As Anthony Albanese laughably claims a “clear mandate” to govern — despite recording the party’s lowest vote in a century, with less than one-third of voters picking Labor — Peter Dutton is getting down to the tough job of rallying the defeated Liberal party. (A party which actually recorded a significantly higher primary vote than the winners.)
Dutton is already putting his stamp on his leadership: dragging the party back from the fringe left, and remembering once again that what Menzies called the “Forgotten People” are the Liberals’ real strength. On many issues, Dutton is saying just the right things to cheer the Coalition’s conservative base.
Peter Dutton has set up a showdown with Anthony Albanese over climate change and the economy, warning that the new Labor government’s policies will drive up electricity prices, inflation and the cost of living […]
Climate change action and the nation’s finances will form the bedrock of the Coalition attack strategy, with the new Opposition Leader declaring “electricity prices under Labor will go up” and that the Prime Minister will lead a “bad government” incapable of fiscal repair.
The Australian
On a range of issues, Dutton declares that he will re-orient Coalition policy to “be squarely aimed at the forgotten Australians in the suburbs, across regional Australia, the families and small businesses whose lot the Labor Party would’ve made more difficult”. Dutton is promising to rein in the obsession with “Net Zero”, by supporting “policies which aren’t going to turn lights off in small businesses, aren’t going to send families broke in the suburbs because they can’t afford Labor’s power bill”.
He’s also not backing down from his tough rhetoric on China. Dutton reiterates his pre-election statement that “China under President Xi is the biggest issue our country will face in our lifetimes”.
Most tellingly, Dutton is telling the Top End of Town to go and get stuffed.
Peter Dutton has lashed Australia’s top corporate executives for siding with Labor and other parties, saying he would focus on policies to benefit small business as the Liberals’ new federal leader.
Mr Dutton said on Monday the Liberals had become “estranged from big business” in recent years and he wanted to be a voice for “the forgotten people” in small and micro business.
He accused business leaders of focusing on social policies while failing to “speak out” on economic issues, including industrial relations, tax and wages reform.
Dutton also rightly called out the source of the rot in big business.
“I think many of them are probably scared to step up because they are worried of an onslaught by Twitter and they’re living in that environment” […]
As home affairs minister, he used a 2018 speech to the Samuel Griffith Society in Brisbane to attack the rise of “political correctness” within the business community. He singled out business leaders from Qantas and other companies for engaging in “ideological indulgence” by using corporate funds for social activism.
He blamed activist shareholders and investment funds for pressuring the Commonwealth Bank, Woolworths and BHP Billiton to adopt policies on climate change.
By “activist shareholders and investment funds”, he mostly means the massive, union-controlled industry superannuation funds, created by Paul Keating. These funds control gigantic pools of other people’s money and use it to leverage their far-left political agenda.
In a 2017 radio interview, Mr Dutton said business leaders and big corporates were being “bullied” by activist groups into supporting same-sex marriage laws. He said he wanted a politically respectful debate on marriage equality but publicly listed companies should not take political positions, and business executives should not put debating moral issues ahead of running companies.
The Australian
Of course, it’s not all good news. Dutton is playing down adopting a policy for nuclear energy. Instead of calling out the “Indigenous Voice” proposal for what it is, racial separatism, Dutton claims to be adopting a “wait and see” approach. Which in some ways might be fair enough, but none of the proponents of the “Voice” seems too keen on telling the rest of us exactly how it will work. Mostly, one might suspect, because if they told the truth, Australians would reject it out of hand.
No doubt, Dutton is just scared of being screeched at as “racist” by the media-left. But he ought to know by now that they’re going to do that, no matter what. Far better to point out what many Australians already know: that a “Voice” is, in fact, deeply racist, because it elevates one racial group above all others in Australia. In a more sane world, that would be called out for what it is: apartheid.
