Peter Dutton is not Donald Trump, but the US election result means any complacency that remains in Labor ranks should vanish.
One of the great vanities of a country is to think its politics is its own. The United States, Britain and Australia are all governed by progressive centrist governments. Each of those governments won after conservatives struggled to lead during the pandemic. The men presiding then shared a central trait: Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison were showmen, performance dominating substance.
There was some outrage in Australia earlier this year when Peter Dutton began blaming immigration for a wide range of problems: in housing, schools, healthcare and childcare. Sadly, this theme was all but inevitable, given Trump was making such arguments five years earlier, blaming illegal immigration for “reduced jobs, lower wages, overburdened schools, hospitals that are so crowded you can’t get in, increased crime and a depleted social safety net”.
Did any of these capture the imagination of voters in America? Have they here? It’s too early to be sure. But looking over various collected lists of Biden’s achievements, I have a similar reaction as I do to those lists of Labor’s achievements circulated on social media. Much of it is worthwhile, substantive. But it tends to fade from your mind the moment you stop reading.This can sound like a superficial critique. But the reason they tend to fade, I suspect, is that they don’t cohere.
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