Praising by Faint Damnation

Recently I received an election leaflet in the mail; it was purportedly explaining why we should not vote for Peter Dutton.



I am shocked at these allegations.

Now the readers of this site will probably be at least somewhat familiar with my local member Peter Dutton, but let me just recap:

Peter Dutton is a strong contender for the most ignorant, dishonest, despicable and despised politician in Australia, despite the extraordinarily fierce competition in this field.

He started his career working as a drug squad officer in the Queensland Police force during the corrupt Joh era. Now I have no actual evidence that he was corrupt, but given the pervasive nature of the police corruption at that time, and given that his politics and personality were essentially the same as others who were convicted of corruption, and given that he was working in an area particularly prone to corruption, it is difficult to see how he could have avoided it. Certainly after less than a decade in the police force he managed to accumulate enough money to become a property developer.

But corrupt cops and dishonest property developers are not news these days and what is more important is that he is responsible for the ongoing torture of hundreds of innocent people in concentration camps. He is responsible for over a dozen deaths in these camps, which technically makes him a serial killer.

He awarded a contract of $423 M for operating his Manus concentration camp to a dodgy company registered to a fishing shack on Kangaroo island. A company which employs rapists, underpays and mistreats its local workers, and provides next to no services to the unfortunate refugees in its "care". [I can provide citations for all of these accusations, by the way.]

He has spent millions of dollars of taxpayers' money unsuccessfully fighting against desperately ill refugees (including children) being transferred to proper hospitals for badly needed medical treatment. He has descended to Trump-like levels of dishonesty in slandering these refugees, even making up a completely fabricated story about refugees being paedophiles to explain an incident where Papua New Guinea security forces opened fire on them at his concentration camp on Manus.

He had Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young spied on during a visit to his concentration camp on Nauru, and lied about it.

He has whipped up race hatred with completely fabricated claims of "African Gangs" running riot in Melbourne. He has be known to parrot white supremacist talking points such as the idea that "White Genocide" is being practised in South Africa - resulting in him making unwanted offers of refugee status to white South African farmers and causing much international embarrassment.

For a short time he had his black uniformed thugs (he spent $10 M dollars on special new military-style uniforms for them) patrolling the streets of Melbourne like the Gestapo, asking people to show their documents, but was quickly forced to back down by community action. Not a wise move in a progressive place like Melbourne; if he'd tried it in another city he might have got away with it.

Before his career in torturing refugees he was Minister for Health. His success in this portfolio can be judged by the fact that in a poll by the Australian Doctor magazine, he was voted the worst health minister in the last 35 years.

He is also on record as saying that leftists (like me) are "dead to him", which I have to say, coming from a person who controls the entirety of the federal security forces, is a pretty sinister threat.

So basically he is a text-book example of the sort of person that Hannah Arendt was referring to when she wrote about the banality of evil. He has the exact mix of corruption, block-headedness and ignorant brutality that sends people to death camps - and somehow has lucked into a position where he can do just that. In any civilised society he would be in jail for crimes against humanity.

So what charges do this leaflet bring against him?

1) "Dutton's childcare centres received millions in taxpayer-funded childcare rebates"

The leaflet quantifies this by giving a figure of $5.652 million. [Not sure why they quoted this to three decimal places, could it be they are hoping this will be read as $5,652 million? But surely that would come across as a childish exaggeration.]

OK, it's always a dubious thing when a member of the government gets government funding for some personal project, and it's quite likely this funding is in breach of section 44(v) of the constitution (the government voted against referring it to the High Court, so it was never put to the test). However I have to say that the entirety of section 44 of the constitution is unduly strict, and that while receiving government funding while acting as a government minister is a bad look, there was no evidence of actual dishonesty. So it's a pretty weak charge to bring against someone who has wasted nearly a hundred times that amount on a far more dodgy deal to build a concentration camp that shouldn't have been built in the first place.

2) "gave a visa to a former Police mate's European au pair"

If I were to read this without knowing the guy's history, I'd have to say that I'd have sympathy for him - it makes him come across as a kind-hearted person who will bend the rules a little to help out someone in need. In fact, for all you can tell from the wording, the au pair could have simply fallen foul of some technicality and he was just putting things right.

In fact, there were there three separate incidents (that we know about) where he overrode the decision to his own department to grant visas to his friends' au pairs - who had breached their visa conditions - and he lied about them. And when we consider his merciless treatment of immigrants and refugees it becomes clear that he wouldn't even know the meaning of the phrase "kind-hearted" and that he was cynically exploiting his position for the benefit of his rich mates.

But even then, who cares? The rules are too strict anyway and if a couple of people were illegally working when on tourist visas (or whatever they did) it's hardly a matter of national importance or a terrible scandal that they got away with it.

3) "cut millions from local hospitals & schools"

Now my knowledge of the workings of government is not as great as it could be, but my understanding is that hospitals and schools are a state government responsibility, although their funding comes primarily from the federal government. Dutton is a member of the federal government and the only time he had his hands on any state funding was when he was assistant treasurer in the Howard government, which was more than ten years ago, so it is drawing a long bow to say that he personally cut funding to anything. Now I would readily believe that as health minister, Dutton was responsible for actions which resulted in hospitals receiving less funding, but if you're going to make a claim like that, you really to support it with some evidence. But they give no details at all and don't even say how much was cut. And how do they tie schools into it? Dutton never had anything to do with the education portfolio.

So this was the best the ALP could come up with against Dutton.

No mention of the deaths, the tortures, the lies, the racism and the fact that he's only a couple of goose-steps short of having his opponents put against a wall and shot.

It's shockingly bad and incredibly weak. We have one accusation that's merely a bad look but without necessarily involving any impropriety, a second accusation that, if anything, makes him look good and a third that's unduly vague without any evidence to back it up.

The arguments are so weak in fact that I almost suspect that the aim is to garner sympathy for the guy. If I didn't know better, I'd be thinking "if this is all the dirt they could rake up against someone who's been in politics for the best part of 20 years, he must be pretty good."

I am not looking forward to the forthcoming federal election. So far, the ALP seems to be going all-out to lose against the worst government since federation.