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Two events over the last week illustrate why Donald Trump’s victory will give heart to Peter Dutton that he has a real chance now to consign Labor to one-term status at next year’s federal election.
One was the High Court accepting the arguments of refugee advocates that around 150 foreign-born convicted criminals, including scores of sex offenders who can’t currently be deported, can’t be subject to monitoring and curfews. The decision reignites the controversy around criminals freed by the High Court in its NZYQ decision, which the government badly bungled in 2023. At least this time around, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke had new legislation ready for introduction to restore ankle bracelets and curfews and find new ways to deport the criminals. Needless to say, that didn’t stop the Coalition from savaging the government over the decision.
The other was the announcement by NSW state government-owned Sydney Water that it wanted to increase water charges by an astonishing 50% over the next five years. Why? “To secure Sydney’s future by planning and building today to support population growth of 1.7 million people by 2050.”
That is, a state Labor government wants people in Sydney to pay half as much again for the water out of their taps so that a federal Labor government can bring millions more people into Australia. It’s a very direct connection between migration and inflation. The former, famously, is Trump’s signature issue, and one that Dutton has emphasised as well, while inflation is now being cited as the reason why Trump was able to prevail in the US despite the rude health and declining interest rates of the US economy.
Reinforcing that narrative is the Albanese government’s failure to bring immigration down as fast as it forecast, with Treasury secretary Steven Kennedy admitting this week that the budget migration forecasts would be exceeded. Why? “Rather than depart, many migrants have extended their stay by applying for new visas, including permanent visas.”
That would have been music to Dutton’s ears — the government admitting that Labor was failing to meet its migration targets because too many people were staying longer than they should. Dutton was ahead of the game on that issue, describing foreign students extending their visas as “the modern version of boat arrivals”.
They’re nothing of the sort, of course: foreign students are here legally and are entitled to seek visa extensions, bringing in export revenue and much-needed labour. But the comparison to boat arrivals is an effort by Dutton to reanimate the hostility towards asylum seekers in the electorate. If there are no boats, Dutton will dress up anything he can get his hands on to make them look like boats. Criminals the government can’t deport. Foreign students. Don’t sweat the details, just think boats.
But he doesn’t need to make such clumsy connections. Boat arrivals were a cultural issue, a tender spot in the psyche of a white Australia founded on dispossession. It was never about economics, because even at the maximum number of boat arrivals, the number of asylum seekers involved was insignificant to the overall population. But linking legitimate migration and inflation solves the problem of not having any boats. Every household, no matter how they view refugees, endures the economic impacts of high migration, from crowded schools and roads to housing unaffordability and high-density development.
That the detail of how, exactly, Dutton will cut back migration is confusing even to his own frontbenchers isn’t important, not when much of Australia’s media think holding power to account only applies to Labor. Nor does it matter that migration brings disinflationary impacts as well — how will we build as many houses as we need without addressing trades shortages through immigration? How will we prevent skill shortages across the economy from driving wages up once the Reserve Bank starts cutting interest rates?
But that’s all nuance, and voters don’t do nuance.
Dutton is already well down the path laid by Trump. The latter’s victory will confirm the need to go even harder — that and the fact that the Albanese government looks weak, even helpless, and has sat by and watched its lead in the polls vanish. Even if Dutton is not able to secure a resounding victory, he may well win enough seats to make the Coalition the largest bloc in the House of Representatives, putting him in the box seat to negotiate his way to the prime ministership.
That’s if the misogynist right within and outside his own ranks doesn’t inflict the same damage on Dutton that Robbie Katter inflicted on David Crisafulli. No wonder Dutton has been laying down the law to his feral reactionary MPs on abortion. Suddenly he can see a real path to power next year. He wants to spend the months leading up to the election talking about migration driving up household bills, not men trying to control women’s bodies. If he can do that, there’s a solid chance he’ll be the next prime minister.