A test article - is he nuts?
"I thought the chance of Dutton being prime minister was so terrible," Turnbull says. "I thought Dutton would run off to the right. He would be dog whistling. He'd be going on about Muslims and migrants, and any right-wing, hot-button, red-meat issue he could go for, he would go for. And I thought he would do a lot of damage as prime minister of Australia in a short period. Because once people become prime minister, they're off the leash."
Malcolm Turnbull, Nemisis, ABC
It's now been two and a bit years on the sidelines for Dud and Suss and the chamber pot rodeo that is the Tory coagulation. They now seem to have settled on a key theme for their desperate marketing of the L/NP grift machine as viable, alternative government - nuclear power.
The Thug's inherent talents had previously been pushed to the fore as a primary strategy - fear campaigns and a Howardesque racism (the Tories' nod and wink to One Notionists and those at the bigot end of the nut job bell curve). He seemed to have embraced the idea that his innate hatefulness had been validated via his successful appeal to the worst in our nature through his 'go low, go No' mendacity in the Voice referendum. Dud's FUD¹ is surely the quintessence of the man. Taking time out from drowning kittens to disparage the dusky and the powerless always puts a spring in his goose-step.
¹Fear, uncertainty and doubt
Carping negativity and constant doom-mongering, hyperbolic distortions of events, dismissal of inconvenient reality, Trumpian post-truth narratives to frame their hypocritical, self-righteous humbug and their blaming-the-dog-for-farting pecksniffery, accusations of failings that they themselves effected when in government, opportunistic partisan sledging to politicise any issue regardless of collateral damage - all to be deployed as chance arises of course, as per the Tory handbook. And all with the enthusiastic participation of the Murdoch t̶o̶i̶l̶e̶t̶s̶ outlets. But Dud's now changed tack - pitching a Bjelke-Petersenite "don't you worry about that" nuclear energy brain fart as his election winning master stroke.
Dud projects a dullard's demeanor, a gormless oaf who's confused by the concepts of logic or reasonableness. His narcoleptic personality suggests the power had failed on his cocoon partway through his metamorphosis to a human-like form and his presentation skills trigger a Pavlovian gag reflex so what makes him think he can sell this particular dog? Why does he think it's a winner? Let's speculate.
There was a brief post-FauxMo attempt at re-packaging the Dud. Cuddly Pete™ had the shelf-life of a Liz Truss lettuce after the Tory/Murdoch brains trust pinged that a Hannibal Lecter psychopathology in a dull-eyed, lumbering Spudzilla masquarading as your kindly uncle was not only well beyond Dud's acting skills but also beyond the credibility of their own rabid propaganda. So then came the "party for the workers" pitch.
Dud celebrated this newly discovered workers' champion status by jumping onto the pointy end of an aeroplane on a 9 hour round trip to Perth to spend just 40 minutes of quality time gobbing Caviar Russe Classic Osetra, quaffing Pol Roger Brut Reserve and plucking the hairs on billionaire Gina Reinhart's chins at her ostentatious birthday celebrations.
"The same people that said that the minimum wage would wreck the economy, tax cuts for all Australians was Marxist economics in a war on hard-working Australians, the same people who said the weekend would be over and there would be no more barbecues for everybody."
Katherine King MP
Was another contrived persona called for following the failure of these facile attempts at reimaging? A nuclear science-literate visionary, a man of energy, a can-do man of action? That notion is ludicrous as is obvious - Dud is more Larry Vaughn, mayor of Amity Island². But such a try-on is no more risible than their previous two goes at 'hide the fuckwit'.
²Jaws movie reference
Which brings us to that huge deposit in the mining industry; Gina herself. Gina, aka Big Vag, is a filthy rich nepo baby who roundly embraces an anti-worker, anti-environment ethic and so is perfectly placed to call the shots in RWNJ Toryland. Big Vag has interests in coal mines so delaying the closure of fossil-fueled power stations that further tops up her billions at the expense of a habitable planet is an L/NP face on which she is prepared to sit.
Then there's the Nats who've never seen a regional boondoggle they didn't like - provided someone else is paying. Nuclear power is being championed by yokel luminaries and one string banjos such as jizz distributer & VB sommelier BJ, the Purpled Priapus from New England. Nominative deterministic David Littleproud and pencil-neck Matt King Coal Canavan ("what have koalas ever done for us") will also do all that they can to obstruct clean energy - the notion of viable ecosystems being anathema to their $-driven ideology. The play for these envionmental criminals is to stop or delay any more wind or solar power generation. The level of humbug displayed by these plunderers as they profess a heretofore unspoken concern for the wellbeing of whales supposedly at risk from wind turbines is truly astonishing.
These things are all speculative but nevertheless still plausible contributors to Dud's adoption of the nuclear albatross. However the underlying rationale I believe resides within that dark, dank sinkhole of malignant authoritarian cruelty and deceit that forms his being.
"Dutton's raison d'être? Make Australia Afraid Again. Then he will offer himself as the lesser of two evils. A serious strongman for the age of anxiety."
This is not about energy policy, it's Dutton doing what Dutton does - stoking a culture war.
He has no intention of seeing nuclear energy come to fruition, rather it's to drive uncertainty to sabotage investment in green energy and then abandon climate action. Positives for Dud are that it enrages Greens, "dirty lefties" and latte-sipping inner-city elites, it disguises his paucity of ideas ("look, squirrel"), he controls the agenda by flooding the zone with shit³, and it helps to camouflage that he's got as much substance as a snowman in a hot tub and couldn't carry a stick through an open door. And our pathetic corporate media is lapping it up.
³Steve Bannon, pustulated, Trumpy slimebag
The consequences for national security, energy independence, sovereignty, Australia's potential pariah status and economic haemorrhaging are all entirely secondary to the ambition of a truly nasty, divisive thug. Is he nuts? You be the judge - my take is that he's psychotic.
“…the paucity of talent inside the ranks of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party is such that there will be many eager for Frydenberg to return. Right now, if Peter Dutton were to be hit by the bus – or flogged at the next election – there is no obvious leadership alternative. None.”
AFR "journo" and Lib Party stenographer Phil Coorey
Lech Blaine. The Guardian.
Lech Blaine. The New Daily.
Judith Brett. The Conversation.
The Stats Guy: Dutton’s migration dog-whistle doesn’t stack up. Simon Kuestenmacher - The New Daily.
Peter Dutton is Australia’s figurehead of fear and fake news, like Trump but without charisma. Katharine Murphy. The Guardian 14Oct23.
Old P. Duddy is Mr. Chicken Little personnified! He is so bereft of ideas he's gone full nuclear and constantly quotes Keating in the vain hope that the voting folk have poor memories. A little bird told me that Albo likes Italian food. So I propose an Italian classic for Albo: Chicken Catch a Tory!
Spot on.
This is not about energy policy… But if it was can you imagine the disaster in the wings if Dutton slithered into government? Three Mile Island, Chernoby, Fukushima come to mind. And when you consider what Abbott’s lot did to the NBN…
excellent as always. the Gina paragraph made me almost spit out my morning coffee.