I think we can all agree that whatever the media thought they were doing to effectively report on Donald Trump didn’t work. He continues to defy every form of political and moral gravity, his lies having accumulated such mass and density that they constitute a black hole.
Yet the lesson that flows from this has not been realised, certainly not by the US media. It’s important, because our political trend is the same, just more Australian (slower and with more irony).
Former PM Scott Morrison lied constantly, but couldn’t hide the smug self-awareness that his resting smirk face betrayed. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, by contrast, only has one face, and it always looks sincere. The trouble is that he says things that are objectively untrue, things he cannot possibly believe. He does so often, with increasing frequency and flagrancy. As with Trump, this presents the media with a big challenge. So far, they’re failing the test.
Last week Dutton stated two bald facts at a press conference: “Look at what’s happening in Canada, where 60% of their energy source comes from nuclear, they pay half the electricity price that we do here.” Sounds compelling, but neither assertion is true. The true proportion of electricity generation from nuclear power stations in Canada is 15%, and the latest OECD comparison has Canadian power prices closer to two-thirds of ours.
Around the same time, The Australian falsely reported that Professor Marcia Langton had called No voters in the referendum “racist and stupid”. The newspaper took down its headline subsequently, but in the meantime Dutton had posted it on his official Instagram, and has refused to remove what is, objectively, a lie.
Also on the Voice, Dutton stated that all Australians “are treated equally under the law. A Voice will change this fundamental democratic principle”. Simply untrue, as he well knows. The constitution includes a race power as an explicit entrenchment of inequality, a power that has only ever been used to make laws for First Nations peoples.
It’s quite a call, especially coming from a guy who, in government, wanted to be able to strip Australians of their citizenship at his discretion, even if it would render them stateless.
On radio 2GB, Dutton speculated whether Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been doing “sweetheart” deals for Qantas, saying: “It’s clear the relationship between the prime minister and Alan Joyce — it’s been on display for all to see — their red carpet events and dinners at the Lodge and Kirribilli and the rest of it.” The dinners part was simply made up. They never happened.
Minor? In the bigger scheme of things maybe, but that’s just the past week’s worth. Dutton has form, of course, reaching particularly egregious levels during his reign as Home Affairs minister, when he created a sub-genre of using false allegations to demonise asylum seekers and justify their mistreatment.
Highlights include claims that offshore asylum seekers were being encouraged to self-harm, or making false allegations of sexual assault and then “trying it on” with abortion requests to get to Australia (baseless); that there were murderers, rapists and paedophiles among the Nauru contingent (baseless); that the father of the Biloela family left Australia while he was seeking asylum here (false).
If it were just that Dutton was relentlessly negative, a cherrypicker of convenient statistics, a master of misleading three-word slogans, and an expert at punching down on the vulnerable (all of which he is), then he’d be in the Tony Abbott realm where taking his words seriously would still serve some arguably useful social purpose.
But Dutton goes further. When he’s cornered, he just makes shit up.
Exhibit A: on April 24, 2017, Dutton is interviewed on Insiders by the ABC’s Barrie Cassidy after a claim he made that a five-year-old boy had been raped by Manus Island detainees.
Cassidy: You said that a five-year-old boy was led away by three asylum seekers, and that caused the mood to elevate quite quickly. Now that’s not true is it?
Dutton: Yeah, of course it is true.
Cassidy: It’s not true.
Dutton: It is true and the briefing that I’ve had is particularly succinct and clear.
It wasn’t true. Cassidy went on, quoting the PNG police commissioner, who had confirmed that the boy was 10, hadn’t been lured anywhere, and had left the centre untouched — as CCTV footage showed. Dutton simply pivoted, saying “I have facts you don’t have”.
Because he is opposition leader, Dutton’s words are treated by the media as inherent matters of public interest, regardless of subject and regardless of their truth. As with Trump, when he says something patently false, for the media that is a reportable thing in itself. Which suits him fine, because flooding the body politic with garbage, until truth itself becomes meaningless and all we are left with is anger, is the whole strategy.
The notion that political leaders are always newsworthy is fine, so long as the individuals in those positions observe some basic attachment to their social responsibility as leaders. By (slightly strained) analogy, anything a convicted mass murderer might have to say would be highly newsworthy — but as a society, we have decided that we should not hear it as it would harm us and benefit the murderer.
When a public figure of any type has become a cause of social harm by virtue of their own actions, and it is clear they will consciously compound that harm every time they’re given a platform, the normal rules of engagement also become enablers of harm.
