During the end of year ‘silly season’ the Victorian Branch of the ALP put up a post on FaceBook that apparently targeted Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s wife. The cries of outrage from the News Corp empire were, in this case, probably appropriate
Mr Dutton responded to reporting of the meme on social media, saying the Liberal Party he led would never target Anthony Albanese’s partner, Jodie Haydon.
“I respect and like Jodie, but she is not an elected official and will not be the subject of humiliation, attack ads or public smear by the Liberal Party,” he said.
Education Minister Jason Clare agreed with Dutton
Federal Labor MP Jason Clare said the meme was inappropriate.
“I think it was stupid and it was wrong. A family should be off-limits. We’re on the ballot paper, not our partners,” he said.
“That’s why when the prime minister saw it he demanded it be ripped down, and I’m glad it has.”
Thankfully and correctly, we now have agreement that the partners of politicians shouldn’t be the subject of ‘humiliation, attack ads or public smear’. So why does the Opposition seem to think that this behaviour is warranted regarding certain groups within our community that also are not elected to the respective parliaments in Australia?
Just prior to Christmas, Dutton and other leading members of the Coalition made several statements that suggested he thought recognition of the traditional owners of Australian lands had gone too far. Dutton announced he would not stand in front of the Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander flags when making announcements on the assumption he becomes Prime Minister in 2025. His ‘spokesperson’ for Indigenous Affairs, Jacinta Price, is calling for revision to the current practices in relation to the ‘welcome to country’ acknowledgements that have become common. Several Coalition politicians have been asking Government Departments for detail on the costs and time involved in activities such as dual naming of defence bases around Australia and ‘welcome to country’ acknowledgements (without any concern apparently to the cost and time taken to find the requested information).
Understandably, some Indigenous groups have concerns
Indigenous leaders say the opposition is deliberately creating division through its string of announcements on Indigenous policies. It has announced more concrete changes to Indigenous affairs than it has in most other portfolios.
“I’m absolutely baffled as to why a very senior politician in this country would focus on a group of people, in this case Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders, who have come through and survived the most horrific things that happened to our people through colonisation – and yet he wants to bring us down every opportunity,” says Jill Gallagher, chief executive of the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation.
“It actually reminds me of schoolyard bully tactics. I really don’t understand it.”
And before Dutton and the Coalition claim that Jill Gallagher and others should just ‘swallow a spoonful of concrete and harden up’, Dutton and his shadow ministers frequently make similar comments about other groups in the community. They include the followers of certain religious faiths, refugees, students from South East Asia and others that are seen to be a menace to society at various times.
According to Dutton, the definition of being off-limits to political attack seems to be that the person has not been elected to Parliament. Like the vast majority of Australia’s Indigenous people, most refugees, students and so on have not stood for or been elected to Parliament. So why does Dutton (who claims he would be able to ensure Prime Minister Albanese’s partner would not be the subject of political attack by his side of politics) routinely allow students, refugees and the followers of certain religions to be ‘the subject of humiliation, attack ads or public smear by the Liberal Party’.
If the attacks on groups of people were accidental, the Coalition would be ‘walking the comments back’ on a regular basis. They aren’t.
What is the difference between an unprovoked personal attack on a politician’s partner and an unprovoked attack on a group of people based on their ethnicity, reason to be in Australia or religion? The real answer is nothing. However the Coalition seems to be thinking they can attempt to distract a number of voters from the lack of real policy or discussion on what they hope to achieve if they did manage to win the next election. At the same time, they are throwing evidence to the redneck rump of the Coalition (and those who prefer political parties that are even further to the conservative right) that they support a racist society.
While the person who thought attacking Dutton’s wife was clever did something stupid – Dutton’s reaction and obvious double standard was certainly instructive.
Also by 2353NM: It’s the season…
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When corporations seek the lowest IQ for employees, it is no wonder they end up owning the lowest of Moral Standards. And only one step away is corporate lobbying of the current government to support self-regulated corporate management of unregulated employees… Where the Fuck does this end up?
I think politicians and political parties need to go back to the Confucian and Biblical motto, “Don’t do to other people what you don’t like being done to you.” The hypocrisy here is that there were insinuations that Tim Mathieson was gay, and when he was charged with sexually assaulting a woman, before he and Julia Gillard got together, some sections of the media went after Julia Gillard!
Whilst I agree that dutton’s wife is not fair game, I can make one minor concession to the producer of the meme. I don’t believe that dutton’s wife, unlike Bruce Ruxton’s second wife, Helen, would give him a metaphorical clip around the ears and tell him that he shouldn’t have said some of the things that he said in Question Time or at press conferences.
Let us not forget one thing about dutton. His lies about asylum seekers on Manus were challenged by Barrie Cassidy, and rightly so, but all the people he has attacked have not been able to fight back.
