Well known for being unable to count when it comes to the party room, Home Affairs hardman Peter Dutton, it seems, also struggles with being able to tell left from right.
In response to the Director-General of ASIO specifically singling out right-wing extremism as a terrorism threat in Australia, Dutton yesterday attacked “left wing lunatics”, among which he included Islamist terrorists.
Given Islamist terrorists are religious fundamentalists who seek the overthrow of secular societies, hate LGBTI people and atheists, deny basic rights to women and who historically first came to prominence fighting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, this is, at the very least, a novel interpretation by Dutton.
Islamist terrorists looking to avenge Western military intervention in Muslim countries also have as much in common now with the right — is it not Trump himself who wants to end “forever wars”, to the cheers of anti-interventionist conservatives in the US — as with the anti-American left.
Dutton might have been correct to worry about left-wing terrorism if it was the 1970s and the Red Brigades, the Red Army Faction and Action Directe were still running amok in Europe. Now it is white supremacists and incels carrying out mass murders in Europe, the United States and New Zealand.
The FBI recently identified Nazi and white supremacist terrorism as the greatest threat to US security along with Islamic State terrorism. The state of Texas says white supremacists are its greatest security threat, along with incels.
British police say the fastest-growing security threat is far-right terrorism and in October, MI5 took over as the lead agency in combating that threat in the UK.
So why is Dutton talking about left-wing terrorism instead? The surge of right-wing terrorism, of extremism based on the same chauvinist rhetoric Dutton has long espoused (boycotting the Stolen Generations apology, “African gangs”, myths about white South African farmers, attacks on Lebanese-Australians), presumably makes even the Home Affairs minister shift uncomfortably in his seat; to have it confirmed by a security agency in his own portfolio must have indeed stuck in his craw.
All of this goes to the broader point that Dutton is, and has always been, a risk to Australia’s national security. This is a minister who has presided over a massive increase in illegitimate asylum seekers arriving via airports — who then go on to undercut Australian workers’ wages — a weak visa compliance system and repeated cybersecurity failures.
His rhetoric has consistently targeted minority groups, in direct contrast with the advice of security bodies like ASIO, who — in order to do their jobs effectively — need to work with communities attacked by Dutton.
And literally everything, no matter how inappropriate, appears to be an opportunity for Dutton to rail at his hated “lefties”. When you’re as far right as Dutton is, it’s perhaps unsurprising literally everyone looks like they’re to your left.
Just another “left-wing lunatic”?
“Don’t think about what I said. Worry about what mean”? …. What is Spud’s ‘first language’ – just so that we might all tune in to what this Humpty-Dumpty scrambled egg-head is saying.
A Queensland Pleece. The same today, yesterday & tomorrow.
He thinks he can just pick up ultra-right-wing/fundamentalist/conservative Islam extremists and dump them in the ‘leftwing lunatics’ basket :- so that he can pretend he’s in the middle, saving us from interaction between them and this extreme right wing (“Christian”) extremism?
You say: ‘This is a minister who has presided over a massive increase in illegitimate asylum seekers arriving via airports — who then go on to undercut Australian workers’ wages — a weak visa compliance system and repeated cybersecurity failures.’ Where is your evidence that asylum seekers, be they ‘legitimate’ or not (whatever your term means) undercut workers’ wages? Why also do you mean by dividing us into Australian workers, and presumably others who are not Australia workers?
I read a book about them once called The Bullyman.
Sorry this went to the wrong comment. If you look at the workers in places like 7/11 and Caltex who are ripped off, they are overwhelmingly vulnerable and recent migrants, thereby making a mockery of the “accidental error” defence. The more important thing is that Dutton has attacked only one kind of asylum seeker and shows clear racism in his policies (as do much of the LNP).
I think that the point being made is that Dutton, the man who would leave a man to die from an infected foot rather than transfer him in enough time from one of our very expensive camps to a hospital intensive care unit.
He is also the man that ensured that the AU Pairs were given visas into Australia on humanitarian grounds and prided himself on preventing any unaccompanied women from the UAE from obtaining tourist visas, because they are likely to be accepted as refugees.
He has overseen the mass trafficking of people into Australia on tourist visas, who then claim asylum and are allowed to work in the community for the next 18 months or so.
So, yes these people are being exploited and used to drive down Australian wages and conditions.
The current regulatory system requires the worker to complain to WorkFair Australia, which they are not going to do so!
Dutton is in the process of outsourcing the Visa process and so, the wait time will blow out further and the exploited trafficked people will have longer time to work.
Has anyone done any digging into P.Dudd’s past, because the police in Queensland have a fairly awful history back not so far?
Isn’t the point is he is on auto-pilot, and thinking reactively, or not thinking at all.
The “both sides” rhetoric makes sense when there’s the danger of alienating members of his base, many of whom share sympathies with what the Neo-Nazis stand for, and little danger of alienating those who understand the political distinction between the Left and Right and how Militant Islam fits into that. i.e. it’s an “us versus them” argument to an audience that hates and suspects the political left.
Watching Peter Potato in question time, and I try to severely limit such exposure, has turned me off potatoes for good. About time he jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. I don’t care whether it’s left or right, as long as it’s hot!
Noel, you’ve only yourself to blame here. Stop thinking of him as Mr Potatohead and try a different name such as Muttonhead or Bonehead.
In wet spells like the present, spuds always get grubs in them. This one is so riddled with them he’s morphed into one, but as someone suggested yesterday, I think they were well and truly ensconced back in his plod days and one would think the current Qld govt. would be justified in reopening the inquiry into his exploits in the paddy wagons.
Home Affairs – riddled with Potato Blight.