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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media I'm Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Peter Dutton has an uphill battle, even he would admit that. But the leader of the opposition who is best known for tough, hardline conservative talking points is trying to put himself in the best position possible – by insisting he has a softer side, and striking a contrast with his predecessor Scott Morrison. But beneath his attempts to rebrand himself, who is he… and where did his ideas come from?

Today, contributor to The Monthly, Malcolm Knox, on what Peter Dutton is prepared to do to become Prime Minister.

It’s Monday, November 7

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RUBY:

Malcolm, there seem to be a lot of people, some of whom want to remain anonymous, others who are more willing to put their name to it, who have suggested that Peter Dutton is not how he seems, that there is more to him than you might think that he is. In fact a different man in private, a much nicer man than his public image suggests. So can you tell me a bit about what you've heard and what you've read to that effect?

MALCOLM:

Yes, I think it's a predictable part of the process that when a politician changes their role from the specific commission that he was given as Immigration Minister or as Home Affairs Minister, as Defence Minister, which was which was very much that of a, you know, a government hard man who was out there to perform a specific task for, for his party in government. Now he's changed roles to the leadership. And of course, there's a kind of a makeover taking place where they want to expand his appeal and project him into the public as a more rounded character than the targeted role he was playing before.

Archival Tape – Reporter 1
“To many voters, the former Defence Immigration and Home Affairs Minister is a hard head. A public image his own colleagues concede is problematic.”

Archival Tape – Reporter 2
“Mr. Dutton says Australians would witness a gentler side of him, arguing that the public had grown accustomed to him being seen in tough portfolios.”

Archival Tape – Peter Dutton
“All I would say is I'm not going to change, but I want people to see the entire person that I am and I want people to observe and make their own judgements when they meet me.”

Archival Tape – Reporter 3
“When you scratch the surface of Peter Dutton and you actually see that he's not an extremist is what he's been painted as, he actually is quite pragmatic.”

Archival Tape – Peter Dutton
“In this role you can show people a little bit more of the true full picture.”

Archival Tape – Friend of Peter Dutton
“My view is that they don't know the real Peter Dutton.”

MALCOLM:

I've heard that myself from people who've met him that, you know, Dutton takes them by surprise because they have a certain image in their head and he comes across as more of a, I suppose an informal, even humorous individual. It's also interesting to me that he's being recast in specific contrast to Scott Morrison. Effort to leave not only the Morrison years behind, but the Morrison personality. And I can't think of any federal election since 1996 when Paul Keating was so resoundingly dumped by the Australian people that an election was so strongly influenced by the electorate's personal loathing for an individual, and that was Morrison. So the Liberal Party's task and I think, you know Dutton, is quite enjoying this role. It's to say I'm a different person from Scott Morrison, I'm a straighter person, I'm a more believable person. I'm not that superficial, untrustworthy guy from marketing. I'm somebody who has created myself over the years. I have been consistent through those years. You know what you're getting with me. And I think there is a degree of credibility in that that Morrison clearly lacked, which was identified by the Australian electorate.

RUBY:

Mmmmm okay. And so there's a rebrand underway and I know that you've recently interviewed Peter Dutton and I'm curious to hear what you think of him and, and this idea of the new Dutton versus the old public image and who he really is. But before we get to that, I'd like to look at his history as a way of understanding him. Can you tell me a bit about his past? Because I think a lot of what we've heard about his early years is really framed around him being this Queensland police officer who decided to run for politics inspired by the problems that he saw in that role. But his political ambitions they go further back than that, don't they? So where did it begin for him?

MALCOLM:

Yeah, they do. And I think we need to rethink the character of conservatism in Australia as a small business based conservatism. And that was one that formed very much in the 1980s and 1990s when Labor was in power and small business felt victimised, particularly by up to 17% interest rates and what they saw as a Labor Party that was hostile to small business and Peter Dutton grew out of that environment…

Archival Tape – Peter Dutton
“My family is a typical small business, middle class family. When we were children, mum and dad struggled to send us to good schools and worked and saved hard to provide for their sole focus, their family.”

MALCOLM:

Dutton spoke about sitting around the family kitchen table and hearing so much hatred for Keating.

Archival Tape – Peter Dutton
“Mr. Speaker, I first joined the Liberal Party when I was about 18 years of age and for me it was a natural party of natural choice. I'd always had an interest in politics and to me the Liberal Party was a party founded in many ways on the principles of individualism and reward for achievement.”

