What’s next for Peter Dutton?

The defeat of the Voice to Parliament poses an interesting dilemma for Peter Dutton: does the opposition leader move on quickly or does he continue to dig into the wound he’s inflicted on Anthony Albanese? 

The prime minister will want to move on as fast as possible, and can do so with the help of US President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping. And as much as Dutton might want to keep reminding voters of how Albanese is a loser, he doesn’t want to keep talking about Indigenous affairs.

The next election will be fought over the cost of living and jobs and health, like all others. For many No voters, the prospect of hearing still more about First Peoples will be unpalatable — not to mention an ongoing reminder that they helped to humiliate and insult them. Dutton, sensing that, has already dumped his weird call for a second referendum and you can bet he won’t be talking about legislating a Voice any time soon — despite his promises.

But there’ll be two pressures on him that might make moving on quickly a  little harder. One is that the No victory and campaign strategy has breathed new life into assimilationism, and not the weak variety either. Led by Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and with full-throated support from a number of her colleagues and News Corp, the new assimilationism proposes the complete obliteration of Indigenous programs and an end to separate Indigenous policies, a permanent rejection of any recognition of the historical fact of colonisation, and the dismissal of any traumas of colonisation as either a delusion or fabricated.

It’s a war against any suggestion that First Peoples are anything other than a minority engaging in special pleading.

This will create a persistent pressure from the right on Dutton to devote his time to culture wars and punching downward. Stand by for calls to end Welcome To Country (“divisive”), “mainstream” Indigenous programs, make ruling out Treaty a test for Labor, another Intervention in the name of sexual abuse of children, remove any Indigenous impediments to extractive industries, and change curriculums to erase any mention of the Indigenous experience of colonisation in the same way MAGA Republicans want to purge US schools of anything not white, Christian and heterosexual. After all, Australians just voted against all this woke rubbish — there’s a mandate for change. 

Because the Liberal base is less affected by cost-of-living issues than ordinary Australians, the importance of culture wars, especially when whipped along by the Sky News zoo, will loom larger than political sense might dictate for Dutton.

The second is that the success of conspiracy theories, and especially claims of elite plots — already a tried and tested tactic of the far right used extensively during the campaign — will encourage their use. Already Price, desperate to argue that First Peoples didn’t strongly vote for the Voice, has picked up Dutton’s attacks on the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) and suggested a conspiracy to distort the votes of Indigenous communities. Expect — in defiance of the speed with which the AEC delivered a No result at the weekend — further claims of AEC interference. Indeed, can the Coalition trust the AEC to independently conduct the next election? 

That is, why not stick with what’s working? For Dutton, that might be the cloud that accompanies the silver lining of inflicting a serious wound on Labor. He’s argued for much of the year that Labor was preoccupied with the Voice at the expense of “real issues”. He might be in danger of doing the same.

Has Dutton been a bit too clever for his own good? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.