THE MINISTER ON A MISSION
He’s still a polarising figure in the political landscape but Defence Minister and Liberal Party headkicker Peter Dutton has reset the reputation of our elite soldiers and put defence back on the agenda, James Campbell reports The me dals. The returning
When Peter Dutton went down by five votes to Scott Morrison in the August 2018 Liberal Party ballot to replace Malcolm Turnbull, he looked fated to be one of the nearly men of Australian politics.
Though it had been Dutton with the guts to stand against Turnbull as the champion of right wing Liberals itching to get rid of the man who had deposed Tony Abbott in 2015, when the dust settled, it was Morrison who came away with the prize.
When a year later Morrison went on to beat Bill Shorten the conventional wisdom was that Dutton’s time had passed.
But today no one in Canberra is talking about Peter Dutton as yesterday’s man anymore.
His arrival as Defence minister in March – a job even his Labor critics say privately he was born to hold – has come at the exact moment the portfolio is moving to the top of the political agenda for the first time since the end of the Vietnam War. Dutton’s importance inside the government is certain to rise as national security comes to the forefront in the wake of the rise of tensions with China.
Australia might not be at war but the reality is we face the greatest strategic challenge in our neighbourhood since the fall of Singapore in 1942. Dutton is certain to be at the centre of the new and enhanced relationship with the defence establishments of the UK and US.
The announcement on Thursday that the country will build nuclear submarines put him right at the centre of the biggest national security decision in decades.
As the pandemic raged for the past two years elevating the importance of the economy, most commentators had
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg pencilled in as Morrison’s inevitable successor.
But it’s a view more and more people in government are now beginning to question.
“If Morrison were run over by a bus tomorrow Dutton would win against Frydenberg,” is the blunt assessment of one Queensland MP.
When the Liberals opted for Morrison back in 2018, most critics thought in rejecting Dutton for the more-centrist treasurer, the party had dodged a bullet.
The blunt-spoken former copper was seen as too right wing and too Queensland for the top job.
He certainly had a reputation for saying what he thought.
Not many politicians would dare to worry in public that refugees might not be “numerate or literate in their own language let alone English” as Dutton did in 2016 or pondered the wisdom of the Fraser Government’s decision to offer sanctuary to Lebanese who had fled that country’s civil war.
But a complete indifference to the views of the Left and milquetoast Liberals in metropolitan seats has been a hallmark of Dutton’s political career.
Whether he’s been deporting New Zealand criminals or calling for mandatory or minimum sentences for protesters who break the law, Dutton has revelled in sticking it up progressive opinion.
He has also shown he is not a minister who is run by his officials.
While he personally liked then AFP commissioner Andrew Colvin, as Home Affairs Minister Dutton felt the organisation was distracted by causes that, while worthy, were not part of its core job to keep Australians safe and arrest criminals.
He was also irritated that the AFP was ridiculed as “plastics” by some state police forces.
Under Dutton’s watch Reece Kershaw, described by insiders as “a copper’s cop”, was vaulted in from the
Northern Territory to become commissioner and has reshaped the AFP with an unashamed focus on crime-busting.
Dutton, who as a Queensland detective in the 1990s was involved in the reinvestigation of the infamous murder of toddler Deirdre Kennedy, also drove the establishment and funding of the world-leading Australian Centre to Counter
Child exploitation.
Soon after his arrival in Defence he began visiting bases to deliver a simple message: Despite ongoing investigations prompted by the Brereton inquiry’s findings of war crime in Afghanistan, the government has their back.
“I think morale has been down and I think there is good reason now for it to be rebuilt ... and the commitment that the government has to the Australian Defence Force, not only financially but morally, is very important,” he said.
He also moved quickly to reverse a decision to strip the meritorious citation from 3000 Special Forces veterans who served in Afghanistan.
“For the vast majority of people, they
have done the right thing and they have protected our country, they have acted in accordance with exactly what we asked them to do and they are properly recognised through this citation,” he said.
“He’s dealt with the significant issues much more quickly than we thought he would,” one Minister said. MPS are particularly pleased he has smoothed relations with the veteran community, the minister added.
“He’s found where he truly belongs,” is the blunt assessment of a cabinet colleague. “The returning of the medals.
