The controversial plan to lay off 41,000 public servants to finance an ambitious but ludicrous nuclear power initiative was a grave misstep, and the consequences would have been severe for the Opposition and the country if Peter Dutton were to win. The public service sackings not only jeopardise the livelihoods of the public servants themselves but also raise the question of the feasibility of the nuclear power initiative. Last Monday, April 7, the Opposition dedicated much of the day to frantically trying to justify their policy shift – not laying off 41,000 public servants – while attempting to outline how they would gather up 600 billion dollars to fund seven sprawling nuclear plants across the country. However, their attempts to pacify the public over the sackings have also revealed a lack of Leadership that the public is now acutely aware of.
The call for all public servants to return to their offices has been decisively scrapped, marking a significant retreat for the party. This shift underscores a dramatic change in strategy, reflecting the current climate and the evolving needs of the workforce. However, this change also raises concerns about the Opposition’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances and its commitment to public service, making you, the citizens, feel the impact of this decision.
With a penchant for politics reminiscent of Trump – exemplified by his baffling comments regarding the Health and Education sectors the public perception of Dutton’s is now Trumpish, to say the least. Given his track record, who could blame the public for thinking so?
It feels like their last attempt at governing the country, as if each day brings a new misstep, a fresh stumble into dissension. The Liberal National Party (LNP) must seriously revaluate their choice to install a leader who mirrors Trump in style and substance.
Cheryl Kernot once said of Dutton that he’s a ‘natural head kicker’ who ‘always played the politics and never the policy’. This quote is particularly relevant in the current political context, where Dutton’s leadership style and focus on political manoeuvrings over policy implementation have been scrutinised.
“He’s just a natural head kicker… And I think the one thing that frustrates me most about his rise to where he is is that he’s got there without any massive scrutiny of his policy.
He always played the politics and never the policy. And he just got away with it.”
As the federal election approaches, the test will be whether voters can accept this polarising figure as a credible national leader. My prediction? The answer is a resounding no. So far, his campaign lacks the finesse and poise radiated by the Prime Minister, who has remained composed and self-assured throughout. While the Prime Minister deftly grasps the complexities of Labor’s policies, Dutton continually delays revealing his plans, frustrating the public and media alike.
The Coalition has squandered valuable time over the past three years, failing to develop robust policies that resonate with voters. Faced with an innovative approach to climate change and spiralling power costs, they responded with a nuclear policy that is confusing at best and profoundly unwelcome at worst.
Albanese responded to Dutton’s claims, saying:
“All of these changes have been opposed by Peter Dutton. He’s campaigned against them each and every day, and today he’s pretending. He’s pretending that the policies that he announced, including in the budget reply that was two weeks ago, including the cuts to 41,000 public servants just don’t exist, and everyone will just forget about all that. This is a new Peter Dutton who’s discovered work rights.”
Peter Dutton’s election campaign is in a mess. How will he finance his nuclear ambitions without the savings from the public service sackings? That question will be asked of him. When will you release the details of your policies has become a daily question from the press?
At a time when his campaign should be promoting fresh ideas devised from three years of political rest, there is a perception that they have again picked the wrong person for the job. Rather than divorce himself from Trump, people now see an ideological resemblance between Dutton and Trump and don’t like it. It is turning away the swinging voters he so desperately needs. He could have explained the plan to reshape the public service at any point in recent months. Maybe he didn’t have one.
Instead of the disciplined, tough guy centred on cost-of-living pressures and national security, we have a muddling leader whose unyielding, combative style is precisely what we have always had. Repeatedly, he is given the opportunity to explain his plans and declines at each opportunity.
Peter Dutton has been leader of the Liberal Party for about 150 weeks. During this time, he has rarely ventured away from the soft carpets of 2GB and Sky News After Dark. I have seen him on Insiders, but he repeatedly refuses invitations from the Press Club. It wouldn’t be a bad gig if only he could answer questions.
He never subjects himself to noisy press conferences in front of the federal press gallery. This deliberate strategy of avoiding tough interviews and press conferences has served him well in Opposition. Still, after just one week of the five-week federal campaign, as he flounders on detail and blinks in the spotlight of vigorous follow-up questions, he has been exposed as a bad choice as leader.
While Dutton has navigated the political landscape for as long as Prime Minister Albanese, the disparity in their leadership qualities is striking, Dutton’s approach often lacks the vision and charisma that illuminates Albanese’s tenure, highlighting a significant divide in their capacities to inspire and guide.
