Home Berita Internasional Ex-Cop Rises as Australia Opposition Seeks to Defeat PM Albanese

Ex-Cop Rises as Australia Opposition Seeks to Defeat PM Albanese

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In 1998, then 27-year-old detective Peter Dutton was pursuing an escaped prisoner in a high-speed chase through the streets of Brisbane when his car flipped and slid into a building.

Peter Dutton Photographer: Brent Lewin/BloombergPeter Dutton Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg Photo by Brent Lewin /Bloomberg

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(Bloomberg) — In 1998, then 27-year-old detective Peter Dutton was pursuing an escaped prisoner in a high-speed chase through the streets of Brisbane when his car flipped and slid into a building. 

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Shaken by the crash, Dutton quit the Queensland police about a year later and soon embarked on a political career, winning the seat of Dickson in the 2001 federal election with the center-right Liberal-National Coalition, a poll that also cemented then-Prime Minister John Howard’s conservative hold on Australia with a tough-on-immigration campaign.

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Over the next two decades in politics, Dutton cultivated an image of strength, rising through the Coalition ranks to now make his first bid for Australia’s top job in an election on May 3 as the world shifts rightward. Indeed, much of Dutton’s agenda would appeal to supporters of Donald Trump — boosting the economy by cutting red tape, ending “woke” cultural initiatives and taking a hard line on immigration.

Like Trump’s positioning against his Democrat rivals last year, Dutton is crafting an image of toughness as a counterpoint to incumbent Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. “Mr Albanese is too weak – and Labor is too incompetent – to fix the problems that they’ve created and that are facing our country today,” Dutton said at a press conference launching his campaign on Friday.

But Dutton is no carbon copy of Trump either. While he’s a staunch conservative, he’s also a long-time member of the political establishment with over 20 years in parliament. Reflecting Australia’s traditional political centrism, Dutton has pledged to retain the nation’s generous welfare and healthcare provisions if elected and has been a strident critic of Trump’s policy positions on Russia and tariffs.

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Indeed, some inside the Liberal Party say privately that Dutton has to be careful about how closely he aligns with Trump, with Australians historically less than impressed by the US leader. A poll by Redbridge Group released on March 3 found 59% of Australians had a negative impression of Trump, with just 23% looking on him favorably.

So rather than draining the swamp or making Australia great again, Dutton is keeping his campaign message simple – “Back on Track.” He’s focused on the soaring cost-of-living, a national housing crisis and surging post-pandemic migration that have stoked public anger at Albanese’s three-year-old government. 

‘Common Sense’

Former Prime Minister Howard says Dutton’s “common sense” approach to politics makes him best-suited to dealing with the new US president. It was an approach Howard first saw in the Queenslander more than two decades ago, during the 2001 campaign. 

“I didn’t know him until then but he campaigned well, and he had a good story. He had been a Queensland copper and he’d been involved in small business. He just seemed all around a man for all seasons,” Howard said in an interview. As for today, Howard is betting that “Peter Dutton is what the Australian public wants.” 

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Back when Dutton took over as Coalition leader in May 2022, few thought he’d be anywhere close to winning the prime ministership — including many of his lawmakers. Most had their eyes on at least two terms in opposition due to the scale of the Coalition’s loss when former prime minister Scott Morrison’s government was swept from office, losing 19 seats in the 151 seat House of Representatives. 

Yet now, Albanese is facing an uphill battle to become the first prime minister in almost twenty years to win two successive elections. Dutton, 54, has his eye on an even more impressive achievement — making Albanese’s the first single-term government in a century. 

Bloomberg reached out to Dutton’s office multiple times for an interview for this profile, but didn’t receive a response.

A hung parliament where neither major party can claim a clear victory appears the most likely outcome based on recent polling. But Dutton’s lawmakers think such an outcome would just postpone the inevitable. Even if Albanese can hold back the tide at this election, they believe Dutton’s time will come as he steadily wins over the electorate — and his own party.

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Fellow Queensland lawmaker Garth Hamilton said the new opposition leaders’ approach to taking on the government hadn’t initially been universally popular in the Liberal-National Coalition, but over time his “steady, deliberate” leadership had paid dividends. Meantime, the government consistently underestimated Dutton’s appeal, said Hamilton, whose seat sits just across from Dutton’s in Brisbane. “The more Australians see of him, the more they’ve got behind him,” he said.

