The campaign to “rescue” white farmers in the republic of South Africa is becoming the most extraordinary internal collapse of the right for a long time. It’s disgusting too, but we’re accustomed to that now. The racism of it is so bare, astounding and vicious that it will eat through what remains of Australian liberal-conservatism like acid — is already doing so. But is it a new level of depravity? Or an utterly cynical campaign by Peter Dutton to retain preselection, and his marginal seat of Dickson?
The latter explanation would certainly fit with the way this hideous campaign has gone. Dutton has led it; selected elements of the yellow rightwing press have run with it – Jennifer Oriel and an astoundingly racist cartoon by Lobbecke (is there anything this man won’t draw?). Is it really being run by the “threatened whites” brigade, as part of a culture war? It’s a risky move if it is. Many Liberals, even those holding the line on mandatory detention, are going to find explicit race preference stomach-turning.
The “all politics is local” angle presents a more rational case. Dutton held the seat of Dickson 51.5%-48.5% in the 2016 election. Created in 1992, the seat changed hands twice before Dutton nailed it in 2001. He’s held it ever since, but had a swing against him of 5% in 2016. The seat was to have a Labor-shifting redistribution in 2009, and Dutton went carpet-bagging, trying to ease his way into the safe seats of Gold Coast and Wright.
To no avail, and as the redistrib proved small, he managed to survive in the 2010 election. By now, however, he had angered local voters and branch members with his cowardice. His most recent result, and the political odium in which many hold him, make him a target for dumping by the branch, or loss in the poll.
However, Dutton has one secret weapon: neighbourhoods of white South Africans around the electorate’s Albany Creek area, little Johannesburg East. Being white South Africans, they are active in the local Liberal National Party.
Dutton’s sudden adoption of the “poooor white farmers” cause – raised in Australia by immigrant white South Africans from Zimbabwe, now living in Perth – is a branch factional play, projected onto the nation as a whole. Sections of the national right have been happy to follow along, to make more trouble for Turnbull and what remains of the Liberal centre.
The “conservatives”– the racists’ — belief that it will prove popular among anyone other than the sun-struck devotees of News Corp Queensland product is delusional. One hopes. Either way, it’s a new low in a country where the production of lows appears to have replaced the car industry as our manufacturing base.
Guy – South Africa is Zimbabwe replay but in slow motion
“Dutton’s sudden adoption of the “poooor white farmers” cause .. snip … is a branch factional play, projected onto the nation as a whole”.
Guy, with all due respect, attention to detail does not seem to be your strongest suit (does it). In point of fact you seem to be having an ultra-subjectie “Alex Bhathal ” reaction to the entire topic. You may well be correct as to the matter (inter alia) being a factional maneouvre but you are going to have to do better than inference of mere electorate composition. Stats on this matter are requied if the assertion is to be creditable.
Secondly, who comprises the “other” factions and what is their perspectie. I’m sure you appreciate the point. THIRDLY, you have (had) an opportunity to confront some of the objections to your article : “Politicians show their true colours…” but you have, blithely banged on (in a more or less duplicated the story) assuming that you are actually correct! For the sake of standards and respect to the readership do make some attempt to consider the other side – or at least report their assumptions even if you happen to disagree with them.
I realise that the above may be asking a bit much given that objective reporting has disappeared but the process might cause articles in Crikey to approximate some form of uniqueness.
Africaans is the most common language spoken after English in the seat of Dickson according to the 2016 Census. I thinks Guy’s opinion is accurate in relation to factional manoeuvring. It would be interesting to find out the number of South Africans who are members of the Dickson LP branch.
Perhaps not just Dickson and perhaps congregations of immigrants from elsewhere who may comprise a significant percentage of any particular branch party. In any event the remark “who comprises the “other” factions and what is their perspective” remains addressed – so say nothing of even an attempt at lip-service to a contrary view.
Guy, I simply can’t stomach the excessive hyperbole in your introduction to this story.
“Disgusting, vicious, hideous”…. etc.
I don’t know the motivations behind Dutton’s comments. I know there are many minorities around the world who are victims of persecution. The Rohingya are one. Perhaps white South Africans are another, or they at least fear becoming that. I’d be scared if I was in their position, given the past.
Its long past time we stopped referring to the Abbott-Bernardi-Dutton wing of the Right in Australia as Conservatives. They are radical right wingers, bigots & Racists, but there is nothing traditionally conservative about them anymore. Not that I am one of the those ppl who subscribes to the David Brooks definition of Conservatism, Conservatism has long ago left behind the Burkean definition its wanna-be intellectual defenders try to sell, but even under the Goldwater-Reagan definition of conservatism which contains more than enough bigotry already, Dutton-Abbott do not fit, they are radical reactionarys, right-wing extremists, but not Conservatives. In fact the historical movement the modern radical right most resembles is not Goldwater-Reagan Conservatism, its not even Fascism, it is Bolshevism, Lenin-Stalin Bolshevism. The purges of the non-pure, the complete disregard for objective reality, the way they get their press lackeys to push the party line, even if it contradicts what they wrote a week ago. I am reading a lot about Stalin lately and to steal a phrase from The Castle the thing that keeps making me see the similarities between the two movements is ‘just the vibe of the thing’ You read about Stalin era Russia and it just ‘feels’ the same as listening to the modern right wing.
This man can’t help his destructive behaviour. He grew in Queensland during a period when the state was ruled by its most corrupt and authoritarian regime ever – with a premier who relied on manipulation of electoral distributions to retain power, and who had surrounded himself with corrupt political colleagues and police officials.
Later, Dutton joined the Queensland police and, doubtless, would received a lot of his initial training from some of the evil men subsequently identified by the Fitzgerald inquiry. He must also have worked in the ensuing years among those Fitzgerald missed.
He probably thinks his own selfish, self-opinionated attitudes to be normal and aspires to attaining the corrupt Russel Hinze’s title of “Minister for Everything”.
It’s quite possible that as Australia rushes toward the dystopian world posited by Huxley over eighty years ago, Dutton fantasises himself as its autocratic controller.