Peter Dutton has become the new leader of the Liberal Party and the next opposition leader, with Sussan Ley as his deputy. Both of these folks ran for these positions unopposed. The former home affairs minister Karen Andrews said as much, previously claiming that Dutton was the only person in the running.
As per the ABC, she said, “He will be standing, unopposed, to take on the leadership, and that means there’s no-one else putting their hand up.”
After the party room votes took place, ABC detailed that former Prime Minister Morrison congratulated the two of them. He said, “They’re incredibly experienced, well-versed, deeply committed Australians to both the Liberal cause and, of course, the cause of the nation.”
But who is this Dutton character? What are his policies and beliefs? Will these questions ever be answered? Yes, they will be, we’re about to answer them now!
The Minister for Culture Wars
Dutton is one of those dudes who lashes out against ‘woke ideas’ and ‘identity politics.’ This can be demonstrated in how he reacted to some elements of the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2020, Netflix pulled comedian Chris Lilley’s blackface staring catalogue, and there were a plethora of folks demanding that statues of the colonialist Captain James Cook be removed from public spaces. SBS reported that Dutton labelled such actions as “Political correctness gone wrong.”
Moreover, in 2021, Dutton banned his department and Australia’s military personnel from wearing rainbow clothing to events like International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia, and Transphobia. He defended his decision by telling the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, “Our task is to build up the morale in the Australian Defence Force, and these woke agendas don’t help.”
The Community and Public Sector Union’s Deputy National President, Brooke Muscat, wasn’t thrilled with this decision. She said, “If having a morning tea for reconciliation week, international women’s day, or international day against homophobia is stopping our national security efforts then we have a real problem.” Muscat also commented, “This has Peter Dutton written all over it, the Federal Minister for Culture Wars.”
This Man Votes Like a Conservative (Shocker)
Now that we’ve dived into what Dutton says, let’s now take one into how he votes. This man typically votes conservatively, but there are some outliers. For instance, They Vote For You states that Dutton is in favour of expanding Medicare-funded dental care and supports government-administered paid parental leave.
However, as I just stated, these sorts of votes are outliers. Dutton has consistently voted for drug testing welfare recipients, scrapping public holiday penalty rates, increasing how much humanities degrees cost, reducing corporate tax rates, and stopping people seeking asylum from arriving by boat. Yup, it doesn’t get much more Dutton than that.
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