Australia federal election: How Peter Dutton lost his heartland

For the past three decades, when contemporaries of Australia’s original Liberal Party chief Peter Dutton were grilled over his controversial image, they’d generally proclaim his celebrity status in the northeast.

Peter is one of us, according to the Nationals ‘ leader, the Liberal’s coalition partner, earlier this year.” He’s extremely popular in Queensland.”

However, on election day, Dutton’s home state won Labor’s election victory by sweeping the former MP out of his own seat of Dickson.

While seats are still being counted, Labor may get up as some districts in Queensland as it did across every various state and territory combined.

And that’s in large part due to a new generation of young voters and people who disapprove of the Coalition and assign the group’s blatant defeat to the” Dutton result.”

This is where [ Dutton’s ] from, as the 65-year-old coalition voter, who chose not to use her last name, blatantly states:” People know him and they don’t like him.”

Dutton homeland is supposed to be present in the Moreton Bay region, which is located about an hour north of Brisbane. All three of these seats were held by Liberals before the 3 May national vote, with Dickson’s public in the position having the narrowest lead.

Dutton, a former police officer, also has strong roots around, with his dairy gardening great-grandparents having settled in the area in the 1860s. When Dutton second entered parliament 24 years ago, the area was brimming with commercial estates and urban fringes surrounded by semi-rural landmasses. Not very remote or urban, as he put it in his first speech as an MP.

Then Brisbane is one of the fastest growing cities in Australia, and these inner northern cities are some of the main spots people are pouring into. More young people are being driven out of neighborhoods closer to the city as a result of the explosive personal growth.

Outer-suburban communities like these were at the heart of the Coalition’s plan, and Dutton claimed they would win him the vote.

The average residence in Moreton Bay earns less than both the state and national regular, with many of them relying on the health, trade and hospitality businesses for work. The Coalition hoped the Coalition’s pledges to lower gasoline costs, boost housing affordability, and support small companies would woo voters who were concerned about the cost of living.

Kenneth King, a battle volunteer for Moreton Bay, even believed that Dutton’s personal product would benefit them.

” I’ve known Peter Dutton for a lot of times”, the Dickson native told the BBC on polling day. He has always been a person of high character, serious about developing effective laws, and has a lot of emotion for regular Australians.

” Individuals know him because he has a lot of respect in the community.”

But there’s a distinction between being well liked and also known, says Aleysha, a swing vote in the neighbouring public of Petrie, who declined to give her title.

The 26-year-old caregiver says,” I don’t know whether he appeals to the regular man.” He “doesn’t placed himself in women’s shoes.”

Her voting over the years has gone to a range of events from straight across the democratic range– except the Greens, she adds with a swift laugh.

” I don’t have a group seat with me. According to her, “it’s whatever celebration corresponds with my values,” adding that the future of her two young children is another significant factor.

This vote, that meant her ballot went to Coalition former Luke Howarth, who she knows privately from her religion.

However, she’s praying for a mystery even though the final votes are still being cast, so she’s not surprised to learn Howarth may be on his way out.

She claims that Labor ran quite well-known campaigns in the area, but claims that it was passing Howarth and his head on billboards that had stayed in her thoughts.

Speculating as to why Howarth is struggling to get the vote, she suggests that “unfortunately I think that’s what did it”.

She claims that Peter Dutton’s experience behind him turned out to be a big turnoff for both myself and professionally.

Sue claims that this vote she was torn at the ballot box because she typically votes liberal and shares the same public.

” I had a big fear over it”, she says. Albanese is “like, weakened,” I don’t like him. Dutton has an insecure character, though.

” He thinks he’s presenting himself as solid, but he presents himself as a bit of a thug.”

In the end, Sue is convinced that Dutton lost him the desk, and that she also voted for Howarth.

She says,” I spoke to a few friends, and some of them did change their seats as a result of Peter Dutton.” Folks, rightly or wrongly, aligned Dutton with Trump. And that’s a really bad thing for almost any reasonable man.

Many of the people the BBC spoke to emphasized that they did not prefer British politics in this country.

Drew Cutler grew up in the seat of Longman, which shares borders with both Dickson and Petrie- and though he never longer lives in the area, the 28-year-old was thus invested in the results he came up to campaign for Labor.

It was won by Coalition MP Terry Young last election by a margin of 3 %, but it is now too close to call.

