The opposition leader’s ‘strongman’ persona runs the risk of creating the impression he is more interested in culture wars than the cost of living.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has lurched into 2025 like a Queensland plod armed with a phone book desperately looking for someone to wallop.
After advancing attacks on Indigenous flags and acknowledgments of country, Dutton has failed to pick an Australia Day fight over his suggestion that councils should celebrate with sufficient patriotic fervour.
To prove he’s not a single-shitstorm politician, he’s expanded his gaze on to the broader canvas of DEI, the diversity, equity and inclusion programs similar to those that Donald Trump is blaming for everything from California bushfires to the Washington DC air crash in the US.
Like Trump, his strategy appears crude but simple: divide your way into power by convincing disaffected voters there are other groups in society who are getting a better deal than they are. As this week’s Guardian Essential Report shows, Dutton has a bit to work with.
When we ask people to say which groups have more power and less power compared to other groups, they are more likely to see groups they identify with as being in deficit, while others are perceived to do better.
While some of these findings are marginal, others are quite stark – especially around sexual and gender identity and disability. Older Australians are also much more likely to see themselves lacking power compared to other groups.
This was the logic behind the campaign against the voice to parliament; a majority of Australians were convinced that having a right to be heard written into the constitution represented special treatment for First Nations people.
The evil genius underpinning the attacks on DEI is that they allow leaders like Trump and Dutton to punch down without leaving any obvious bruising.
Rather than attacking any minority group directly, they focus their ire on programs designed by so-called “elites” within government and corporations to address the systemic power imbalances that underpin social and economic inequality.
Dutton’s confrontational approach also plays into the broader leadership narrative the Coalition is pursuing; that Dutton is a strong leader with firm beliefs while Albanese is a weak leader who swings in the breeze. Again, a separate question on leadership attributes shows again why Dutton is working this angle so assiduously.
While both leaders share the negatives of most politicians, Albanese is labouring under the weight of incumbency, where compromise – part of the PM’s job description – is parsed as a lack of conviction.
The indicators most concerning to the PM in this table would be that he is seen as more out of touch with ordinary people and less decisive than Dutton. For his part, Dutton’s perception of aggression illustrates the sunk cost in running such confrontational politics.
These cleavages are exemplified by the ongoing antisemitism issue and the crisis in Gaza. While Albanese attempts to turn the temperature down in the name of social cohesion, Dutton pours fuel on the fire in pursuit of political definition.
But riding the DEI beast is not without its dangers. As Trump’s wild return to office dominates news feeds, Dutton will be invited by his boosters to embrace the US president’s excesses at a time when most Australians would rather have grown-up leadership.
More fundamentally, an obsession with DEI creates the impression he is more interested in inflaming performative culture wars than dealing with what remains people’s number-one election issue: their material wellbeing via prices and wages.
The truth is that, as a final question shows, Australians possess a far more nuanced position than Peter Dutton would care to acknowledge when it comes to systemic interventions in disadvantage.
What strikes me here is our tendency to agree with contradictory messages about fairness. While the systems that give “special treatment” to minorities are seen as unfair, so too is the status quo. While we agree we should address historical injustice, we are not convinced the current programs are effective.
This shows how the weaponisation of difference on both sides of the debate clouds our shared aspiration of the fair go, as power becomes a zero-sum game where for every winner someone must lose.
Rather than being a motif for individual identity maybe we need to think about the value of organisations that reflect the real world, about the way we define merit and the way we learn from others with different life experience. This is when the diversity challenge becomes an opportunity.
Dutton would know from his time as a cop that confessions elicited under duress are inherently suspect. So too is any pretence to social consensus that is generated by fear and loathing in this era of algorithmic anger amplification.
Albanese’s Australia Day response, where he quipped Peter Dutton was having “a fight with an imaginary friend” is a good start in diffusing his DEI menace.
Even better was Sam Kekovich’s annual intervention in the national zeitgeist. Brandishing a lamb cutlet, he called on all Australians to get out of the comments section and recognise that most of our beef is confected.
Written by Peter Lewis for the Guardian Australia, originally published 4th Feb 2025
