Image from the BBC
The right-wing media and LNP supporters have floated several excuses (not reasons) for Peter Dutton’s failure to lead the Coalition to victory, where they not only lost, but saw Dutton unseated in his own electorate.
A prominent excuse centres on the so-called “Trump effect.” Some conservative voices, such as Liberal Party spokesman Senator James Paterson, have argued that Donald Trump’s unpopularity in Australia, particularly after his controversial tariffs and a disastrous meeting with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, tainted Dutton’s campaign. The Liberals had initially embraced MAGA-style policies – think public service cuts, a work-from-home ban, and a government efficiency unit inspired by Trump’s DOGE agenda – but this backfired as voters recoiled from the association. This excuse feels like a convenient scapegoat; it sidesteps the fact that Dutton’s team willingly leaned into Trumpian rhetoric early on, only to backpedal when it became toxic.
Another narrative blames Labor’s “demonisation” of Dutton. Right-wingers have suggested that Labor’s relentless portrayal of Dutton as a hard-right, Trump-esque figure – coupled with what they call “lies” about his plans to cut Medicare to fund nuclear power – unfairly swayed voters. Some X posts reflect this frustration, pointing to Labor’s attack ads and specific policies such as the Digital ID bill and eSafety Commissioner backing as areas where Dutton failed to push back hard enough. This argument paints the LNP as victims of a smear campaign, but it ignores Dutton’s own role in stoking divisive culture wars, like his attacks on the ABC and Guardian as “hate media” or his comments on Welcome to Country ceremonies, which likely reinforced the negative image Labor exploited.
The LNP’s own campaign missteps are also cited, though often with a defensive spin. Some right-wing sources admit the campaign was poorly executed – Dutton’s flip-flops on policies like public service cuts and the work-from-home ban confused voters, and his gaffes, such as misjudging the price of eggs in a debate didn’t help. However, they frame these as minor hiccups overshadowed by external factors, namely global uncertainty under Trump, which they claim pushed voters toward the “devil they know” in Albanese. Others argue the Liberals were “lazy” during their three years in opposition, failing to develop coherent policies and relying on last-minute promises such as a fuel excise cut that didn’t resonate. This excuse has some merit – analysts like John Warhurst noted the inconsistency in Dutton’s messaging – but it’s telling that the right-wing media often downplays how these self-inflicted wounds alienated voters, focusing instead on Labor’s tactics.
A more introspective excuse, though less common, is that the Liberals misread the electorate’s mood. Some conservative strategists admit Dutton’s preference deal with One Nation was a mistake as it alienated centrist and metropolitan voters while failing to secure enough regional support. Political analysts such as Ben Wellings from Monash University have pointed out that the Australian electorate leans “small C conservative,” and Dutton’s radical-right messaging – think nuclear energy and anti-“woke” school agendas – felt too disruptive. Yet, right-wing media often spins this as a failure to go even further right, with Sky News panels and X users suggesting the party wasn’t conservative enough to rally its base, ignoring how this approach lost them the middle ground Labor successfully captured.
Finally, there’s a tendency to blame the voters themselves. Some right-wing commentators have suggested Australians weren’t ready for the “bold” vision Dutton offered, preferring Labor’s safer promises on cost-of-living relief and healthcare. This excuse reeks of condescension – it implies voters were too shortsighted to see the LNP’s supposed brilliance, rather than acknowledging that Dutton’s vision, heavy on cuts and light on reassurance, simply didn’t connect.
Critically, these excuses often dodge the deeper issue: the Liberal Party’s identity crisis. The party abandoned its traditional centrist roots and instead chased a hard-right base that didn’t materialise in the numbers needed. Dutton’s campaign focused on grievances – migration, “woke” culture, China – without offering a compelling, positive alternative. Labor, meanwhile, positioned itself as the steady hand, balancing cost-of-living relief with a forward-looking vision, which resonated in a time of global uncertainty. The right-wing media’s narratives, while highlighting some real factors like the Trump backlash, largely deflect from the LNP’s own strategic failures, preferring to point fingers at Labor, Trump, or the electorate rather than confront the need for a serious rethink.
Independent sites such as The AIMN provide a platform for public interest journalists. From its humble beginning in January 2013, The AIMN has grown into one of the most trusted and popular independent media organisations.
One of the reasons we have succeeded has been due to the support we receive from our readers through their financial contributions.
With increasing costs to maintain The AIMN, we need this continued support.
