CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton is continuing to tread water this week, as he finds himself hamstrung between bringing a refreshing approach to Liberal Party politics, or behaving like the far-right redneck that everyone assumes he is anyway.
When it comes to the Indigenous Voice to Parliament Referendum, Dutton has the option to join the nearly universal campaign to bettering the lives of Aboriginal people – or the alternative option of doing exactly what the old drunks on Sky News tell him to do.
With a vast majority of the Liberal base not exactly opposed to the idea, and the party desperate to win back the common sense voters they lost to teal independents, the Voice was always going to be the true test of this so-called ‘new Dutton’.
After getting absolutely pumped at a 2022 election that saw the Liberals lose their once safest blue-ribbon seats to socially progressive Independent candidates and little known Labor upstarts, Peter Dutton has vowed to ‘moderate’ his party away from the fundamentalist Christian white supremacy that kinda lost them government.
With the National Party opting to OPPOSE an Indigenous Voice to Parliament for no reason other than the fact that their MPs are hoping to recreate the media attention they were able to harvest while denying human rights to gay people during the Marriage Equality Plebiscite – the pressure is on the Liberals to make a call, soon.
But Peter Dutton is still trying to buy time.
Instead of saying yes or no, he is continually asking for ‘more details’ about this referendum that his party have been instrumental in helping draft.
In an open letter to Albanese, Dutton called for clarity on a series of questions, asking how people would be elected to the Voice, how much the advisory body would cost, and how it would deliver outcomes for people in the community.
After Albanese, and several of his own MPs, explained to him that he had been provided with all the required information and details. Dutton is still not taking a position.
Instead he’s opting to ask the same question over and over again.
“I NEED MORE DETAILS!!” screamed Dutton today, while standing in front of 40,000 pages of documents providing him with nothing but details about the exact topic he’s been well briefed on since its inception.
“STOP BEING SO SECRETIVE!!!”
With this whole thing looking too much like hard work for the leader of party that has been shattered by culture wars, it seems Dutton may actually not ever provide a formal position on the Voice and instead leave it up to his MPs to decide for themselves, allowing the rednecks to relentlessly campaign against reconciliation in the Murdoch papers – while he gets a pat on the back for his commitment to free speech.
