Pictures (clockwise from top left): Alex Ellinghausen, Gizmodo (Inset: Twitter), Brisbane Courier-Mail, Columbia Pictures (digitally altered), National Defense Magazine (digitally altered).

All of a sudden, after the bombshell events of the past week, it’s Kirribilli or bust for aspiring LNP Prime Ministers.

No longer is it a question of whether PM Scott Morrison will decamp as party leader, now it’s a matter of when: before the election defeat, or after.

Strategically-leaked text messages from coalition heavyweights, including Morrison’s own deputy, damned the PM last week as a “complete psycho”, a “liar”, a “hypocrite” and a “horrible, horrible person”.

Mortally-wounded, the coup de grace to Morrison’s hopes of another term in the Lodge came when normally-friendly News Corp outlets turned on him, courtesy of a Monday column by “Australia’s most-read political commentator”, one Andrew Bolt.

The column was prominently headlined: “ScoMo has got to go”.

“Morrison is not just despised by progressives, but disrespected by conservatives … right now he seems a man with the fight beaten out of him,” Bolt wrote.

For those relieved at the looming demise of a PM described in such damning terms by people who should know, it could be a case of “careful what you wish for”.

Bookies have installed the man promoted in Bolt’s column – the hard right, gaffe-prone, China-provoking, authoritarian Defence Minister Peter Dutton – as favourite to replace Morrison, and potentially to steer Australia into an uncharted future.

Dutton (above left), a towering and fearsome former Drug Squad detective, provokes such visceral trepidation in many voters that his home town tabloid – another News Corp outlet keen to promote the would-be PM – was forced to run a puff-piece feature on ‘Peter the husband and family man’. Its headline: “My Pete’s No Monster” (above right).

Under new LNP rules, a two-thirds party room majority is required to unseat the PM – a daunting challenge for any Prime Ministerial aspirant – but Morrison’s polling numbers are terminal. The latest Newspoll shows his government trailing Labor by 12 points, two-party-preferred.

A new leader might provide a boost in poll numbers: not enough to retain government, but enough to save a few MPs their jobs.

Former NSW Premier Bob Carr (who cited a “rock-solid media source” to finger Dutton as an alleged leaker of the damning texts) makes a telling point: “Party rules don’t matter if most MPs think you will lead them to defeat.”

Think it’s too close to an election for Dutton to mount his putsch? You have a short memory: Labor dumped the doomed-to-defeat PM Julia Gillard just 41 days before the 2013 election (this year’s poll need not be held until May – that’s 90-odd-days away).


News Corp seems to have turned on Scott Morrison and backed Peter Dutton after a number of its outlets ran this column by Andrew Bolt (above) on Monday.

If it bothers you that unelected moguls like News Corp’s Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch and minions like Bolt can have a huge say in who runs this country, it should terrify you that Peter Dutton – he who led a fearmongering campaign against ‘African gangs’, joked about rising sea levels threatening Pacific islands and boycotted the apology to Stolen Generations – has well-established authoritarian views of his own.

Dutton has been repeatedly accused of misusing his wide powers as Minister for Immigration, Home Affairs and now Defence. In 2020, he introduced legislation giving ASIO the power to question 14-year-old children, interfere with the rights of legal advisers, and enable the tracking of individuals without the need for a warrant.

Later that year, he introduced “authoritarian-style” new laws allowing for the use of secret evidence in deporting migrants; refugees appealing against deportation without knowing the reasons why they’re being kicked out seems a tad unfair. Under the legislation, holders of cancelled visas are forcibly removed from Australia, or, if they were stateless, detained indefinitely without charge or trial.

In 2013, Dutton allegedly oversaw a spying operation (later proven, although Dutton’s personal involvement remains unconfirmed) against Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young when she visited the refugee detention centre on Nauru. Last year, he tried to ban shadow minister Kristina Keneally from visiting the Biloela Tamil family on Christmas Island.

