Peter Dutton has gone over the edge of what Australia’s arbiters of political standards in the Canberra gallery consider acceptable — again. But when the opposition leader plays crime, he shows he understands the media better than the media understands itself.
This time, it was his apparently “foolish attempt” to link the release of 83 asylum seekers as a result of a High Court decision with anti-Semitism in Australia as a result of conflict in the Middle East. In the Nine mastheads, David Crowe called it an “overreach” and a “disgrace” that “poured petrol” on the debate. It was more than a “tactical blunder”, he tweeted — it showed “bad judgment and poor leadership”.
Maybe. But the global experience of the right’s embrace of often racially charged rhetoric, coupled with a moral panic over crime, suggests that Dutton’s overheated claims aren’t just breaking the bar of political gentility — they’re shattering all restraints, rendering permissible what was once indefensible. Australia’s media have had more than eight years of watching American journalists struggle with Donald Trump, that world-beating breaker of political decorum, but they’re no closer to knowing how to handle people emulating his tactics.
With Dutton, it’s a feature, not a bug. He’s long got himself noticed, played journalists, built his political career through extravagant claims about crime — particularly when there’s some connection to be made (flaps arms) with border security.
It’s a one-note register, lacking the diversity of even, say, a Tony Abbott. It’s consistently in the key of shrill, lacking the winking humour of a Trump that brings the voting audience in on the joke. There’s none of the glissando that can see Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, slide from Wolverine to Elvis Presley, and none of the television-friendly showmanship of Brazil’s gun-toting Jair Bolsanaro.
Luckily for Dutton, he’s not a solo act. He’s the lead singer in a ritualised call-and-response with the News Corp media chorus, with the greatest hits of the pairing reliably echoing through the rest of the media.
We saw it again last week, with the News mastheads highlighting worst-case examples being unleashed on the Australian community. “Frightening face of High Court fallout hunts elderly women”, warned The Australian‘s front page last week, with its report positioned immediately below a report on rising anti-Semitism.
“We live in fear”, shouted the Herald Sun on Saturday, with a double-deck eyebrow lead-in that left little for the story to add: “Sisters terrified man who killed their mother and dissolved her body in acid will be freed after detention debacle.”
As Paul Bongiorno pointed out in The New Daily, much of what Dutton was urging — defy the courts, unleash terrorism laws — was often without legal foundation and, after the High Court decision, likely to be unconstitutional. Who cares? As Dutton knows, even the best journalists are suckers for the “if it bleeds, it leads” sensibility.
Remember how Melbourne’s African gangs panic, ginned up in the Herald Sun in 2016, turned into the centrepiece of the Liberal Party’s attack on the then-first-term Andrews government, sent national by Dutton in 2018 with the claim people were fearful of going out to restaurants at night? Or his defending of his accusation a year later that pregnant refugees on Nauru alleging they were raped were just “trying it on” by seeking abortions in Australia? Or just this year with his opening salvo against the Voice to Parliament in Alice Springs with unsubstantiated claims of widespread sexual abuse?
As the usually perceptive Bongiorno asked in his column this week, why can’t Prime Minister Anthony Albanese push back? Because journalistic practice means a government response threatens more harm than good. It sustains and amplifies the false claims and racialised rhetoric that feed the media’s crime narrative. It allows right-wing media to roll the debate into a repeat news cycle with government disrespect for public safety at its centre (precisely where Dutton’s attacks last week were trying to take it). And it lets more neutral media off the hook, with the soothing balm of the “both sides” mantra.
Sure, Crowe led off his piece that Dutton had overreached. But Albanese’s response was “too angry”. The subeditors back in head office further sanded off the criticism, heading the column: ”An ugly fight we do not need in anxious times”.
As long as Peter Dutton has been in Parliament, Australia’s media has been rewarding his repeated overreach with attention, so why wouldn’t he keep singing the same old hits? Particularly with News Corp around to keep pushing him to the top of the charts.
Is Peter Dutton’s songbook getting a bit yesterday for you? 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.
Rather than falling into the trap of responding to Dutton’s nonsense, Albanese and the Labor Party should make it a policy to undermine his populist platform, rejecting any form of cooperation with the LNP, sidelining them by negotiating legislation with the Teals, independents and Greens. We saw how attempts to cooperate with the LNP over the release of detainees was weaponised by Dutton and his shills in the Murdoch press as Labor ‘weakness’. The LNP, under Dutton, have no respect or interest in working cooperatively with the government and will are prepared to wreck past conventions to further their populist inspired agenda. The Labor Party already has a majority in the House of Reps and they should use it more effectively. They could stop Dutton and his acolytes in their tracks by following the example set by Dutton and Christian Porter in the last parliament, moving amendments that restrict their rights to be heard when they commence spouting their populist nonsense.. Albanese should also take note of the leadership styles and strategies employed by premiers, Dan Andrews and Mark McGowan in ruthlessly dealing with their opponents. Sure, their strategies antagonized the rightwing media and shock jocks but it got them elected three times on the trot.