Our Democracy has been hijacked by Corporate Interests: If you object to this, you will need to keep a vigilant check on where you spend your electronic cash!!! Right now Cash is still the best option to keep a bartering community alive. God knows what happens when the Banks eventually crash!
The courier mail here in Brisbane went as far as to sat that Albanese is the worst prime minister that Australia has ever had, because he 1) allowed the meme to be published, and 2) took too long to get it taken down.
Forgetting of course, gems like robodebt and multiple “hidden” ministeries of the last PM – what was his name now? ….That’s right, the one who’s having lunch with the trumper.
I keep my money in a bank because I believe that the Civilisation we Humans have developed is better than the Free-For-All Chaos that we Humans have also created. I still believe in Civilsiation.
Why? It’s pretty simple; racists gonna racist. And racism works, amongst certain demographics.
Put simply ,Dutton is a person that still lives in the mentality and racist views of Bjelke Petersen,so well still represented in Queensland.Those people who swallow the cant that is daily bugled by the muck media, will swear by the lies they are fed.Murdoch is probably the most destructive individual of the past fifty years, counting all those so called dictators, including the criminal United States of Hypocrisy.If you think the shit can’t get any worse this year…hang on.
It’s annoying that I haven’t even seen the meme in question.
The meme which has since been removed refers to comments made by Dutton’s wife to the effect that he is not a monster: it was not meant to be a definitive statement but more a point for discussion and comment :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-31/peter-dutton-labor-meme-pm-orders-takedown/104773522
Plain and simple. The dull, unimaginative and mean LNP have their roots firmly planted in the supremacist notions underpinning colonialism. Despite years of effort to bring about women’s suffrage, to reform (some) land ownership laws, rid ourselves of the direct legislative involvement of the British Monarchy – masters of imperial brutality and theft, bring an end to Oz brightest being cannon fodder for the British, to rid ourselves of the ‘White Australia’ policy, to include Oz Aborigines as citizens with suffrage, to curtail slavery and embed worker’s rights.
But from John Howard’s govt onwards, most ‘moderates’ left the LNP, and it became a wretched regressive party determined to roll back previous ‘progressive’ changes (like those being instituted in Europe). Despite bribing older citizens with proceeds of horrendously damaging tax breaks, the LNP lost govt primarily for financial and social reasons, particularly for attacks on employed worker’s rights, and his cosying up with the racist bigotry of Pauline Hanson.
Australia had years before linked itself to American security, as Britain’s broken imperium lacked capacity. The ALP (Hawke / Keating) years opened Oz financial policy to neoliberalism to facilitate its positioning as a global import / export player, but success and wild rides of budgetry control and ‘foreign’ (mainly USA) invasions into privatization / state asset stripping became difficult to manage. Nationalistic blather brought in Howard’s LNP – who actually did zip about those matters, but rather embedded LNP ‘mates’ in the process.
From 2007-2013 The ALP (Rudd / Gillard) brought in massive social reform, but neglected industrial / financial reform. The whole time the USA was bogged down with neoliberal failures and ‘culture wars’ exemplified in the 2008 GFC, which reeked global havoc, and continuing problems for the ALP (incl with infighting), and gave LNP’s Abbott et al an opportunity to use regressive ‘culture war’ blame on the ALP. Eventually the rhetoric worked, and the virtually bankrupt LNP came to power, and for nine years took Oz socially backward, and severely damaged further its financial sustainability in a now fully globalized world, whilst at the same time alienating our Asian neighbors, kowtowing to the olde imperia of the ‘West’ and their ‘culture wars’. Nothing further need be said about the LNP’s loss of power, than it being riven with blatant ineptitude, inequity and corruption.
Dutton and his LNP mob have nothing to offer, not an iota of policy, just an importation of USA RWNJ-style ‘culture war’ babble. A neoliberal / neoconservative socially regressive mercantilist capture politic that has brought the whole of the Americanized ‘West’ to its knees. USA, the largest global hegemon ever known, has been smashed by its own voters, and if the Trumpian policy espoused comes to pass, plutocratic authoritarianism, financial system devastation and chaos may give rise to rolling revolutions of the type not seen for several hundred years.
This may not be what the regressive, desperate and politically inebriated Dutton and his mob wish for in their quest for a sinecure, but if voted into a majority govt, it’s what he and we will likely get.
Dutton is today what he was yesterday and will be tomorrow Rwandan Proverb, “You can out distance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you”. There’s not a seam/vein in the social fabric he will not mine in pursuit of power with indifference to the carnage and devastation left in it’s wake. And here’s the rub brand corporate journalism without feigning a blush, fold like snot filled tissues to the process. It’s all about the heady screaming, headlines print, screen, radio for profit