MALCOLM:

He ran for the Queensland Parliament at the end of the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era, which is a it also shows what a contrarian Dutton is that he would run in a Labor seat for a Conservative party at a time when the Conservatives were getting turfed out for good reason.

RUBY:

It's an interesting decision. Yeah, as a teenager.

MALCOLM:

And he got flogged and even went off into the police and spent nine years in the police force.

Archival Tape – Peter Dutton
“Mr. Speaker, I'm proud of the fact that I had a distinguished career in the police service, and that service saw me perform duties all over the great state of Queensland”

MALCOLM:

And while that has crafted his persona, I guess, as this cop who came out of service as a detective in the Queensland Police, he was very much on the political pathway before that. And towards the end of his police career he joined the family business, he got involved in running and owning childcare centres. And as soon as he could he ran for Federal Parliament in the seat of Dickson on the outskirts of Brisbane, and he defeated Cheryl Kernot and that was when he entered Federal Parliament.

RUBY:

And so that election, when he entered Federal Parliament, what was it about the conditions at the time or what Australia was like at that moment that made a candidate like Peter Dutton electable?

MALCOLM:

Dutton was very much a political acolyte of John Howard and that was the high watermark of the Howard years. If you remember Howard, Howard got in on a protest vote against Keating in 1996. Howard actually lost the popular vote in 1998, but retained power due to the distribution of that vote in different electorates. But it was a very narrow win in 1998. But then in 2001, the September 11 attacks had happened. The Tampa incident was manipulated to motivate Australian conservative thinking and that was when Dutton came into Parliament.

Archival Tape – Peter Dutton
“Mr. Speaker, when we consider the challenges of our modern society, our aim to make our community an even better place is not an easy task. In society today we are experiencing unacceptable crime rates, causing older Australians to barricade themselves in their homes, all in the name of safety.”

MALCOLM:

So you can see that he was riding that wave of John Howard's popularity at that time and Dutton has made himself in the Howard mold.

Archival Tape – Peter Dutton
“We must face the reality that criminals in today's society are well resourced, professionally operated and structured and administered and must be combated to ensure the fabric of our society remains intact.”

MALCOLM:

And you know, he's a person who, who does respect the history of politics, the recent history of politics in this country and particularly in his party, which is again a way of differentiating himself from Scott Morrison, who was much more a shapeshifting person who didn't really have a pass, who just tried to be whatever he thought people wanted him to be next.

RUBY:

We’ll be back in a moment.

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RUBY:

Malcolm, let’s talk about the Peter Dutton we know today - he’s this hardline conservative figure within the Liberal party. So how did he rise through the party and what has he done to establish that reputation for himself?

MALCOLM:

He rose very quickly in the Howard government and was given ministerial positions not long after he became a parliamentarian. Many people will have formed a firm opinion about Peter Dutton from the things he said when he was Minister for Immigration, Home Affairs and Defence in the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments. And this is where Dutton built up this record for being the guy who would step forward and say inflammatory things.

Archival Tape – Peter Dutton
“Well, for many people they won't be numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English.”

MALCOLM:

So he would speak of people in Melbourne being afraid to go out of home because they were afraid of African gangs…

Archival Tape – Peter Dutton
“Reality is, you know people are scared to go to restaurants at night time because they are followed home by these gangs. Home invasions and cars are stolen and we just need to call it what it is. Of course, it's African gang violence”.

MALCOLM:

…he described children from Sri Lanka as anchor babies…

Archival Tape – Peter Dutton
“They still had children. We see that overseas in other countries, anchor babies, so called and the emotion of trying to leverage a migration outcome based on the children”.

MALCOLM:

He said Australia had made a mistake in accepting so many Lebanese immigrants because they were potentially linked with with terrorism and violence.

Archival Tape – Peter Dutton
“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.”

MALCOLM:

When he was Immigration Minister, he said a number of inflammatory things about refugees and quite offensive and disparaging for political purposes, which were to appeal, I suppose, to the conservative base.