Never a fan of pesky journalists, Dutton in 2016 called Sunday Telegraph editor Samantha Maiden a “mad f-cking witch” … in a text mistakenly sent to Maiden herself.

PLEASE HELP US CONTINUE TO THRIVE BY BECOMING AN OFFICIAL FOOTYOLOGY PATRON. JUST CLICK THIS LINK.

Dutton restored merit citations to special forces who served amid a spate of alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, and, in a move common in dictatorships, appears to have introduced red-carpet receptions for the PM when he arrives at an air base.

Australian Defence Association executive director Neil James has warned of “clear breaches” by our current government of the non-partisanship convention, an important tradition which separates us from tinpot banana republics by keeping the military out of politics and vice versa. Enter Peter Dutton, a known authoritarian who – in less than a year as Defence Minister – has shown utter contempt for convention.

Australians have a right to be worried.


Peter Dutton has been ably assisted by News Corp outlets (above) in his attempts to gin up fears about China and turn voter attention away from domestic controversies. Images: News Corp.

As Defence Minister, Dutton has spearheaded the government’s attempts to distract voters from its kaleidoscope of catastrophes (especially on COVID-19) by scaremongering about a “yellow peril” military threat from China.

“A khaki election is better than a vaccination-focused election (for the government, and) there’s always political interest at play with Scott Morrison … muscling up to China, he can see some political advantage in that,” Sky News political editor Andrew Clenell said.

And so, every chance he gets, Dutton and others play the China card (in fairness, it’s just about the only card they have left). In September, weeks after a Chinese ship anchored in international waters off the Queensland coast (as is its right to do) the government and its News Corp friends went into a delayed, DefCon-4 media frenzy (see montage above).

When Penny Wong (of course) accused him of amping up the threat of war over Taiwan in a “dangerous” pre-election tactic, Dutton plumbed new depths, accusing the Malaysian-born shadow minister of abandoning Australian values. If anyone can advise the author why far-flung Taiwan is of direct strategic importance to Australia, he’d be grateful.

Most comically, when the PM’s page on WeChat (owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent) was taken over and altered by a third party, LNP members accused Beijing of hacking the page for nefarious purposes and vowed to boycott the platform.

Tencent insists an ownership dispute is behind the rebranding of Morrison’s account, which happened months before the government decided to make an issue of it, and “there is no evidence of any hacking or third-party intrusion”.

In truth, Dutton and his colleagues are slowly waking up to the fact their “yellow peril” strategy – and the AUKUS agreement with Washington and London, aimed at containing China and giving us access to nuclear-powered submarines (in 20 years!) – isn’t a vote-winner like the Tampa Affair, which doomed Labor to defeat in 2001. It also jeopardises future trade with China, shackles Australia to the US via greater technology dependence and, oh yeah, makes us a nuclear target (that aside, it’s a swell idea).


In happier times. Cartoon: David Rowe (AFR).

While favoured by the bookies, Dutton’s ascendancy is far from a fait accompli. Just like Morrison before him, dark horse Treasurer Josh Frydenberg hopes to slipstream into the Lodge on the back of party room fears about Dutton, his hard right attributes and his electability.

However, as Carr pointed out to Laura Jayes of Sky News, Dutton likely has the numbers “in an increasingly right-wing party room”. He also has the backing of all-important News Corp outlets, and will have learned from 2018, when Morrison and his stealthy campaign snatched the top job from under his nose.

That leaves us with the likelihood – sooner or later – of an LNP leader with authoritarian tendencies not utterly dissimilar to those of wannabe strongmen Orban (Hungary), Bolsonaro (Brazil) or even Trump.

A man only too happy to get down in the gutter, fight culture wars (or real ones?) strip refugees of their rights and divide Australian against Australian, all for political gain.

In a typically-fearmongering speech last November against ‘Chinese expansionism’, Dutton warned countries against appeasement, and “repeating the mistakes of the 1930s”. Whenever I listen to the man, the only mistakes I worry about from that decade were those made by the electors of Germany.