Monday 13th of January 2025
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australia — you will be standing in it.....

Peter Dutton emerged from his summer break on Sunday to launch the Coalition’s unofficial election campaign.

In a 38-minute pre-prepared speech to MPs and party loyalists at a campaign-style rally in Melbourne, the federal opposition leader framed the upcoming contest as a “sliding doors moment” for Australia.

 

Here’s what we learned – and didn’t – from Dutton’s opening pitch ahead of the 2025 poll.

There’s an official slogan and a new brochure

The blue backdrop behind Dutton during his speech was emblazoned with the Coalition’s official election slogan: “Let’s get Australia back on track”.

The slogan is also the title of a new brochure Dutton launched on Sunday, which outlines the Coalition’s 12 priorities for governing the country.

Dutton argued the nation had veered off the rails under Labor, which he described as one of the most “incompetent governments in history” led by Anthony Albanese – “one of our weakest prime ministers in history”.

The Coalition’s slogan will be pitted against Albanese’s “Building Australia’s future” motto, which he pushed during last week’s blitz of seats in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

But no new announcements

The opposition leader didn’t use the rally to make any new announcements, instead rehashing the Coalition’s broad-brush positions on nuclear, housing, immigration, “practical action” for Indigenous Australians, health, regional Australia, defence, community safety and border security.

Those policy positions have been pieced together in the 44-page document released on Sunday, which Dutton described as the Coalition’s “compact with Australians to govern with respect for the views, values and vision of every Australian”.

He pledged to call the prime minister of Israel in the first days of a Dutton government to mend a relationship he claimed Labor has “trashed” amid the Middle East conflicts.

Dutton also foreshadowed an election fight on the approach to teaching in primary schools, which he said should be “places of education, not indoctrination”.

He said further policies would be unveiled in the “coming days and weeks”.

Dutton’s strategy of withholding new policy announcements contrasts with Albanese, who has used campaign-style rallies in Adelaide and Brisbane in recent months to announce major commitments on Hecs and childcare.

Victoria, often enemy territory, will be crucial 

The rally was held in Mount Waverley in the Labor-held seat of Chisholm, an early warning shot from an opposition intent on gaining ground in the traditionally progressive state of Victoria.

The Coalition won just 11 of 39 seats in the state at the 2022 election before losing Aston in a historic byelection defeat triggered by the retirement of former minister Alan Tudge.

Liberal strategists are optimistic about regaining Chisholm and Aston, as well as the teal seat of Goldstein and Labor-held McEwen, north of Melbourne.

In his opening message in the speech, Dutton declared the Liberal party was “back in town” at both a federal and state level, where Brad Battin is the new leader.

Dutton feels people still don’t know the real him

Dutton has been in parliament for 23 years, making him one of the elder statesmen of federal politics.

But as he attempts to broaden his public image beyond that of a hardline ex-Queensland cop, the opposition leader used Sunday’s speech to re-introduce himself to voters.

He spoke about growing up as one of five children in a working-class family – his dad was a bricklayer and his mum a secretary – then working from his early teens, buying a house at 19 and joining the police force.

“I believe the family is the most important unit in society,” he said on Sunday. “Strong and supported families make for a confident and resilient country.”

He continued: “I love our country. I cherish what our forebears have gifted us. Especially those who served in uniform, suffered, and made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, for freedom and for the greater good. I admire Australians.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/12/what-we-learned-and-didnt-from-peter-duttons-unoffical-campaign-launch

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME AMERICA.

PM sauce....

Aspiring PM Peter Dutton could find himself in a three-cornered contest against Ali France and a Teal independent. Andrew Gardiner reports on Peter Dutton’s woman problem. 

Conservative commentator Andrew Bolt sees 2025 as “the year woke finally dies,” the Albanese Labor government one of many to be drowned, he predicts, in a tsunami of culture war conflict and economic angst. 

“America has already swung right; next will be Germany and Canada in elections this year (plus) Australia, too, in our own election in probably April or May,” Bolt foresaw. 

But are Bolt and the man he sees surfing this purported tsunami into The Lodge, Peter Dutton, getting ahead of themselves? Dutton, the member for marginal Dickson in Brisbane’s north west, will for the first time face a Teal independent candidate for the seat. MWM has learnt the candidate is expected to be announced on January 27.

Dutton’s Labor opponent in Dickson, Ali France, came within a little over 3,000 votes of victory, two-party preferred (2PP), at the 2022 federal election. 

The seat’s marginal status renders the Teal candidate a real threat to Dutton’s career as an MP (less as an aspiring PM) potentially siphoning moderate LNP voters away from him on what many see as his ‘Achilles heel’ issues: the treatment of women, the environment and – notably – honesty in politics. 

PM in waiting 

Bolt’s ‘PM-in-waiting’ in fact faces a make-or-break 2025. While Dutton will be comforted by a national 2PP swing of 2.4 per cent to the coalition in polls over the past 18 months, Queensland was by far the LNP’s strongest state in 2022, producing a ‘ceiling affect’ that has capped gains there to roughly half the national average. 

In Dickson (Qld.) that number could be dwarfed by Dutton’s haemorrhaging of votes to the Teals, meaning he must fight on two fronts, including a rearguard action in Dickson. After all, in our Westminster system of government, you can’t be PM if you’re not an MP. 

Like other groups promoting a community independent, Dickson Decides sells itself as a grassroots movement with the goal of bringing “transparent, community-focused representation to Dickson”. According to sources, the group is founded on community engagement principles and eschews ‘party politics as usual,’ adhering broadly to policies promoting the environment and integrity in government.   

Locally, it’s expected Dutton’s opponents will call him out on the issue of honesty in politics. As Michael Bradley of Marque Lawyers points out, Dutton “says things that are objectively untrue, things he cannot possibly believe (and) he does so often, with increasing frequency and flagrancy”.

Dutton’s opponents can be expected to exploit this directly at the mid-campaign Dickson debate for which they will be pushing. How it plays with locals in an electorate of contrasting surrounds and demographics may ultimately determine who wins the seat. 

Environment, women, integrity, nuclear

On the environment, readers are no doubt aware of Dutton’s spruiking what he calls the ‘net zero’ option of nuclear energy, to be delivered by seven proposed nuclear power plants and two small modular reactors at a cost of $331 billion, with a promised reduction in power bills of 44 per cent. 

His opponents say Dutton’s numbers are based on flawed modelling, “won’t pass the pub test” and will prolong our dependence on energy from fossil fuels. 

How does this debate impact the result in Dickson? In a Redbridge survey taken last year, women strongly disapproved of lifting bans on nuclear power (men not so much) with Dutton’s opponents counting on a large number of women ‘defecting’ from LNP to ‘Teal’ and withholding their preferences from him.    

Therein lies Dutton’s biggest problem: women, both across Australia and locally. In a three cornered Dickson contest against two female opponents including the popular and accomplished Ali France (Labor) Dutton’s many stumbles on women’s issues will be centre stage locally during the campaign.  

Remember Dutton’s ‘she said, he said’ comments regarding Brittany Higgins, his description of journalist Samantha Maiden (above) as a “mad f___ing witch,” or his claim that refugee women were “trying it on” with rape claims as part of a ploy to get to Australia? Women remember stuff like that, and it may cost him.

READ MORE:

https://michaelwest.com.au/duttons-dickson-teal-challenge-for-election/

 

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

PLEASE DO NOT BLAME RUSSIA IF WW3 STARTS. BLAME AMERICA.