Your donation – large or small – to help with the running costs of this site will be greatly appreciated.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
Consumers Health Forum of Australia Media Release The Consumers Health Forum of Australia (CHF) is…
Australia Woke Up to a Glorious Dawn The 2025 federal election results are in, and…
By Denis Bright At a time when overseas right-wing parties are still in the ascendency…
In early analyses of the historic Labor election victory, commentators have tut-tutted over the Coalition's…
By James Moore There is a story, maybe apocryphal, which has made the rounds in…
By Jim McIntosh I watched a video earlier (an SBS interview) of an embittered David…
View Comments
Roswell, a good analysis I think. In another report I saw a suggestion that Sky after dark does not represent Australian views. I think Dutton’s willingness to credit Sky and the right-wingers of the Australian and other Murdoch media was a big mistake. Overall I was surprised at the size of Labor’s win but with its apparent almost guarantee of at least two more terms I really hope it leads to the implementation of the policies taken to the election but more, leads to some real action on Climate, fossil fuels, tax reform, inequity and Palestine. And any other areas progressives feel he needs to move on
To rehash some assertions, and to revisit some views, the conservative greater gang in Australia has gone far up (hah) a canyon, faces a wall, cannot navigate, has no vision or clue and relies on artificial so-called help from garbage like STY News, (correctly named here). Other sites (Pearls and Irritations, The Conversation, etc) run intelligent articles by skilled and honest observers. Thus, a pillock of putrid pooiness, virtually subhuman, a dropout semi-human scribbler and sphinctermouthed slob, (yes) named A Bolt, contrives utter bullshit fiction to "explain" the S S wing's realities. Lying for a living, and many do it, must cripple the sensitivities and decencies, for Bolt never alters his permanently set-in erroneousness, his utter alienation from truth, reality, decency. POX news, STY T.V., how vomitously vile. The "Teals", all women, indicated the filthy irrelevance and stupidity of Dutton, his policies, his following, his fate. And there is Nobody fit to lead them from now...But, who sees the future clearly now, with hope?
Once again, the unrepentant, dangerously undemocratic, unspeakably callous sociopaths, misogynistic predators and totally deluded right-wing racists (like that appalling self-promoting and thoroughly arrogant little elitist, James Paterson) go on and on blaming EVERYBODY ELSE for the abysmal failure by the LNP to gain any type of credibility prior to the previous federal election!
The fact that these deluded, intellectual midgets and alpha-male misogynists in the LNP went out on a limb to openly support and emulate that hideous CONVICTED CRIMINAL, Donald Trump, is the reason WHY Australians recoiled in horror and (correctly) assumed that the lying, conniving pathological liars in the LNP had SO MUCH IN COMMON with that born-to-rule, totally deluded, misogynistic predator and megalomaniacal psychopath, Trump! Trump is crazy enough - and deluded enough - to think he is the leader of the world, having the ENORMOUS stratospheric arrogance to refer to himself as a political POPE! It would be hilarious if it wasn't so pathetic! Clearly, Trump failed to look at widespread publications around the world and misinterpreted the word DOPE for "Pope"! LOL! A born-to-rule megalomaniacal DOPE is what the overwhelming majority of the world's population REALLY think of him! Not only does Trump need an URGENT lesson in humility, he desperately needs a REALITY CHECK and a swift kick up his pretentiously arrogant, dangerously undemocratic, autocractic a*se!
Is it any wonder Australians drew comparisons with Trump and the LNP? Trump's Republicans and the LNP are rusted-on misogynists; Trump's twisted version of the Republican movement and the like-minded LNP are all racist, right-wing white supremacists and remorseless pathological liars with stratospheric delusions of grandeur. Both the Trump and the ignominious LNP regimes comprise the worst kinds of malicious and callously inhumane sociopathic elitists who have NOT ONE IOTA of compassion for anyone who is poor and/or vulnerable. Both Trump, and his sycophantic admirers in the LNP, are deplorably arrogant, chest-beating alpha-male misogynists; dangerously undemocratic, war mongering fascists and thoroughly entitled, born-to-win political psychopaths who have ZERO credibility and not one ounce of integrity!
So typical of that appalling, insignificant little political parasite, James Paterson - one of the most despised, racist right-wing extremists in the LNP - to insanely turn around and have the AUDACITY to blame the electorate for voting against that heartlessly cruel, megalomaniacal psychopath, Dutton! Paterson, and other deluded right-wingers, have suggested that Labor’s relentless portrayal of Dutton as a hard-right, Trump-esque figure – coupled with what they call “lies” about his plans to cut Medicare to fund nuclear power – unfairly swayed voters is 100% right. Why? Because Dutton really IS a hard-right, Trump-esque figure who, along with the rest of the neoliberal capitalists in the LNP/Murdoch/IPA Alliance, are DESPERATE to sell off and privatise Medicare and initiate the existential threat of nuclear power instead of promoting SOLAR POWER - which, in the sunny continent of Australia, is free, plentiful and 100% safe!
