Raising the share allegations is not to resolve them one way or another, but to throw mud on the cusp of an election in the hope people believe the worst – as they almost always do.
By the middle of last year, the only two election outcomes being seriously contemplated were a Labor majority and a Labor minority.
That began to change in July when
The Australian Financial Review/
Freshwater Strategy poll showed the Coalition, for the first time, had moved ahead of Labor in that it was leading the two-party-preferred vote by 51 per cent to 49 per cent.
It was in the second half of last year, as the momentum began to shift towards the enemy, that Labor started intensifying its focus on Dutton. Rhett Wyman
Over ensuing months, Peter Dutton’s personal standing continued to grow as Anthony Albanese’s kept falling. It was not a case of a stagnant Dutton benefiting solely from a decline in support for the prime minister.
In December 2022, Albanese’s rating as preferred prime minister was 55 per cent and Dutton’s was 29 per cent, but by October 2023 the poll showed Dutton had drawn statistically level with Albanese Dutton, 43 per cent versus 44 per cent.
Fast-forward to today and the two main election outcomes being most seriously contemplated are a Labor minority and a Coalition minority.
Thus, it was in the second half of last year, as the momentum began to shift towards the enemy, that Labor started intensifying its focus on Dutton.
“That’s not a bloke pretending to have grown up in a shoebox eating cold gravel and going to school barefoot.”
Mid-way though last term, Albanese, as opposition leader, embarked on a deliberate and effective strategy to assassinate Scott Morrison’s character after picking up on the flaws that the electorate would eventually cotton on to as well.
Dutton has proved a much harder nut to crack. In the latter half of last year, as Dutton and the Coalition began to consolidate, Labor started conducting research in an attempt to find ways to demonise Dutton.
Targeting integrity is the best way to destroy someone in politics but, according to those familiar with the Dutton exercise, nothing would stick. That’s because even his detractors accept he’s genuine in terms of his principles and beliefs.
With the election to be called any day, Labor’s efforts over that past few months have surfaced this week in the form of a supposedly dodgy share buyback in January 2009.
The base allegation is that Dutton got wind of a policy that would boost the value of bank stocks so he bought up big in the days before. There is no evidence to corroborate the allegations and, at the time, the ASX detected nothing untoward and did not contact the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
The suggestion is that as a member of shadow cabinet, Dutton found out when the Turnbull opposition was briefed on the policy announcement.
There have been calls to release the minutes of shadow cabinet, but shadow cabinet does not, or back then at least, did not keep minutes. Some of Dutton’s then shadow cabinet colleagues, speaking on condition of anonymity, cannot recollect it being discussed in that forum.
That dossier of allegations was prepared by Labor’s
dirt unit.
This was more or less confirmed to the ABC’s
7.30program on Wednesday night by Labor MP Andrew Charlton who, in his capacity as a former economic adviser to Kevin Rudd during the GFC, was wheeled out to portray Dutton as someone obsessed with lining his pockets in a time of national hardship.
Charlton was an odd choice of attack dog given his own considerable personal wealth, and the running joke around Parliament about how he had to leave his house in Bellevue Hill to take up residence in his electorate of Parramatta.
The object, of course, of raising the share allegations is not to resolve them one way or another, but to throw mud on the cusp of an election in the hope people believe the worst, as they almost always do.
It was the same the next day when
The Sydney Morning Herald produced a detailed account of Dutton’s property investments over more than three decades, stemming back since his days as a young man when he got into property with his bricklayer father.
The story was a genuine look at Dutton’s past, not something the dirt unit trawled up. Still, the government leapt on it with aplomb, saying a bloke with that sort of asset wealth surely can’t empathise on the cost of living.
Truth be told, a net profit of $6.8 million after flipping 26 properties over 35 years, hardly makes him Rockefeller.
“If I was smart, I would have kept every one of the properties, but instead I had to sell one to buy the next one so it’s just a recycling of the same money,” Dutton said.
None of this pesky detail really matters. The object here is to fill in the blanks for voters who have well-formed views of Albanese, be they ill or otherwise, but are just starting to get their heads around Dutton.
The spin from Labor is that Dutton has falsely affected a working-class chic and the share buy-up and property portfolio will all expose him as a fraud and a little bit crooked.
Which doesn’t quite compute with reality. While Dutton’s not talked about his past very much, when he has, it’s a classic tale of middle-class aspiration.
He talks fondly about working his ring off to buy his first house at 19, buying his first shares at a similar age, his pedigree in business and, most recently, buying his son a subscription to
The Australian Financial Review to help him understand how to get ahead.
That’s not a bloke pretending to have grown up in a shoebox eating cold gravel and going to school barefoot.
Indeed, Dutton was ultra-careful not to join the pile-on late last year when Albanese bought his $4.3 million beach house at Copacabana Beach. Other than to suggest the prime minister looked like he was contemplating retirement, which was also the reason so many of Albanese’s colleagues were peeved.
Had Albanese bought that house in Sydney, no one would have batted an eyelid. However, the purchase did burst Albanese’s working-class bubble and much of the strategy behind going after Dutton for also having money is to encourage voters, who may have given up on Labor, to at least go elsewhere, such as an independent.
Labor needs to be careful, given it demonised wealth in 2019 to its detriment when then-leader Bill Shorten and shadow finance minister Jim Chalmers led the charge in labelling every business owner, big or small, the top end of town.
It was actually Albanese who broke ranks with that strategy by using the annual Whitlam Oration to decry his party’s then “toxic relationship” with business.