There’s little doubt that Australia’s opposition leader Peter Dutton is a one trick pony where leadership is concerned. His sole modus operandi is, and always has been, division.
Indeed, Dutton has taken the title of “opposition” leader so literally that he’s unwilling to meet the government halfway on just about anything. More so, he takes every glint of opportunity available to him to plant seeds of darkness and ill-will in the minds of Australian voters.
We’ve watched this play out for months…
With the Voice to Parliament, he told Australians to be wary of a simple plan to give First Nations communities the capacity to offer advice on policy. He told us the plan was a sinister ploy to separate non Indigenous and Indigenous Australians; a measure that would take power away from everyone else.
He referred to the Trumpian playbook and lied–over and over again.
On Australia Day, he encouraged Australians to boycott Woolworths (a business which employs around 200,000 people in this country) for making the socially and economically-driven decision to remove Australia Day products from its shelves, accusing the company of being “against the national interest, the national spirit.”
More recently, he shifted focus away from the critical need to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, by cynically distracting voters with a gap-ridden plan for nuclear– a plan slammed by the CSIRO which has repeatedly highlighted renewables as the lowest cost new build electricity technology option for Australia.
And now, just this week, Dutton has piled on the propaganda once again in a bid to incite fear and embolden those who hold racist views. He has been accused of recklessly “fuelling Islamophobia”–which I can only assume would swell his pride no bound.
During a press conference in Queanbeyan on Thursday morning, Dutton was asked about comments Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made during Question Time this week, regarding then-suspended Labor Senator Fatima Payman.
“Senator Payman, of course, has made a decision to place herself outside the Labor Party, that is a decision that she made,” Albanese said. “I expect further announcements in the coming days which will explain exactly what the strategy has been over now more than a month.”
Some time after this, Payman announced that she would be leaving Labor to sit as an independent. The decision was spurred by her having crossed the floor to support a Greens motion recognising a Palestinian state and pledging to do it a second time despite the ALP’s strict solidarity rules.
Asked about the situation and Albanese’s comments, Dutton characterised them as “a political play by the Prime Minister”.
“He’s been in parliament for almost 30 years. He’s a tricky political operator, there’s no question about that. What he’s tried to do here is spike the story of Senator Payman, who clearly is going to go out into another party or some independent collaboration,” he said.
“I don’t know what her plan is. But clearly, the Prime Minister does.”
Never to miss a chance for fear-mongering, Dutton continued, suggesting that the possibility of a Labor-led minority government at the next election would spell disaster.
“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 will include the green Teals, it will include Muslim candidates from Western Sydney. It will be a disaster,” he said.
“If you think the Albanese government is bad now, wait for it to be a minority government with the Greens, the green Teals and Muslim independents.
“That is not the formula for bringing grocery prices down and for getting our economy back on track. Inflation will continue to rage under that sort of a government, and interest rates will go higher.”
The comments of course are utterly unfounded. I’m not even sure what a “green Teal” is. But of course Dutton’s reckless referral to “Muslims from Western Sydney” is his most egregious.
He know what he’s playing into with such a sentiment, he knows the damage and destruction such words cause. He has lived through the Cronulla Riots, the aftermath of 9/11, the horrifying scenes playing out now in Gaza. He knows that Islamophobia is very much alive and well in this country while people like himself are there to fan the flames.
“As a Muslim who grew up in Western Sydney, I find this comment from someone who is running for prime minister to be an absolute disgrace,” Australian cricket star Usman Khawaja wrote on social media.
“Bigotry at its finest. Fuelling Islamophobia from the very top.”
I wholeheartedly agree… Except he’s not at the top just yet.
Should Peter Dutton ever find himself there, the rot from the fish’s head, from his very leadership, might just corrode us all.