Dutton has earned a front row seat in the ‘Play House of the Farcical’. Not to watch, as one would imagine, the ‘Birth of MAGA-Australis’, but the old political favourite - ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’.

30 April 2025

ALAN HAYES

 

SO, what is going on? The cold reality, as the election dawn is breaking, is that there isn’t an iota of difference between what both parties are trying to sell to the nation over two important issues - security and climate change. It’s a game of ‘I pretend, you pretend’ now that the hitherto guarantee of US security has evaporated into the fantasy of MAGAland.

 

The simple truth is that Australia can longer depend on an imagined US military machine to come to our aid. This make-believe 'military saviour' was only recently tested when the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy boldly carried out live-fire exercises in the Tasman Sea. The "military saviour" remained where Donald Trump had parked it; in a belief that the US is owed by its allies and can no longer be of help.

 

But when it comes to Pine Gap and the Five-Eyes, there is not a whisper of dissent from the Mad King of America. Why? Because Australia is the security eyes and ears for the US and CIA in the Pacific region. A big stick that government and opposition refuses to beat Donald Trump with.

 

The is, of course, rising out our security, the simple fact that neither side of politics accepts that Trump’s MAGAland is now the world’s biggest economic threat and has wrecked the global order that underpinned Western prosperity.

 

And what about AUKUS? Let’s not forget the Mad King’s puzzled look when AUKUS was mentioned earlier this year? It was a MAGA-clueless moment for Trump. "What does that mean?" Trump said.

 

AUKUS is a billion-dollar unity-ticket on a project, heavily touted by both sides, that is destined for spectacular failure – but neither side will admit it.

 

In the words of former Liberal Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull: it is a "one-sided", bad deal. The “most likely outcome” of Pillar 1 of the deal would be that Australia “(would) end up with no submarines of our own,” while suffering a loss of both “sovereignty and security and a lot of money as well”.

 

“AUKUS is a terrible deal. It is so unfair to Australia, and the reason it is unfair is that we are paying US$3bn to the Americans to support their submarine industrial base, but we have no guarantee that we will ever get any submarines,” Turnbull said.

 

Yet despite concerns that Australia will receive its submarines, the AUKUS cost will still keep growing year by year, with a total project cost now hitting in excess of $375 billion.

 

And while billions of dollars are being promised, in the lead up to the election, on defence spending, economists are left wondering where the money will come from. Maybe there’s a secret money tree growing behind parliament house? The question that needs to be answered, however, is: does it really matter?

 

Richard Denniss, economist and senior director of The Australia Institute, has argued that Australia’s defence spending was to signal our seriousness to the United States as a strategic partner. He further argued that our actual capability wasn’t especially important.

 

Uplifting our defence spending was a demand of the Trump administration, making explicit what was always the case: best described by the typical politically incorrect idiom of the British rag trade – Never mind the quality, feel the width.

 

So, as long as we keep showering heaps of money on US defence contractors, Trump will continue to ‘lead Australia up the garden path’ into believing – as the Beatles famously sang – “I’ve got a ticket to ride”. But the ticket to ride as a US partner is as elusive as a ‘will-of-the-wisp’.

 

So, what’s the difference between Liberal and Labor on security? A few petty details over implementation is all that separates them, with one exception: Dutton's billions of dollars in commitment cannot be qualified as to where the dollars will come from. His election train keeps derailing when the hard question is asked.

 

The inevitable train wreck

 

To add to Peter Dutton’s farcical woes, his media conference last week, when he flagged a major defence spending moment, was the inevitable epic train wreck – the Dutton locomotive had derailed.

 

The defence spending beat-up, with all the details to be laid out for all to see, was touted as the Coalition’s watershed announcement – except there were no details. No details where the $21 billion defence spending was coming from. No details how the money would be spent and that it wouldn’t just be frittered away by the Australian Defence Force.

 

The national security announcement was less than 400 words on the printed press release, leaving Dutton stumbling for words, except to sheepishly confirm that – you guessed it – higher taxes would have to pay for the Coalition's defence spending pipe dream.

