious, and they have picked this bloke as that candidate.”1

Compares China to Nazi Germany

April 25, 2022

Dutton marks Anzac Day by invoking Adolf Hitler, urging Australia to prepare for war, saying the international situation was “a replay in part of what’s happened in the 1930s. You don’t need to overegg it. The Chinese, through their actions, through their words, are on a very deliberate course at the moment and we have to stand up with countries to stare down any act of aggression to make sure that we can keep peace in our region and for our country.”1

In June 2024, Dutton says he is “pro-China”.2

Warns about Muslim MPs

July 4, 2024

On July 4, in the wake of Fatima Payman’s defection from Labor, Dutton says, “I think what it does demonstrate is that the prime minister, if he’s in a minority government in the next term of Parliament, it will include the Greens, it’ll include the Green-teals, it’ll include Muslim candidates from Western Sydney, it will be a disaster.”1

Ignores invitation to attend Garma festival

August 2024

On August 2, 2024, Djawa Yunupingu, chair of the Yothu Yindi Foundation, says that Dutton ignored his invitation to the Garma festival, telling NITV, “Of course, I’d be happy to see both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. I wrote to the leader of the opposition a week ago. He hasn’t replied to me, I haven’t heard from him since. I wonder why?”1

Demands ban on all Palestinian refugees from Gaza

August 15, 2024

Dutton says “I don’t think people should be coming in through that war zone at all at the moment.”1

Dutton is asked if he wants to stop “all refugees” coming into the country. He replies, “We should stop people coming in from a war zone”.

“We don’t know if the proper checks haven’t been done … You bring 3,000 people in, let’s say 99% are good. If 1% of people are questionable or sympathisers with a listed terrorist organisation, how on earth is that in our country’s best interests?”

Says Nazi Germany had shame

August 17, 2024

Defending his proposed ban on all Palestinian refugees, Dutton says, “The Nazis tried to conceal their crime of murdering 6 million Jews. Hamas felt no guilt when they carried out their terrorist attack on October 7.”1

Pro-Israel Jewish groups criticise Dutton’s claim. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry says, “The Nazis were proud of their work but concealed it for various reasons…”2

You Deeper

Dutton doesn’t realise importing US politics means the death of the Liberal Party
Politics
Tamunofiniarisa , ,
Dutton doesn’t realise importing US politics means the death of the Liberal Party

Politics tamfitronics

This article is an instalment of Where to for real Liberals?a series on the future of the Liberal Party under Peter Dutton.

Contemplating the future of the Liberal Party, institutions matter, especially the electoral system that stands between the voters and parties of government. Since the 2022 election, it has become clear that two distinctive features of Australia’s electoral system — compulsory and preferential voting — are not working in the Liberal Party’s favour.

On July 17 it will be one hundred years since legislation was passed to make voting compulsory in Australia’s federal elections. It was a private members’ bill supported by all parties and it went through both houses in less than a day. The states followed in their own time. Queensland had already introduced it, in 1915. The Australian Workers’ Union was encouraging itinerant rural workers to vote, and conservative premier Digby Denham thought that compulsion would force apathetic Liberals to the polls and return him to government. He was wrong. A 5% swing gave Labor a majority and it began an election-winning run in Queensland that lasted until 1929.

Compulsory voting institutionalised Australia as a majoritarian democracy — one in which governments are supported by the majority of voters, not just the majority of those who turn out. And it made for more egalitarian policies. In voluntary systems, those least likely to vote are the poor and marginalised, which encourages politicians to ignore their needs in favour of the comfortable and well-off.

Without compulsory voting, I doubt if we would still have a national health scheme. The Coalition opposed it in its first iteration as Medibank under the Whitlam government, abolished it when it returned to office under Fraser, and opposed it again when it was reintroduced as Medicare by Hawke. It kept up the opposition for an election-losing decade until, in 1996, after John Howard won in a landslide, he said that the rejection of Medicare had been a mistake.

Because the law rather than the parties get out the vote, compulsory voting favours the centre by weakening the influence of zealots at either end of the political spectrum. A party’s passionate base is tempered with the votes of the moderate and indifferent. In voluntary systems by contrast, parties are tempted to stress highly emotive issues to bolster the turnout, especially those to do with sexuality and religion as we see in the US.

It doesn’t really work here. When the Liberal Party ran anti-trans candidate Katherine Deves in Warringah in 2022, they won just 32.4% of the first preference vote in what was once a safe Liberal seat.

Preferential voting was introduced in 1918 after pressure from farmers’ groups who wanted their own party without the risk of losing the seat to Labor in three-way contests. It soon led to the formation of the Country Party and coalition governments, and it has enabled minor parties to come and go: the Democratic Labor Party in the 1950s, the Australian Democrats in the 1980s and 1990s, the Greens and One Nation in more recent times. All existed because of preferential voting. So do the teals, who present an unprecedented challenge to the Liberals, one they did not see coming and seem to have no idea how to meet.

For the past few decades, the major parties have been losing life-long rusted-on voters. This results in fewer safe seats and the trend is accelerating. At the 2019 election, 46 of the 151 seats in the House of Representatives seats were decided on first preferences. At the 2022 election, this plummeted to 15. All the rest went to preferences, including the six heartland seats that the Liberal Party lost to the teal independent candidates.

Since Pauline Hanson brought her politics of white grievance into federal Parliament, the Liberal Party and its coalition partner, the Nationals, have fretted about their loss of first preferences to the right — to One Nation in particular and more recently to Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party. As Liberal prime minister, John Howard tried hard not to alienate One Nation voters. He wanted to show that he could feel their pain so that their preferences would come back to the Coalition.

Labor similarly has lost first preferences to the Greens on the left, but again these progressive preferences mostly come back to Labor, though the Greens now have four seats won on preferences and leader Adam Bandt is within a whisker of winning Melbourne on first preferences. With both parties of government protecting their outside flanks, it looked as if the electorate was becoming more divided, with a weaker centre and the risk of the hyper-partisanship that afflicts contemporary US politics.

But this depleted centre has now been captured by competent, professional, middle-aged women. They are not the cookie-cutter candidates of either side: neither private school-entitled young men nor trade union officials and political staffers, but people with real-world life skills and rungs on the board, people who are acceptable to disaffected Liberal voters who would never vote for the party of organised labour.

Australian politics, on the whole, is won or lost in the centre. Peter Dutton, along with many media commentators, are misled when they think that Australia is following the trajectory of the United States into increasing polarisation where disaffected margins can be played off against a perceived entitled elite.

The combination of compulsory and preferential voting gives Australian politics a flexibility unavailable to its electorally sclerotic ally. It allows new political formations that reflect shifts in the views and makeup of the electorate. As the Liberal Party has moved to the right, looking more and more like its coalition ally, compulsory preferential voting has enabled the moderate centre it once represented to find new candidates.

That Peter Dutton has scorned them does not auger well for his party’s future.

Does the Liberal Party need to regain moderates to reclaim power? Let us know your thoughts by writing to[email protected]. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.