CW: rape and racist violence.
This year, opposition leader Peter Dutton made several unfounded public remarks in an attempt to exonerate his friend – an alleged rapist – and to discredit his friend’s victim.
In 2016, Dutton sent a text message to a female journalist calling her a ‘mad fucking witch’.
Before politics, Dutton spent almost a decade on the notoriously violent and racist Queensland Police Force.
In government, Dutton has consistently worked to give police ever more invasive and draconian powers of surveillance, and militarised weaponry.
In 2020, Dutton quietly introduced legislation allowing children as young as 14 to be interrogated by Australia’s secret police.
As Immigration Minister, Dutton championed Australia’s despicably violent policy of turning back the boats of refugees.
Dutton oversaw the indefinite detention, torture and sexual abuse of innocent refugee families in brutal offshore prison camps, depriving them of hope, safety and dignity.
In 2019, Dutton made the unfounded claim that refugee women he had incarcerated were ‘trying it on’ when they reported rape.
Dutton has driven children as young as nine to self-harm, attempted suicide and resignation syndrome.
Dutton has called refugees ‘illiterate and innumerate’.
Dutton has refused to provide his prisoners with urgent medical care.
Dutton has said that lawyers and doctors working to help asylum seekers are ‘un-australian’.
Dutton has said that allowing Lebanese Muslims to immigrate to Australia in the 1970’s was a ‘mistake’.
In 2008, Dutton refused to attend the Apology to the Stolen Generations.
In 2015, Dutton was caught on film joking with Abbott and Morrison about the effects of climate disaster on Pacific Islanders. Publicly, Dutton’s government denies the climate emergency (while wilfully contributing to it).
In 2018, Dutton led a baseless dogwhistling campaign against so-called ‘African gangs’ in Melbourne.
Dutton attempts to dress up his racism in the rhetoric of ‘strong borders’. However, he gave the game away in 2015, abusing his ministerial powers to prevent the deportation of his cop friend’s Italian au pair.
And again in 2018, when he spruiked the opening of borders to white (specifically white) South Africans, who he said would ‘abide by our laws, integrate into our society, work hard and not lead a life on welfare’.
And again in 2020, when he allowed 2,700 passengers to disembark from the covid-19 infected Ruby Princess cruise ship (see A Short History of Notable Boats).