If Dutton wants to know WHO is responsible for his devastating loss in the last election, he only has to look in the mirror! Dutton is a heartlessly cruel, rusted-on racist and born-to-rule megalomaniacal psychopath who, if elected, the huge majority of Australians KNEW would have gone down a dangerous undemocratic path of born-to-rule fascism, annihilation and total defundment of EVERYTHING Australians value, especially our highly popular MEDICARE and just about EVERY socially-responsible, compassionate program initiated to provide any type of benefit or support to the poorest, most vulnerable people in our nation!
WHEW! Compassionate and egalitarian Australians can now sit and relax knowing that the hideous sociopath, Dutton, has not only catastrophically and justifiably lost his OWN seat in Dickson but is unlikely to recover his long-term parasitic career as one of the most despised, totally heartless, racist political psychopaths in living memory! The only three other political miscreants as thoroughly reviled as Dutton are the insidious war criminal, John Howard; that Monument to Misogyny, the inarticulate intellectual midget, Tony Abbott and that appalling, racist, misogynistic bible-thumping hypocrite, Scott Morrison - a signed-up member of that notorious, paedophile-protecting CULT of Hillsong! The LNP have a knack of vomiting up and churning out the worst, most repugnant, racist, misogynistic right-wing extremists and born-to-rule undemocratic fascists in living memory which is WHY Australians must leave them languishing in OPPOSITION indefinitely!
Kathryn, I’ll get Roswell to do his thing with that comment. The previous efforts were an absolute hit.
James Paterson is a dickhead. Nothing else. Dutton is also the devil we know. The hard-right (he's NOT centre-right) reactionary contrarian numbskull who's an ally of Tone the Botty! His performance as Immigration, Defence and Home Affairs Minister is prologue to the type of PM he would have been. Dutton did NOT have a bold vision for Australia.
The LNP: The crazy person in a heavily padded room who, when given a blue crayon and a piece of butchers paper, eats the crayon and paper or scribbles completely and utterly indecipherable gibberish that passes (for him at least) as a political platform on the walls and uses the paper to wipe his arse.
Yeah, no.Linda Reynolds(who?) has come out from under the bed and blamed the male dominated Coalition for the flogging(Guardian), and endorsed SSSSSSSSSusan LLLLLLLey.thereby confirming what we all knew.
Jesus H Christ.Some one call the Fire Brigade.
Look, don't waste time and brain cells...obviously labor is to blame.
"Some right-wing commentators have suggested Australians weren’t ready for the “bold” vision Dutton offered"
What vision, bold or otherwise? There was no vision for the future growth of Australia as a country or for its people, all there was, was cuts to what people need, jobs etc. and huge amounts of negativity. If you want to appeal to people you need to have some idea of what they need and want and most people will respond to positivity far more readily than they will to constant negativity which makes them feel badly about themselves.
The simple fact is that Dutton and the coalition do not have the intellect or the ability to govern a country, they can't even seem to get themselves on the same page at a time when it is most important that their message not only gets to as many people as possible, but that the message is believable. When you say you are going to sack 41,000 people and then when that is not widely accepted as being a good thing you change your mind, the message that lingers is that sacking 41,000 is what they really want to do and the clawing back of it is just a convenience to gain votes, same for stopping working from home. The messages from the coalition were so garbled that they didn't even resonate with many liberal and LNP(Q) voters.
The country and the Australian people did the right thing, we dodged a bullet by rejecting Dutton and the coalition. Now the ALP needs to right some wrongs, increase social security payments to closer to the poverty line at least, revisit AUKUS and take a serious look at negative gearing and capital gains tax. there needs to be no missteps this time, they need to also take a hard look at the tax legislation and increase the tax free threshold, incomes have increased considerably since the Gillard/Rudd government decided to increase the TFT from $18,200 to $19,400, a move that the abbott government reversed, they have three years experience under their belts, they need to work with what the Australian voters have very clearly told them, we want the inequities changed but we don't want the boat rocked so hard that it takes on water, a balancing act to be sure, but it can be done.
Goldstein is proving to be a cliff hanger with Tim Wilson (Liberal) and Zoe Daniel (Teal Independent) level pegging. Goldstein has the second-largest Jewish population in Victoria and during the election an anonymous letter was circulating accusing teal independent Zoe Daniel and her campaign of being antisemitic - clearly this, whilst mischeivous and false, caused her some damage.
Tim Wilson has declared himself to be "proudly Zionist" and supports Israel's right to 'self defence' and its actions in Gaza.
The result could be interesting as Dutton had gone out of his way to court the Jewish vote, had visited Israel and said he would welcome Netanyahu to Australia, ignoring the ICC warrant for his arrest for crimes against humanity.