Archival Tape – Peter Dutton
“Where I see people breaking the Australian law, I will call it out. And where I see people doing harm to Australians, I will call it out. And I'll tell you what else I call out, Mr. Speaker - that is this weak Leader of the Opposition. You can't pretend to be the alternative Prime Minister of this country…”

MALCOLM:

It did seem that Dutton was cast in this role and believed himself pretty well suited to this role. There was nothing insincere about the statements he was making or put on. It was in the service of his party, in the service of a political agenda. But I have quoted in the article American football coach Bill Parcells, who said, you know, ultimately you can say what you like, but you are what your record says you are. And I think that's probably the major liability or heavy baggage that Dutton carries as a party leader now.

RUBY:

Mmhm. Yeah, It's interesting on that idea of the political game, I think you make the point in your piece that some of the things that he's said and done in the past are quite clearly sort of playing for a tabloid audience. What is the distinction there between someone who is willing to say and do things for that audience versus someone who really believes, you know, in the things that they're saying? And do you get the sense that he is just a politician willing to sort of play that game? Would you think that there is real conviction behind most of his beliefs?

MALCOLM:

I think it's kind of both. He's probably a politician suited for a very sceptical age because he seems pretty sceptical himself and almost like a game player. Look, I had to do this to win the game. I have to do this to win the other game. But we all now know it's a game, don't we? That's not something that suits the current moment, because Anthony Albanese has come in with this air of, you know, 'no more games'. We're going to be straight with the Australian people and we're going to play nice. So as the cycle is at the moment, this is not going to suit Peter Dutton. But you know, he has a kind of fatalistic hope that the wheel will turn once more at some point in the future.

RUBY:

At this point in time. It is hard to see that Peter Dutton could become Prime Minister in three years time. What would have to happen for that to be a real possibility? And do you get the sense that he does have the political capacity and I suppose also just the potential to be popular enough to actually get to the point where he would be a contender?

MALCOLM:

It's very hard to imagine at this point that he can. And from what I gathered when speaking to him, he was quite realistic about that and certainly realistic about the fact that he really only has a hope electorally if some significant things go his way. And, you know, in going his way, he probably means going against Australia because his best hope is that, you know, there's a major external economic shock that affects standard of living in Australia and is eventually put at the feet of the Albanese government. The other thing I guess he can hope for is if Labor reverts to its tradition of eating its own - and it's done that in the past - and I suppose as a student of history, Dutton lives in hope that the Labor Party in government will do that again. There are few signs of that at the moment, but it's early days yet.

RUBY:

Hmm. And can you tell me a bit more about your conversations with him? How did Peter Dutton seem to want to present himself to you and how did you interpret his personality and his priorities? Who is the Peter Dutton of 2022?

MALCOLM:

You know, you've always got to be wary of that kind of Stockholm Syndrome as a reporter - when you speak to somebody and as I'm as prone to it as anyone else - you begin liking whoever you're talking to. Standing back from that, I think my overriding impression was that he's a consistent person and he's a straight person in the sense of there are not going to be many different dimensions discovered of Peter Dutton, you know, may be mildly more likeable than you thought he was, but he's still defending the positions he took.

And I did actually ask him, I said, well, why do you want to back away from that when your main attraction to your party and probably to the base is people reckon they know who you are. That's the major attraction after a person like Morrison that they know what they're getting with Peter Dutton and he's going to do what he promises to do and he's going to be who he claims to be. And you know, he said I am maintaining that you see is what you get. People haven't seen the full me before.

He's trying to walk a pretty fine line between his record and the picture he wants to promote as a more broadly appealing political leader. If you had a pretty dire preconception about him, you probably would have been a bit surprised by how personable he was. But realistically, I think you've just got a person who's a pragmatic politician. He knows what he's up against. He's under no illusions about it, and he'll just chip away the best he can.

RUBY:

Malcolm, thank you so much for your time.

MALCOLM:

Thanks, Ruby. Thanks for having me.

RUBY:

You can read Malcolm Knox’s piece in the latest issue of The Monthly.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today…

Elon Musk began his restructure of Twitter over the weekend, sacking approximately half the company’s staff.

Musk has reportedly laid off the entire curation team, which was tasked with stopping the spread of misinformation, as well as the human rights team.

And…

Australia has announced it will jointly bid with Pacific nations to host the United Nations climate summit COP31 in 2026.

This week, energy and climate change minister Chris Bowen will travel to Egypt to attend COP27.

I’m Ruby Jones - this is 7am - see you tomorrow.

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