#peter dutton

Jerome Laxale (current JSCEM chair) invites Dutton, Pru Goward, Nick Minchin to give evidence concerning use of Exclusive Brethren in campaigning.

And then on election day he learned.

Adrian Beaumont at The Conversation:

With 52% of enrolled voters counted, The Poll Bludger has Labor ahead in 92 of the 150 House of Representatives seats, the Coalition in 43, the Greens in two, independents in 11 and others in two. In called seats, Labor is on 76 (already a majority), the Coalition 32, independents six and others two. Labor has gained ten seats and the Coalition has lost ten, including Peter Dutton’s Dickson to Labor. It’s amazing that Labor has held the Victorian seat of Aston, which they had gained from the Coalition during Labor’s honeymoon period. The Poll Bludger gives Labor a projected national two-party preferred vote of 54.5–45.5, a 2.4% swing to Labor since the 2022 election. Current primary votes are 34.7% Labor (up 2.3%), 30.5% Coalition (down 3.9%), 12.8% Greens (up 0.3%), 6.2% One Nation (up 1.3%), 2.0% Trumpet of Patriots (new), 8.1% independents (up 4.5%) and 5.8% others (up 0.6%). I believe this election result was mostly because Dutton became too close to One Nation and Donald Trump for the Australian people to tolerate. Dutton would have done better to have stuck to the cost-of-living issue and avoided culture wars. With the addition of the YouGov poll below, Albanese finished the campaign at a net -4.2 using an average of five polls in the final week that asked for leaders’ ratings. Dutton finished at -20.8. The Canadian election on Monday and now Australia’s election demonstrate the left’s ability to win elections. Many thought Trump’s election would herald an era of right-wing dominance, but both Canada’s Conservatives and Australia’s Coalition lost what had looked like wins two months ago. Both leaders also lost their seats. Before the 2022 Australian election, I wrote that Australia and Canada could be strong for the left owing to big cities that make up a large share of the population in both countries. The right’s gains in the last decade have been biggest in regional areas.

Less than a week after Canada rejected right-wing lunacy, Australia also said “No MAGA BS” at the polls, as PM Anthony Albanese and his Labor party prevailed with a big majority and the opposition Coalition losing seats including their own leader’s (Peter Dutton).

See Also:

The Guardian: Australia re-elects Anthony Albanese as Labor rides anti-Trump wave to seal crushing win

We'll have more on the Australian election in the next couple of days. While it's clear that the Labor Party has won a solid majority in the Australian House of Representatives, I'd like to wait until all 150 seats have likely winners before throwing numbers around.

But we already do know that Donald Trump has had a negative impact on right of center parties in national elections twice in less than a week. Both the Conservative Party in Canada and The Coalition in Australia went from election favorites to losers in less than six months because of Trump. And the leaders of both parties even lost their own seats in parliament. SAD!

Incumbent Prime Minister Anthony Albanese secured a come-from-behind win for his center-left Labor Party in Australia’s election Saturday while his right-wing challenger lost his seat. The Labor landslide came after Albanese’s government spent months trailing the opposition in polling, but gained support rapidly in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s clash with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his “Liberation Day” tariffs.

Being the local equivalent of Trump will repel more votes than it attracts.

Over his three years as opposition leader, Peter Dutton, the hard-right prime ministerial candidate of the conservative Liberal Party of Australia, embraced MAGA-style politics and bigged up Trump. In February, for instance, Dutton called Trump a “big thinker” and lauded his “art of the deal” negotiation tactics after the American president called for the U.S. to take over Gaza and turn it into a Middle East Riviera. Dutton’s campaign borrowed heavily from the U.S. Republican Party’s policies under Trump, with the Liberal leader arguing for significant cuts to the public service and championing a DOGE-inspired government efficiency unit. Dutton also unveiled (and then abandoned) a policy to force all public servants in the Australian capital Canberra back into the office full-time. Dutton’s embrace of MAGA policies backfired spectacularly.

Australians can see that Trump is trying to turn the US into a shit hole country. They want no part of that for Australia.

While the now defeated Peter Dutton was fighting MAGA-style culture wars, Aussies were more focused on economic issues.

Taking inspiration from Trump, Dutton said that Indigenous “welcome to country” ceremonies, which are performed by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander elders to welcome visitors to their ancestral lands, are “overdone,” and claimed “we need to stop the teaching of some of the curriculum that says that our children should be ashamed of being Australian.” In a nod to Trump’s attacks on the media, Dutton labeled Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, and the left-leaning Guardian newspaper “the hate media,” after they reported in the last week of the campaign that he was on track to lose the election.

The Guardian found it difficult to consider its glee in headlines about Dutton's defeat.

Then there's something which Republicans in the US are in the process of learning the hard way. When you try to appeal to the hard right, you lose moderate voters.

Amid rising support in the polls for far-right parties including the Trumpet of Patriots and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, Dutton sought to undercut their appeal by taking on some of their policies and aping their language. But by attempting to woo these voters, Dutton alienated centrists, with his polling tanking among younger voters and women.