 

You could hear the grinding of metal as the train wreck occurred – a crash that ripped apart the hitherto conviction of the Liberals “party of lower taxes” creed, which Dutton had been recently fuelling when referring to his “aspiration” to establish indexed tax thresholds.

 

So, there we have it – two contradictory “aspirations”. Dutton attempting to play down massively increasing defence spending, while at the same time promoting the Liberals as the party who will cut income tax. And what did Dutton flaccidly say: “A great Coalition government will always be better on national security and economic management.” So, why won’t Dutton fess up and tell voters what the $21 billion extra in defence spending is going to buy?

 

To add to the farce, Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie tried to mitigate the train wreck - it was now out of control – but he was continually pounded over comments he previously made about women in the ADF not being strong enough to participate in combat roles.

 

It was blatantly clear that Dutton had zero, zilch, nada and zippo detail on how much it would really cost or what he thought was needed to make the nation secure.

 

As the Playhouse of the Farcical unfolded, all of the Coalition’s weakness were on stage for all to see: Lack of policy work; Poor frontbench; Lack of media experience; and failure to offer a coherent narrative and believable ability to be a ‘great Coalition government’.

 

Is it any wonder that Peter Dutton has been floundering and amateurish in his performance!

 

Does the unity-ticket give both parties a climate-change seat?

 

When you shift through the rhetoric of both parties, Dutton believes his ‘me-too’ unity-ticket entitles him to a first class train ride to the Lodge, while Labor bounces along behind on the hard seats of second class.

 

Labor, and rightly so, believes in the climate emergency and is committed to the decarbonisation of the domestic energy grid. But while this comes at a cost to taxpayers, is it enough to rely solely on PV solar farms, community batteries, wind farms and pumped hydro for our energy needs? They have their place – more so as home-base PV solar and battery installations, which reduces our need to burn fossil fuel; a plus for households and a plus for the environment. Still, more needs to be done to provide baseload power into the grid that excludes the burning of fossil fuel entirely – much to the dismay of Liberal billionaire buddies (donors) who increase their pile from coal and gas mining and power generation.

 

The Dutton camp, however, can’t see the green hills for the carbon-filled skies. They barely even pretend that climate change is a reality and humankind is facing a crisis – the ice flow that the polar bear is clinging to hasn’t quite reached the coast of Queensland as yet.

 

Yet it’s no secret, however, that Dutton and the Coalition wants to keep fossil fuel-powered generation going for as long as possible. This comes at huge cost to taxpayers - a cost far greater than renewables. And while voters believed that Dutton had retired his nuclear folly, it’s been gently resurrected – Coalition mailouts are once again extolling the alleged benefit of going nuclear. It’s a fantasy worthy of the Trumpian playbook.

 

Dutton is advocating that introducing nuclear power to Australia's energy grid is a way to provide a reliable supply of electricity quickly and at a reasonable cost.

 

In the Coalition’s latest email, guaranteed to download into an inbox near you, they deride the Smart Energy Council over the $600 billion costings to go nuclear. They claim that modelling by independent energy experts, Frontier Economics, shows the Coalition’s balanced plan – including nuclear energy – will cost 44% less than Labor’s renewables. But let's not kid ourselves, Frontier economics is a not a government-owned body like the CSIRO - they are a private consulting firm and you pay for their opinion. When you pay, you expect to get the result that you want! So, are Frontier Economics anymore credible than the Smart Energy Council, which is also a private body?

 

Not surprisingly, the nation's leading science institution, the CSIRO, has defended its research into energy generation following comments from Opposition Leader Peter Dutton disparaging its findings that nuclear power would be the most expensive source of new energy for Australia.

 

The CSIRO's GenCost report, which is produced annually by the Australian Energy Market Operator, found renewable energy sources, including wind and solar, were the most affordable sources of new energy production in Australia, with nuclear power the most expensive.

 

Yet amongst all the ‘to-and-fro’ about the energy crisis, both sides are still committed to expanding Australia’s gas extraction and exports, which are by far our biggest contribution to the climate crisis, and one in which Australians, who own the resource, see the mining giants enjoying a royalty-free and tax-free party.

