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. 

John Howard is testament to that.

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

Where the money is

Those keen to write Dutton’s Dickson epitaph need to keep in mind both his survival skills and, now, his billionaire ‘ace in the hole’. Dutton has won this marginal seat at eight straight elections since 2001, utilising an array of clever methods over the journey, and has recently forged a powerful relationship with the wealthiest Australian, Gina Rinehart. 

Illustrating what some call his fealty to the Hancock Prospecting matriarch, Dutton has as Opposition Leader: 

• travelled to the Pilbara as Rinehart’s guest (June 2022); 
• flown to Sydney courtesy of Rinehart to (he says) attend a Bali bombing memorial (October 2022);  
• jetted, courtesy of billionaire Tim Roberts, to a Rinehart party at Roy Hill in WA (November 2023, see photo above) and, most remarkably: 
• taken time out from an important Melbourne by-election campaign for a 40 minute Perth pit stop at Rinehart’s birthday party (March 2024).  

That’s quite a friendship, in which Rinehart “appears to have been rewarded with a key role in developing what passes for Dutton’s policy positions”, wrote Crikey’s Bernard Keane. 

Dividends include Dutton’s embrace of Rinehart-supported policies like an increase in the income threshold pensioners can earn without losing payments, migration cuts and, of course, the spruiking of nuclear energy. 

Doing a Josh

Anyone prepared to turn Rinehart’s most coveted outcomes into government policy can likely count on substantial support should, say, his seat be under real threat from a pesky, Teal-clad booster of “bird-killing wind generators and massive solar panel stretches”. Certainly, sources close to the Teal campaign expect as much. 

“There’s no depth to which (Rinehart’s) pockets don’t reach. I expect saturation advertising – just like Kooyong in 2022 – if it’s close,” one source told MWM.  

In many respects, Dickson in 2025 does indeed mirror Kooyong (Victoria) three years ago. Back then, Josh Frydenberg, an aspiring Liberal Prime Minister beloved by big time donors, found himself caught in the cyclonic headwinds of another Teal-adorned grassroots movement. 

In Dickson, we see all these elements and more, with Australia’s society (and environment) at a clearly-defined crossroads and one candidate – Dutton – determined to take a hard right turn.

The people v the money

“It’s the biggest campaign in the country, with an unprecedented ability to attract volunteers and donors, made even spicier by the fact Dutton divides us like few others,” a Teal source told MWM.  

Three years ago, money poured into Kooyong to save Frydenberg, but this came at the expense of other, needy electorates where it might have been better-spent. Could the LNP and its backers make the same mistake twice?  

“That’s the bonus, even if we happen to lose in Dickson,” the source told MWM. “There are community independents running in 36 seats across Australia and no matter how many oligarchs chip in to stop us, their resources are finite.” 

“We, on the other hand, rely on people power, and there’s no shortage of volunteers ready to work for us.”  

MWM sought comment from the Teal, Dutton and France campaigns, but had not heard back by publication time.  

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

 

 

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