Are you forgetting that the difference between the Lying Nasty Party and the Alternative Liberal Party are more charade than actual?
It’s two management teams bidding for control of Slavery Incorporated – actually properly calling out the LNP’s dirty tricks would be like a pro wrestler breaking the fourth wall.
This is the only answer that makes sense to the question I continued to ask myself for years – why don’t Labor kick heads and team up with the Greens for decency? Fear of Turdoch isn’t enough to explain it.
Dutton has only to drop sentences that could be heard in any number of US violence culture serial TV shows .
It is taking our journalists, politicians and public a long time to recognise that the main media outlets have the first and last word on political outcomes, but not really, most people already know.
After decades of relentless nightly acting out of violent scenarios it has become accepted in the national psyche of what is entertainment and blurred the line between news and deliberate scripting of fear inducing engagement as entertainment/news/political discourse.
Duttons physical features and demeanour are are advantageous for the character role he has developed. He is the world weary cop that has seen it all before that protects the public from the baddies.
Albanese is portrayed as the good statesman who does not enjoy the same level of support and indeed cannot should not trust the main media to portray him or his party with positive emphasis.
It only takes a minor editing of a sentence or scenes showing him getting angry to subtly discredit him.
The media organisations have more power than the politicians to take advantage of current affairs to manage political outcomes and our 3 main outlets for news and information are conservative by design.
This current government must break rank and take this to the people via this corrupt medium citing the long and historic list of abuses of this power. Rupert will have a well crafted response.
There is some precedence with the conservatives successfully attacking the public service/ABC.
There must be a strategy to break this monopoly of media controlling politics, Labor has to find it. The messenger is not just any messenger they control outcomes.
Legislate for mixed media political allegiance , the greens and independents will undoubtedly help, the neoliberals embedded in the Labor party will not.
Thank you for the article.
Dutton speaks in sentences? Well blow me down.
This deathless draining and dastardly descent into a dystopian dolorous discourse is dismally doleful.
“Fear and Loathing in Dickson” playing to a packed in-house.
I wonder if our viewsmedia doesn’t know how to handle constructive criticism – accept the fact they could do better, as judged by ‘rubes’ : rather than their self-obsessed inward looking cohort (even as they know there are bad apples their barrel, but won’t pull them out)?
Can’t countenance the possibility they might be wrong; clinging onto the idea that “What happened in Trumpsylvania can’t happen here”?
So much of the “responsible” media (selectively taken up with ‘holding the selected powerful to account’) is taking in Dutton’s and the Limited News Party’s laundry : while they can still make calls against Labor transgressions. Failing the public – in their paid opinionista selected application of their power to open (politics) to the sunlight of query.
What about Coorey (“Backsliders” Sunday Nov 19) – doing Spud’s laundry and mitigating the Liberal’s predilection for siding with Israel : with “… for the same reason The Greens, you know, are 100% pro-Palestinian”? Opinion as news.
Our partisan owned and run selective viewsmedia is failing us as a country too.
This article sums up my frustration with the way the specialized left-leaning media (Crikey, New Daily) have covered this government – a consistent vague call to “do better” in an environment where 99% of the mainstream media reports a pro-LNP reality, and a public that no longer cares (or perhaps never did?) to seek out pluralistic media.
Lets take a very basic example – anyone who uses Microsoft Edge as a browser automatically gets a news feed as a home page. Despite best efforts to clear cookies and trackers, the vast majority of news articles are Sky, Daily Mail, and similar who post just the most absurd headlines. Now days, you don;t even have to be seeking news to get constantly pummeled by pro-LNP propaganda.
So what is a labor gov to do? A royal commission? maybe, but how far do you take it? NewsCorp is an LNP mouthpiece, but the SMH/Age is also run by a Liberal politician. What about the other side? Well there isn’t a left mainstream media. And of the small guys, Pearls and Irritation (and C****y) are CCP mouthpieces, Macrobusiness are just troppo, and nobody has hear of New Daily. And all are crying bloody murder over the misinformation legislation!
TL;DR – the media landscape is a mess – you either live with it (and compromise) or you shut it down
I was convinced you were wrong so I just spent 5 minutes trying to adjust the MS Edge news feed settings and it would appear that you are …
Entirely right.
Regards,
Egg on face