We have to talk about Dutton

Peter Dutton - the Brussels Sprouts of Australian politics

Aside from Peter Dutton’s personality, his disloyalty, his resemblance to common vegetables and his propensity to say unbelievably stupid things when presented with a microphone, there is another problem facing him during this election campaign. He cannot defend his record, nor his government’s record on asylum seeker, refugee and immigration policy. Not because it’s bad, although it is; the problem is that for almost three years, there has been a deliberate absence of information about one topic: stopping the boats. 

And when there’s no credible information, the vacuum sucks in anything and everything, filling with void with a mishmash of nonsense that would make the boys on Mythbusters cry. Who knows what the hell is going on inside the Department of Immigration and Border Protection? 

From the earliest days of the Abbott Government, we learned that the Minister – Scott Morrison at the time – would not discuss “on water operations”. It’s meaning was a little broader than that; there would be no discussion of asylum seeker boats approaching Australia, leaving Australia, landing in Australia, breaking up, breaking down, being boarded, being evacuated, being towed, being torpedoed…if it involved a boat that might have asylum seekers in it, expect it to be classified. The weekly press conferences with Scott Morrison and LTGEN Angus Campbell, now Chief of Army, were precise to the point of farce. We were told, via those weekly press conferences, exactly what the Government wanted us to know, and no more. “On water matters” became a cynical catchphrase for anything mysterious, secretive or hidden.

So while Scott Morrison was busily not talking about on water matters, and the Murdoch tabloids were trumpeting Prime Minister Abbott’s success at stopping the boats, the Guardian was reporting that representatives from the UNHCR had released a report that suggested that boats were still leaving and people were still dying. They can't both be right. 

According to the UNHCR report on Irregular Maritime Movements in South-East Asia, over 50,000 people set sail just from the Bay of Bengal area in January-November 2014. The smugglers operating in the region move people who are trafficked as well as those paying for passage outside of legal migration channels.

The only avenue left to Minister Dutton is literally the party line – that the boats have stopped and everything is honky-dory. We know it's not because people have set themselves on fire.

Unfortunately for the Turnbull team, Mr Dutton has about as much credibility left as those vegetables he's often compared to. This ex-cop has perfected the art of shoving of both of his feet in his mouth at the same time, while continuing to talk nonsense. Into a live microphone.

In his latest headline-making gaffe, he suggested that asylum seekers and refugees are likely to be illiterate and innumerate. It’s worst-case-scenario cultural stereotyping, it's unforgivable ignorance…or in smaller words, it’s just plain wrong. Some, like the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, have stood behind their self-embattling Minister for Avoidable Gaffes. Most have not. It’s never easy to defend the indefensible.

The good people of Dickson, Mr Dutton’s electorate, would do well to remember that his gaffes are not one-offs, nor are they always accidental. Consider these classics from his greatest hits album:

• ·      He was the only Coalition front bencher not present during Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generations.
• ·      He was unhappy about a redistribution which made his seat less safely Liberal, so he tried for pre-selection in a neighbouring seat, and lost. He had to return to Dickson, tale between his legs, and hope Dickson was desperate enough to have him back.
• ·      During the Gillard-Rudd parliament, he was Shadow Minister for Health and Ageing, yet infamously asked only one question about health during that time.
• ·      He was appointed Minister for Health during the Abbott Government, and was subsequently named Worst Health Minister of the past 35 years in a poll run by a trade magazine for doctors.
• ·      He was caught by an open mic, making jokes about climate change and how it will effect low lying Pacific islands.
• ·      In response to an unflattering article by Samantha Maiden about former minister Jamie Briggs, Dutton wrote a text of support to Briggs, in which he described Ms Maiden as “a mad fucking witch”. He then sent the text to Ms Maiden instead.
• ·      He denied that Greens Senator Sarah Hanson Young was spied upon while on Nauru – a claim which was contradicted by his own department, as well as Wilson Security, the company which had done the spying.
• ·      He described refugees as “illiterate and innumerate” and suggested that would be unemployable, clogging unemployment queues while simultaneously taking jobs meant for real Australians. 

And that’s without the “creepy internet meme” fiasco, which wasn’t really his fault at all – blame someone in his crack media team.  

I wonder if it’s the same media team that brought us “on water operations.”