Keeping two special forces on the east and west coast. That’s been driven by him asking the hard questions.”
But the Minister questions Dutton’s chances of moving into the top job from Defence.
“He (Morrison) might be comfortable he’s in Defence — where have previous Defence minister’s gone?”
Dutton’s arrival in Defence has also pleased that part of the Labor Party that cares about national security.
“Am I glad he’s going to Defence? Of course I am,” one senior Labor shadow minister said at the time he was appointed, the portfolio’s sixth minister in eight years.
“He’s going to bring a seriousness to the job that it deserves.”
What might surprise people who are only familiar with Dutton from his appearances in the media, is that despite the hardman public persona, in person he is courteous and considered.
And unlike many government ministers Dutton is surprisingly personally popular with Labor MPS.
“He has beautiful manners. He’s just very polite,” one said.
By Canberra standards, Dutton is also seen as a straight-shooter internally.
Indeed some moderate Liberal MPS agonised back in 2018 over how to vote in the leadership ballot because although they thought Morrison would be an easier sell to the electorate, they personally preferred Dutton.
Today if it came to a vote between Frydenberg and Dutton, some might vote differently, one MP warns.
“Moderate Queenslanders voted for Morrison overwhelmingly but in a Frydenberg-dutton head-to-head contest Frydenberg can’t rely on the moderates flocking to him,” one said.
“At the end of the day they will be choosing between two bald f...ers. The question they will be asking is ‘ which one is going to help me hold my seat?’ ”.
Frydenberg’s closeness to Morrison — the pair shared digs at the Lodge during lockdown recently — has not helped him with all his colleagues either.
They fear he likes to be liked too much, something that no one has ever said about Peter Dutton.
“He’s now been captured by the Prime Minister – colleagues can see that,” one said.
“Everyone can see Morrison dominates Josh,” another said.
That the jockeying between Frydenberg and Dutton’s supporters has already begun can be seen from the way that view is furiously contested by the Treasurer’s supporters.
“There’s a big chunk of the Right who are very comfortable with Josh as successor – don’t over-estimate the size of Dutt’s base,” one Frydenberg supporting minister said, while another added the Treasurer’s strength is he can appeal across the nation.
“Where is his (Dutton’s) appeal outside of Queensland and parts of rural NSW?” he asked.
Not that anyone thinks Morrison will be leaving any time soon.
This week’s announcement of the nuclear subs deal and the enhanced AUKUS strategic alliance showed he is very much in charge.
As Morrison’s staff were keen to stress on Thursday, the work on obtaining nuclear subs had begun long before Dutton arrived in Defence and did not at the outset even involve his predecessor Linda Reynolds.
“This has been entirely driven by Morrison,” a cabinet minister said.
What might surprise some of the MPS who back in 2018 voted for the ‘safe option’, is that it was Dutton, not Morrison, as Bill Shorten’s opponent that scared Labor’s campaign brains trust.
The fear was Dutton would take the Coalition to places Labor couldn’t follow.
“We thought he would be more aggressive,” a former senior ALP campaign official recalled this week.
“The view was with Turnbull gone they could fundamentally reposition themselves on a range of issues like national security, climate change, and boats and he would have made a bigger point of difference than Morrison.”
Campaign officials also feared Dutton would be better at exploiting Shorten’s weaknesses.
“There was a concern that Bill would take the bait because there was never an issue he wouldn’t get involved in,” he said.
“If he’d come out and said ‘we don’t want a big Australia’ you could step back and watch Labor walk into the pit. We can’t help ourselves. Jesus himself could not have kept the Labor Party together on that.”
The former Labor official’s view is that Dutton’s stocks are going to continue to rise in the next few months.
Mostly he believes, because Frydenberg’s are destined to fall because of the increased scrutiny being to where the money went in last year’s Jobkeeper program of which the Treasurer was the author.
“Jobkeeper is likely to turn into pink bats from hell — the ABC’S only just getting started on it. It will become a byword for how money was wasted and as we discovered (with the Rudd school halls build) waste is a pretty potent theme.”
If the former official is right, then talk about Dutton as PM will only increase, something few people saw coming back when Scott Morrison beat him by five votes back in 2018.