My thought for the day
The most insightful individuals I encounter are those who embrace reason and logic as their guiding stars yet remain open to ambiguity and uncertainty. They understand that the world is often painted in shades of grey rather than stark black and white. In contrast, the least discerning among us are the fools and zealots, overwhelmed and blinded by their unwavering certainties and dogmatic beliefs, who refuse to entertain any possibility beyond their narrow worldview.
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So, so TYPICAL of the LNP’s appalling level of selfishness and total lack of care for ordinary Australian citizens who desperately need their jobs to support themselves and their families! The smug, self-serving, totally corrupt multi-millionaire parasites in the LNP are quite content to suck off the Australian taxpayers for decades on end – grossly enriching and empowering themselves, at OUR expense – whilst defunding, sacking and destroying the lives of so many Australians, even the misguided citizens who supported them! The incomprehensible, unforgivable intention by Dutton to blissfully terminate the jobs of more than 36,000 public servants is beyond depraved. Has Dutton, and the callously inhumane sociopaths in the LNP/Murdoch/IPA Alliance, even for a nano-second considered what sacking 36,000 jobs will DO to the lives of 36,000 public servants who will, no doubt, be forced onto welfare, seriously impacting their lives and the lives (and futures) of their families who, like many Australians, have bills and mortgages to pay and children to support? The answer is a resounding “NO!” because the smug elitists in the Alliance don’t give a rat’s behind about ANYONE but themselves and their multi-billionaire friends (like Rinehart and their notorious Promotions Manager, the American Rupert Murdoch) in the Top 1%!
Quite frankly, it would be a far better, more economical and, most certainly, a more foresightful decision for Australian taxpayers to seriously CULL the parasitic “careers” of these grossly overpaid, callously inhumane, non-achieving, racist right-wing political miscreants in the LNP who have NEVER EVER achieved ONE SINGLE THING that provides ANY benefit, whatsoever, to working- and middle-class Australians. There can be no doubt that the removal and/or sacking of the appalling psychopath, Peter Dutton, would BENEFIT everyone – EXCEPT, of course, the avaricious, self-serving Top 1% whom the LNP reward with huge tax incentives and financial incentives to attain and maintain their support!
Dutton is a dangerously undemocratic fascist; a callously inhumane, short-sighted elitist who has not one iota of compassion for ANYONE or ANYTHING except the loathsome political psychopath who stares back at himself from the mirror every morning. Even many of Dutton’s own colleagues in the LNP, cannot abide him. The fact that this ignominious, regressive individual rose from being a corrupt, racist ex-cop in Queensland to becoming the most despised, corrupt, racist political psychopath in Australia’s history, is a tragic condition of the LNP which repugnant pack of reprobates, tend to advance the parasitic careers of the worst type of non-achieving, self-serving and malfeasant war mongers (like John Howard), extreme right-wing racists (Dutton et al), misogynists (like Phony Abbott) and bible-thumping hypocrites (like Scott Morrison, a signed-up member of that paedophile-protecting CULT of Hillsong) who continually attempt to destroy, defund and obliterate just about everything the ALP (in conjunction with our Unions) have managed to achieve to benefit the lives of ordinary Australians. The dangerously autocratic fascists who take up EVERY seat in the appalling LNP/Murdoch/IPA Alliance want nothing more than to break-up, sell-off and privatise MEDICARE which egalitarian health care system provides high quality health care to EVERY Australian, no matter what their financial position in society is. Instead, the condescending elitists in the LNP/Murdoch/IPA Alliance want to dismantle MEDICARE and replace it with the horrendously expensive and FAILED system of healthcare (with the word “care” considered to be a sick joke) that is inflicted upon American citizens who, no doubt, look in envy at OUR current taxpayer-subsidised MEDICARE system (based on the enlightened MEDIBANK system introduced by the Whitlam Labor government) that serves Australians so well by providing taxpayer-funded, high-quality health care to ALL!
If the power-obsessed, megalomaniacal narcissist, Dutton, rises to fascist power, one of the first things this monstrous individual will do is to follow the Agenda of the notorious capitalists in the IPA and not only begin the total dismantlement of our MEDICARE system but also oversee the rapid sell-off and privatisation of our much-loved ABC! There are just so many RED FLAG WARNINGS in relation to the unspeakable miscreants in the LNP/Murdoch/IPA Alliance who will permanently defund, change and/or tear down everything Australians, the ALP and our Unions have fought so long and hard for to benefit Australian citizens. If the Alliance crawl into power they will defund and remove EVERYTHING except, of course, anything that provides exclusive and elitist benefits to THEMSELVES and their friends and supporters in the Top 1%.
