Peter Dutton’s hyperbolic denunciation of Australia reinforcing its existing policy on Palestine, along with most allies, attracts allegations of playing local politics. These claims miss the real dog whistle, writes Michael Pascoe.
Nobody has ever accused Peter Dutton and his LNP of being subtle. When Australia voted in the UN with nearly every country other than the US and Israel for a pathway to the long-agreed two-state solution, no claim was too much for the headline-dominating opposition leader.
“They’ve completely abandoned the Jewish community, the state of Israel,” Dutton claimed.
“I think the Prime Minister stands condemned because when you ask yourself, why would the government, why would the Prime Minister sacrifice his credibility and backflip on the commitment he gave?
“It’s for votes. He sold the Jewish community out in this country for green votes in western Sydney and in places like Marrickville.
“That’s what the Prime Minister’s done and I think we should be standing with allies like the United States.”
And Micronesia, Palau and Paraguay?
BREAKING: Today, the United Nations voted 170-6 on “The Right of the Palestinian People to Self-Determination”.
Those voting against:
🇺🇸United States
🇮🇱Israel
🇦🇷Argentina
🇵🇾Paraguay
🇫🇲Micronesia
🇳🇷Nauru pic.twitter.com/VpKEiWKnFG— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) November 14, 2024
There are a number of false claims in this Trumpy spray ranging from the major, such as making up the idea that the government had given a commitment against actually backing the two-state solution, to the minor, such as saying “allies”, plural, instead of “ally”, singular. The US is the only ally we didn’t vote with on that particular motion.
The Opposition leader is a bit rich in claiming Labor slowly moving in step with the rest of the civilised world (allowing some licence about whether the US is “civilised” in regards to Gaza or where it’s heading under Trump) is all about courting Green and Muslim votes.
All about the votes
As if Dutton’s own policy positions on everything from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ flags to his nuclear gaslighting aren’t all about votes.
The quality of Australian politics being the quality of Australian politics, Labor of course also does nothing without a view to the votes, how far the electorate will let it move after the disaster of the Voice referendum.
What is missed in commentary is what votes Peter Dutton is concentrating on.
You don’t have to look very far on social media to find as many allegations of Dutton’s unreserved support of Netanyahu being all about chasing the supposed Jewish vote and financial support as Albanese chasing Green and Muslim votes.
You’ll also see a simple arithmetic promoted that there are roughly 800,000 Australians saying they are Islamic and 100,000 saying they are Jewish. Very simplistically, those numbers would pretend Dutton is being brave and Albanese obvious.
Albo and the Labor base
But these are not the votes that it’s about.
Albanese is trying to stem the erosion of faith in the Labor base.
Dutton is dog whistling his preference for “white” over “brown” to build his hard-right base. If it helps a bit against the Teals in the seats of Wentworth and Goldstein, that’s just a bonus.
It’s not the 800,000 Muslims, even if they were politically uniform, that Albanese is chasing. It’s the millions who wanted Labor to act on principle, to restore the nation’s sovereignty instead of giving it away.
It’s not the 100,000 Jews, who certainly are not politically uniform, that Dutton is focussed on. It’s the millions who bark when he whistles on African gangs, Aboriginal flags, boat people, “Chinah”.
Brown v white
He never has to say it out loud. His people see Palestinians and Lebanese as “brown” and Israelis as “white”.
Backing the Netanyahu government all the way and then a bit further is what Peter Dutton says out loud. What he whistles is that he’s 100 per cent for white people in any conflict with brown or black.
That’s why it helps to conflate Jewish people in Australia with the Israeli Government, the good white people we know with colonialists killing scores of thousands of natives.
There was something similar in Dutton’s earlier stance of wanting to preference white South African farmers if they were to seek refugee status. They were the LNP’s sort of people, white, unlike all those other refugees.
And it’s working for him. The division brought to the surface in the Voice campaign is his guiding light. That 60 per cent who voted “no” weren’t all racists but plenty were, a majority safely suspected of being opposed to “woke”, whatever that is, a majority dismissive of the pantomime elites Dutton suggests, a majority opposed to “pronouns”, as Dutton euphemistically summarised a culture war.
It is a body of people who might be led to think renewable energy is an unnecessary fixation of those rich, woke, pronoun-diverse, city elites, if the LNP can spin its illusion of having a cheaper, easier, quicker nuclear-powered solution. Only woke greenies would oppose such a thing.
Dutton competing with Trump to be Netanyahu’s biggest supporter is consistent with the rest of the package, the inherent dog whistle as solidly LNP as coal mining.
That’s what is generally missed. It’s old Australia, unrenovated, happy to bark.
Back in Abbottsville
Dutton picked up the Abbott baton of “total opposition” and has taken it further, adding a level of small-minded thuggery in keeping with his boast of “playing tackle, not touch”. It’s tackle with an eye gouge, given the chance.
The attack on Josh Burns’ electorate office provided such a chance. Burns is Labor and Jewish. As The Saturday Paper’s Mike Seccombe reported:
“Peter Dutton has made the political division clear, refusing to allow Liberal frontbencher James Paterson to read out a public statement on behalf of Burns, who had lost his voice in the wake of the attack.”
He then added a squirrel grip, claiming Burns hadn’t been game to speak about anti-Semitism, effectively accusing him of cowardice.
Going all-in on the Gaza dog whistle means going all-in with Netanyahu which in turn means totally endorsing the Netanyahu explicit doctrine that “Anti-Israel sentiment is antisemitism”.
That appeals to the extreme end of the local Israel lobby but, in a logical world, should be a hard note to blow even on a dog whistle. Shouting “anti-Semitism” about any criticism of Israel’s policies or practices has become a perverse variation of Godwin’s law.
That doesn’t concern Peter Dutton. It’s only the barks that count.
Michael Pascoe is an independent journalist and commentator with five decades of experience here and abroad in print, broadcast and online journalism. His book, The Summertime of Our Dreams, is published by Ultimo Press.