This article is an instalment in a new series, “Peter Dutton is racist”, on Dutton’s history of racism and the role racism has played on both sides of politics since the 1970s.
Like all racism, Peter Dutton’s racism is a shape-shifting, malleable entity, flitting from African gangs menacing Melbourne restaurant-goers to sinophobic COVID-19 conspiracy theories, to “disastrous” Muslim parliamentary candidates in western Sydney. Dutton’s racism is adaptable, much like that of Pauline Hanson who initially warned Australia was in danger of being “swamped by Asians” in her first maiden speech in 1996, and then “swamped by Muslims” in her second, 20 years later.
It is pointless, then, to expect consistency from racists. But there are two stable themes in Dutton’s particular brand. The first is its opportunism. The second is its adherence to the nation’s foundational racism against First Nations peoples. Dutton boycotted the Apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008, only to express regret for having done so in 2023, claiming he had been motivated by his experience in the Queensland police force, where he says he witnessed domestic violence against Indigenous women and children (but not, apparently, white women and children). Fifteen years after the Apology, Dutton once again blew the anti-Aboriginal dog whistle, claiming the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament would have “an Orwellian effect, where all Australians are equal, but some Australians are more equal than others”.
The one form of racism Dutton wants us to know he very clearly opposes is antisemitism — but again, it’s a particular brand of antisemitism. He seems to conflate the genuine rise in antisemitism with solidarity with Palestinians and criticism of the State of Israel, even going so far as to label the International Criminal Court prosecutor’s pursuit of the leaders of Israel “antisemitic”.
Of course, Dutton’s antiracism is as opportunistic as his racism, aimed at undermining his ALP, Green and teal independent opponents. But even before we get to his weird claim that, unlike Hamas, at least the Nazis had felt enough shame about genocidal murder to undertake it in secret, it is possible to see Dutton’s racism against Arabs and Muslims as a reconfigured form of antisemitism.
Martha Nussbaum’s 2013 book The New Religious Tolerance outlined how antisemitic tropes in Europe were now being directed against Muslims. Peter Dutton fits this pattern. His opposition to admitting to Australia any Palestinian refugees fleeing the bloodbath in Gaza because some of them might be Hamas supporters suggests he would have been no friend to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism in the 1930s. After all, some of the Jewish refugees were communists.
White South African farmers, on the other hand, are trustworthy refugees, deserving of special attention by Australian immigration authorities. In his former role of home affairs minister, Dutton ordered his department to investigate migration routes for white South African farmers, who he said “want to work hard, they want to contribute to a country like Australia”.
Unlike refugees from Gaza, of course.
Both antisemitism and Islamophobia have spiked in the months since the October 7 Hamas-led terrorist attack. The ALP’s failure to take a strong stance against the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the party’s treatment of Senator Fatima Payman have angered Muslim and Arab voters in what have traditionally been regarded as safe Labor seats. Dutton may turn out to be the ALP’s greatest asset in this constituency. After all, “less racist than Peter Dutton” is a very low bar to clear.
But many Muslim voters and long-term ALP voters are wary of falling into the Howard-era trap of being seen as a safe ALP vote-bank. I am reminded of a Howard-era conversation with a Muslim friend, who pointed out that if a community is seen as rusted-on to one side of politics, then both sides can safely afford to ignore them, confident that their vote will never change. (Obvious in retrospect, revelatory to me at the time.)
As I noted in my previous article on the launch of the Muslim Votes Matter movement, many prominent Muslims no longer see themselves as having to choose between the lesser of two evils. The Greens and the exemplar of the teal independents indicate there are other options besides the two major parties. And the high number of informal votes in culturally diverse seats may be due as much to voter disillusionment as it is to voter disengagement.
But if a Peter Dutton prime ministership starts to loom as a real possibility, Muslim voters are likely to cling to the ALP rather than gamble on third-party options. As inured as Muslims have become to Islamophobia in the years since the September 11 attacks, Dutton’s record is second only to fringe-dwellers like Fraser Anning and Pauline Hanson. And Dutton has shown himself ready and able to play the One Nation tune, if that’s what it takes to win the support of their constituency. “Less racist than Peter Dutton” may be all the ALP has to achieve to maintain its hold over the Muslim vote bank.