If Australians want to attain a terrifying INSIGHT into Dutton and the LNP, they only have to hear, see and learn that this power-obsessed, megalomaniacal narcissist, Dutton, is a totally delusional, completely misinformed, sycophantic supporter of Donald Trump! Dutton doesn’t care that Trump is a CONVICTED CRIMINAL and a notorious misogynistic predator and seems to ignore the fact that Trump is shaping up to become the worst, most corrupt, self-serving, destructive, racist political psychopath in American history – a dangerous, power-obsessed fascist who has now turned against age-old American allies (like Australia and Canada) and forcing appalling tariffs on nations around the world, not only INCLUDING Australia and Canada, but targeting some of the poorest, most vulnerable countries in the world! The short-sighted, incomprehensible support the LNP/Murdoch/IPA Alliance provide to megalomaniacs like Trump is, indeed, a frightening indication of just how cruel and deluded the like-minded right-wing-extremist Alliance really are!
However, the ONE GOOD THING – a light on the horizon – is that Dutton is such a hateful, racist, corrupt, Trump-supporting miscreant, recent political polls have revealed that, not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of intelligent, compassionate Australians have now turned against him and his un-Australian, mean-spirited and dangerously undemocratic policies to the point where Dutton has now become a SERIOUS LIABILITY to the LNP. The fact that this depraved individual managed to make his OBSCENE FORTUNE through the manipulation of funds pouring into PALADIN – the off-shore and ILLEGAL, inhumane detention centre instigated by the LNP with strong connections to the Dutton family – needs to be thoroughly investigated as further proof that the malignant Dutton is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg!
Dutton is another Tone the Botty. As was pointed out by someone recently, one of the problems for Dutton as Opposition Leader is this: when he was Home Affairs Minister, and he sparked trouble with South Africa, he had Julie Bishop as Foreign Minister, to smooth things over. As Opposition Leader, the buck stops with him. He can’t rely upon Sussan Ley or worse still, Bridget McKenzie, to act as patsy.
Some claim that Dutton is not a racist (he is) and being a head kicker, he leaves himself wide open to this claim. For example, whenever my former high school Deputy Principal used to blast bad behaviour on assembly, he would say, “Again, it’s only a handful of you, the rest of you, well done.” For example, one morning he mentioned that three students from the school were caught shoplifting (in uniform) at a nearby shopping centre, and no, they hadn’t stolen a can of soft drink or an apple, they were pretty laden, but he said, “It’s only a handful of you.” A more intelligent and even-handed leader would have said, as Immigration and later Home Affairs Minister, “The vast majority of Lebanese Muslims are law-abiding citizens and residents, however, 22 descendants of those allowed in by Malcom Fraser, out of around 22,000, have been involved in crime. Okay, it’s only a handful of them. The rest are law-abiding citizens who have contributed to the economy, be it from fitting wheels on cars or professional employment.”
In the vein of Tone the Botty, it’s fool us once, shame on you, fool us twice, shame on us! Tone the Botty is on record as farting that a day in December, 2012 would have bene hotter but for the carbon tax that wasn’t. Where this comes back to bit him on the bum is that had global emissions been lower, Cyclone Alfred may not have advanced so far south! Warmer water caused by warmer global temperatures allowed it to happen!
Dutton has come up with grandiose but impractical policy farts and no sensible strategy to fund them.
The other problem with Dutton is that he relies too much on his experience as a police officer but hasn’t broadened his horizons since leaving the force.
I don’t think the coalition have actually changed their policy on getting rid of 41,000 public servants, they have just changed the language they use.
Liberal campaign spokesman James Paterson, and former IPA snake-oil salesman, revealed the latest tweak to their policy when he said on Friday that they would rely on natural attrition and a hiring freeze, plus voluntary redundancies to speed up its plan for reducing headcount in the bureaucracy, with long-serving senior staff in line for payouts above $100,000 under federal pay rules.
They have a deep hatred of the public service and in particular they have demonised Canberra at every opportunity.
Their policy has not changed.
Have you noticed that nobody in the coalition is talking about nuclear and Small Modular Reactors or anything else to do with their nuclear brainfart – they were going to release all the details and costings and timeframe for installation and commissioning ‘in their own time but well before the election’. But here we are approximately three weeks away from the election and nothing.
Oh Kathryn …..have you been taking classes in accurately describing COALition pollies from Grumpy Geezer or Phil Pryor because your description of Boofhead is spot on!!
John Lord, do not despair, there is a wonderful YOUNG LADY candidate running for LABOR in Dickson who has reduced Boofhead’s election margin down from about 8% to about 1.7%. There is a large group of YOUNG voters supporting this campaign.
VOTE 1 ALI FRANCE IN DICKSON & GIVE AUSTRALIA A CARING POLITICIAN.