Born into a middle class family in the northeastern state of Queensland, Dutton tried to run for political office almost as soon as he was able. After joining the Liberal Party when he was just 18, he ran as a candidate one year later in the 1989 Queensland state election. He was soundly defeated, leading him to pivot his career into the police force.

Dutton often speaks about how he was shaped by his years as a Queensland cop, describing how regularly seeing domestic violence and instances of child sexual abuse shaped his world view. After leaving the force he moved into the building business, buying, renovating and then selling properties with his father.

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It was in 2001 that he had a crack at politics for a second time, and defeated a prominent Labor politician for the seat of Dickson. The young politician rapidly rose through Howard’s government. After Howard lost power in 2007, Dutton broadened his experience with a stint as shadow minister for health and aging. When the Liberal-National Coalition returned to power in 2013, Dutton’s star began to rise again. 

In 2014, he was appointed the minister for immigration and border protection, overseeing an uncompromising approach to asylum seekers who arrived by boat. Almost all were either turned back or sent to live in offshore detention centers in the Pacific, a policy which was later attempted by the UK conservative government.

In 2017, then-Coalition Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull created a new mega-security portfolio specifically for Dutton, making him the minister for home affairs. It solidified him as one of the nation’s most significant conservative figures and gave him oversight of the majority of the Australia’s security and intelligence apparatus.

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Turnbull, who subsequently lost the prime ministership after a Dutton-led leadership challenge in 2018, has a less fond memory than Howard. “He’s a thug,” said Turnbull in an appearance on Channel 10’s The Project last year. “Peter’s got one tune that he plays, it’s been all his political life, and that is division and animosity, generally targeted at immigrants. I couldn’t think of anyone less suited to be prime minister of a multicultural society like Australia.”

Turnbull declined to be interviewed by Bloomberg News, pointing to his previous public comments.

China hawk

Throughout his political career, Dutton has been able to cultivate an image of strength, says Kos Samaras, director of Strategy and Analytics at the Redbridge polling group. Even still, “he’s not viewed as a populist by the sort of voters that we think are going to be attracted to a populist,” Samaras said. “He’s still viewed as part of the establishment.”

In his role as minister for home affairs and later as defence minister, Dutton was a foreign policy hawk who regarded China as a strategic threat in the region. He was a frequent and vocal critic of the Chinese government — an approach that backfired. At the May 2022 election, seats with a large number of Chinese Australian voters turned against the Coalition with a post-election review finding that souring was among reasons for the overall loss. 

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After that defeat, Dutton was unchallenged in a party room ballot to become leader of the Liberal Party. Through the remainder of 2022 and much of 2023, he and the Coalition trailed Albanese’s new government in the polls. 

But then a national referendum over whether or not to give Indigenous people an advisory body to Parliament emboldened Dutton and his party. Albanese had pledged to create one; Dutton opposed it. In the end, the Voice to Parliament was soundly defeated in a national vote held in October 2023, with 60% of Australia saying “no.” With his credibility dented, Albanese’s approval ratings plunged as Australians began to question whether he was doing enough to temper a cost-of-living crisis. 

Throughout it all, Dutton has been best known for his stances on immigration and defense, rather than economic policies. Although he served as assistant treasurer in Howard’s government, the opposition leader will frequently talk about stopping crime or strengthening the military rather than macroeconomic reform.

Some investors have flagged concerns over Dutton’s energy policies, including his plans to create a A$331 billion taxpayer-funded nuclear power industry. The opposition leader also plans to introduce a natural gas reserve on Australia’s heavily-populated east coast and pledged to eradicate several large government funds.

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Uphill battle

Despite his strong performance over the past year, Dutton will face a difficult journey back to government at this election. The Coalition needs to win at least 20 seats to hold power in its own right, and Dutton’s tough, uncompromising stance on many issues could make it difficult for him to form a minority government with centrist independent lawmakers.

But if he is to ride the global rightward shift to attain power, it’ll be from inside the establishment rather than outside. 

“Something that populist right leaders tend to do is to say that the system is broken as it currently stands, and that I’m the one who can ride in on my horse to fix things,” said Australian National University political expert Jill Sheppard. “He doesn’t necessarily have that instinct. I think he is deep down an institutionalist.”

—With assistance from Kevin Dharmawan.

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