 

The fact is, both sides are also still happy to undermine environmental regulation, and both sides are hostage to the demands of the corrupt, fossil fuel-controlled West Australian government. Both sides have pulled from their hip pockets the ‘Pullman-Class-Golden-Unity-Ticket’ to ride.

 

So, while both parties have failed to collect their legitimate unity-ticket on eliminating fossil fuel, what is the answer? Concentrated Solar Thermal Power (CSTP) plants. The coal and gas miners, and the coal and gas power electricity companies, won’t be happy about changing the status quo and the move away from fossil fuel - but who really cares whether they are happy or not, except for those living on the top of the pile.

 

Clean, renewable baseload power should be a priority on the election agenda. To put it into perspective, AGL are spending around $785 million for a super battery at the decommissioned Liddell Power Station site. It will only power 60,000 homes for two hours during the peak charge time. For the same investment, AGL could have built a 100-megawatt CSTP power plant, servicing the grid twenty-four/seven. It’s not rocket science, but it is a unity-ticket for the people – not a ‘play house of the farcical’.

 

The quest for MAGA-Australis

 

100 days into the Mad King’s reign in MAGA-Land and the Coalition has pulled out all stops to convince ‘Land of Oz’ voters - whose impression of Trump has steadily grown more toxic - that Peter Dutton is not a Trumpian disciple.

 

It’s become a hard sell and a spectre hanging over Dutton’s campaign, because Trump, and his indecisive and dictatorial policies, keep lurching back into view. So, while Dutton may insist that he’s an original player on the ‘Play House of the Farcical’ stage, he can’t help breaking out into the Trump tribute act whenever he’s performing in front of an audience. He keeps doing and saying things that invite comparison!

 

Last weeks 'egg-on-the-face' media event train wreck, was the most recent example of ‘The Play that goes Wrong’. It was another spectacular Trumpian moment, not unlike the moment Dutton shared with shadow finance minister Jane Hume. For those who may have forgotten, Dutton and Hume had their decision to end ’working from home’ blow up in their faces - telling all those woman to go and job-share instead. So, in a never-to-be-forgotten political bomb, Dutton lost his unity-ticket for using that Trumpian play-book gem! A week later, Hume was foot-slogging here way through the smoking ruins of the Coalition’s female vote - stuffing her face with ‘humiliating humble pie’ - in a desperate attempt to apologise.

 

And Dutton? He continues the ‘old soft shoe’, while accelerating his pretence of non-Trumpiness.

 

A special farcical moment for Dutton

 

There was, but for a brief moment last week, that Peter Dutton must have thought that he had his signature policy - lower petrol prices at the bowser - right and the 'golden gates’ of the lodge were within his grasp. Even in the Coalition’s latest propaganda email they were spruiking, “We will provide immediate relief, with 25 cents per litre off petrol and tax relief of up to $1,200 for most Australians.”

 

It would seem, however, that the Liberal candidate for Robertson, Lucy Wicks, missed that briefing. In a full page, local newspaper advertisement she was claiming the saving on fuel would be $300 greater than what her boss was touting.

 

But Dutton’s signature policy has become a policy now being played out in the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ – it seems nobody in the opposition has been reading the memos on falling fuel prices.

 

So, while the Opposition leader was spending an inordinate amount of time posing at the bowsers with a hose in his hand, worldwide anxiousness over Trump’s tariffs sent oil prices free-falling, and cheaper fuel at the bowser was the result. But did  anybody bother to tell Dutton?

 

Notwithstanding the fact, as previously reported, Dutton’s petrol discount, based on the most recent motoring data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, revealed that the average motorist would actually only save just a meagre $6 a week.

 

The drop in oil prices was certainly a slap in the face for Peter Dutton, and, aside from fuel prices tumbling, he has, regardless of his run of very bad luck, and, without any doubt, now earned himself a front row seat in the ‘Play House of the Farcical’. Not to watch, as one would imagine, the ‘Birth of MAGA-Australis’, but instead the old political favourite - ‘The Play That Goes Wrong’.

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