Mr. Cutler, a former employee of the Labor party, recalls that Labor ran very effective local campaigns. But he also thinks Dutton’s policy flip-flopping and the aura of instability that he projected was potent.

That included a change in the government’s position on electric vehicle taxes, public service job cuts, and plans to end work-from-home arrangements, among others.

When contrasted with the image of strong, decisive leadership Dutton tries to convey, Mr. Cutler suggested that such optics were particularly damaging.

” I almost think the Australian people would have respected him more if he stuck to it… and said,’ This is what I’m putting forward- if you don’t like it, don’t vote for it’,” Mr Cutler told the BBC.

Rick, a retired Liberal Party member and recent graduate, said on election night that he also felt confusion contributed to the party’s defeat, particularly among young people.

He said,” I think people couldn’t understand Dutton’s policies.”

But 30-year-old April, who didn’t provide her last name, says it is Dutton who didn’t understand.

She recalls a time when Dickson wasn’t in charge and feels as though he has since lost touch with his own voters and the nation as a whole.

His crucial role in the defeat of the Voice to Parliament referendum, which sought to recognize Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the constitution and establish a parliamentary advisory body for them, was the final straw, in her opinion.

” I think he has caused a lot of harm to a lot of minority groups across the scale,” she says.

The final straw, in the eyes of some electorates, was watching Dutton fly to a Sydney fundraiser after Cyclone Alfred struck the Dickson region in and around in February.

April decided to campaign for Ellie Smith, the so-called “teal” independent running in the seat because she didn’t think the Labor Party’s offering was strong either, especially on climate action.

Borderline embarrassment that Dutton was from her local area had crystallised into determination:” I felt like it was a duty in a way … our responsibility to get him out.”

In the end, Labor ultimately won at least six seats in Queensland, with the exception of one there. And they could still lose that even though they are a few votes clear of Longman as the count progresses.

According to Frank Mols, Queensland has long been a bit of a political wildcard and frequently finds itself in the” shadow” at federal elections.

The state contributed to Scott Morrison’s “miracle” victory in 2019 and Kevin Rudd’s historic victory in 2007 according to a political lecturer from the University of Queensland. Last election, Queensland surprised the nation by giving the Greens three seats- up from none.

According to Dr. Mols, there are a number of factors that make the state more “volatil” and likely to cause upsets.

Firstly, it is the only state or territory where more than half of the population resides outside of Brisbane’s capital city, aside from the island of Tasmania.

” We talk about Queensland always being two elections, one in the south-east corner, and then the rest- and they often get very different patterns.”

According to Dr. Mols, there is also more political fragmentation in the state, which combined with Australia’s preferential voting system can make political equations here tighter and trends harder to predict.

But he largely attributes last weekend’s surprise for the Coalition to Dutton and his generally critical campaign performance, like many of the voters the BBC spoke to.

While there’s a tendency to attribute success or failure to policy issues, more often its really about voters ‘ emotional response to candidates and leaders, Dr Mols says.

Is Dutton a person you would walk up to if you took the barbecue test? Is he someone you would gravitate toward or warm to?

” You can wonder: was Peter Dutton, in hindsight, the Labor Party’s best asset”?

The Greens Party, which has lost at least two of the three seats it won in Brisbane last election, may have been affected by Dutton’s decision.

” Perhaps in desperation, [ Dutton ] was gravitating toward culture war issues, sort of evoking Trumpian themes, and that has been punished,” Dr. Mols says. ” But also the Greens … who were perhaps seen as being at the other end of that shouting match, have not done well”.

Dr. Mols also makes a speculative suggestion that some former Greens voters may have prioritized Labor this time, even though more centrist Teal independents tend to disagree.

In any case, he doesn’t view the outcome in Queensland as a wave of support for Labor. The state was still the only jurisdiction in Australia where there were more first preference votes for the Coalition than Labor.

There must be enough a swing in the direction of a party, he says, but it’s frequently the preferencing that actually makes things go off track.

” This is more of a loss for the Liberals.”

For many Coalition voters, that loss is deeply felt. It is referred to as a “real rout,” Rick says.

However, there is an unfathomable mirth among others, just like Aleysha.

” I think it’s quite funny, that he slipped as much as he did”, she says. ” And I can’t explain to you why.”

Kelly Ng provided additional reporting.