At that point, the platform providers — certainly the media, among other institutions — are obliged to reassess what they’re doing and consider whether it’s time to stop pretending that the conversation we’re having with this person has any social utility at all.
Even America draws the free speech line at the person who falsely shouts “Fire!” in a crowded theatre.
When was the last time you took Peter Dutton at his word? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
I have always thought he was a Queensland bullyman copper and competent only in the sewer rat cunning that my old man used to deride. It is a sad day when a serious party has such little talent that he is a leader. The final stinking corpse remnant of the party murdered by John Howard and slowly eaten by maggots.
He appeals strongly to other maggots, of whom there are an astonishing number. He lives by the first commandment of an ageing society, “everything was better in the old days”. His ability to deride, and deny, absolutely everything is matched only by his inability to think positively about anything. But he grasps that, because so many of his national electorate are motivated by jealousy and negativity, he may not need an actual strategy, ever.
I thought his comment this morning on the Pezzullo episode speaks volumes………………
…………praising Pezzullo and asking for a referral of the ‘leak” to the AFP.
Utterly shameless……………………
Pezzullo was his ideological plant in the PS – obviously Dutton who is a lazy incompetent left Pezzullo to do his bidding without any accountability to the Australian population.
I think it was long rotten before JWH came onto the scene. Perhaps you forgot the National Service compulsion young men were forced to undergo by means of a lottery from 1964-72. The war in Vietnam that we entered and promoted more willingly than the US. The anti-union legislation of the 1920s under Bruce. The pursuance of the war in 1916 when ‘rat’ Billy Hughes tried to kill even more young men by conscription. There is nothing to admire in conservatives in any age in this country. They are evil and rotten and would throw your child under the bus if it could win more votes.
ahh Pete. He and his mate Mike stopped the boats but let in the sex traffickers… You cant knock the Queensland cop out of a Queensland cop.
Since he walked out on the apology to the Stolen Generation and warned of African gangs terrorising Mleboure I have assumed he is not worthy of respect nor can he be believed.
On the issue of untruths, reminiscent of Joh’s QLD regime locally and nationally, where the media are still mute or careful in not upsetting the ‘top people’ over decades….even in recent years the MSM indulging an LNP/ON need or request to ‘gaslight’ Melbourne?
I have been saying for 20+ years that we have an incompetent and biased media so I cannot understand why people think the media will treat Dutton any other way than they have. Remember the love affair they had with Turnbull then Morrison? My problem is with Albanese. Even after all Dutton has said, all the abuse, the lies and twisting of facts, Albanese offers him bipartisanship if the vote is positive. The reality is it will not get up, and, to a large degree, that is because the PM has caved into Dutton’s demands time after time and rejected passing legislation to actually deal with the lies of Dutton and News Corp. It is almost as if it is the case that Albanese wants it to fail so he can blame Dutton.
The real rub though is, while he jumps into bed with Dutton, News and our most rapacious corporates, he reserves his vitriol for the Greens and ignores the Teals.
I have realized that Albanese is not a progressive but a throwback to old Labor and he is comfortable having a poisonous relationship with Dutton while actually fighting those who want to live in a country that reflects a better, more humane society.
Like the announcements for data pirate middlenen trainee middlemen ; Liberal lite ; vote the only opposition is Teals, Greens or Progressive independants – grow a pair of balls&brains
Indeed. The Coalition are the current ALP’s cozy bed-mates when they cooperate, and even Rudd was prepared to have his CPRS watered down to nothing or worse in order to cut the Greens out of the process, then it was somehow the Greens’ fault that it failed. Albanese did give Dutton the bipartisan gift of the NACC carrying out its investigations behind closed doors except under “extraordinary circumstances”.
I just heard him on ABC radio saying what a fine and noble figure he has always found Pezullo to be…should I believe him?
Should the ABC have added a qualifier to the interview “what follows” or “what you just heard” could possibly be untrue?
Please come back Barrie Cassidy and Kerry O’Brien..!!
Jon Faine ! Nuh they infiltrated Our Abc ; if this mob had balls & brainsandbackbones they’d clean up the liberal infiltation of Our Abc
Ita gone yet??????
Dutton and Pezzullo have long been mutual enablers, so what else should we expect.
How can a face that never shows emotion ever look sincere?
Well, who knows, maybe it could if he didn’t look so insincere every time he opens his mouth to spout utterly vile or idiotic – or both – lies.