Comment

Stan Grant
How Peter Dutton misunderstood the Australian heart

The late Sir Roger Scruton was always among the most admirable and dignified defenders of the tradition of conservatism. He was a British scholar of dignity, humility, intellect and grace. He embodied a timeless gentility and manners. He was a civil cup of tea in a world of political hemlock.

Scruton was always worth reading and listening to, whether or not one agreed with his perspective. He is especially worth revisiting now.

In the wake of the Australian Labor Party’s resounding election victory, we might ask: whither conservatism?

It is an important question. Conservatism is being betrayed by opportunism, ignorance and, at its worst, bigotry. That is not what Scruton advocated.

For Scruton, conservatism was a natural inclination that, at its core, centres family, tradition, community and decency. Conservatism is about preservation. It is about beauty: nature, architecture, art and music.

To Scruton, conservatism is the work of the “invisible hand” of co-operation. Society is not imposed from above but grows from a consensus. Freedom is less a right than an inheritance.

Conservatism is not saying no to change but urging caution. The role of politics is not to engineer society but to reconcile it. In Scruton’s words, “conservatism is a philosophy of inheritance and stewardship”. It is not a philosophy of rampant free markets but the market tempered by a moral order. As Scruton said, we are accountable to our neighbours.

This is the conservatism of 18th century thinker and politician Edmund Burke, who famously envisaged it as a compact between those living, those dead and those yet to be born.

Regardless of how one voted in the election, we can concede that the challenges faced by our country and the world require the ballast of a conservatism that exemplifies the best of its traditions. The contest of ideas between progressivism and conservatism ensures we are accountable.

Progressivism and conservatism are failing us, however. To risk caricature, progressives don’t know when to say stop and conservatives don’t know how to say yes. I think it is reasonable to argue that progressives have exhausted the efficacy of the politics of identity. It is an ideology that has eroded a sense of a civic “we”, a construct essential for healthy democracy.

Conservatives, I’d argue, have an even more pernicious problem, a slide into a primitive fascism.

Throughout the world, conservatism has been hijacked by a militant nostalgia. It longs for an unattainable past that was never as great as its proponents would now have us believe. In America, there is nothing conservative about Donald Trump. In Europe, the resurgence of the far right exhibits the worst of blood and soil hatred.

Australia is not prey to such extremes, but there are worrying signs: the decline of faith, a widening wealth gap, unattainable home ownership, transactional immigration that eschews community bonds, a hostile public discourse, partisan media, and politics that seeks to contrive and inflame division.

In the final week of the election campaign we saw a floundering Peter Dutton flirt with an ugly repudiation of the conservative tradition when he pivoted to a culture war over the question of Indigenous Welcomes to Country. This was calculated and cynical and – I pray this was not his intent – amplified the voices of neo-Nazis who booed the welcome at an Anzac Day service in Melbourne.

Dutton’s decision failed two bedrocks of Australian conservative tradition: an ancient and continuing spiritual welcome to place that extends generosity to the stranger so they are strangers no more; and the Anzac spirit of our shared sacrifice, a day that has taken on the patina of secular liturgy.

Welcome to Country is an inherently conservative practice. It speaks to continuity and embrace. It is uniquely Australian and a gift that should be sparing, sacred and meaningful. I can concede that it has become unnecessarily ubiquitous and performative. At times it is even overtly political. That’s unfortunate. Yet to desecrate it diminishes us all.

To be generous, and one should always be generous, Dutton’s political desperation overwhelmed his personal decency. He is a person friends describe as loyal, who has a loving family and has served the nation in many ways for decades. We saw that decency in his gracious concession speech on election night. It’s so sad that we often see the best of our leaders in defeat.

Dutton fell for the Faustian pact of politics: he sacrificed his soul for the promise of power. We should not reach for leadership; leadership should reach for us. We should not seek glory in leadership but rather humility. Leadership should not enhance the office bearer but instead the people leaders serve.

Leaders should resist the whisperings of their inner devils. Every leader should wake with a prayer of gratitude not hubris. Whatever their public confidence and self-assurance, they should never stray far from their self-doubt.

Our age does not value such virtues and our leaders sadly reflect our age.

Anthony Albanese has ascended to leadership that I suspect exceeds his natural gifts, and that is a good thing in a leader. Without wishing to overstate it, in this regard he resembles Abraham Lincoln and, like Lincoln, Albanese is enhanced by his limitations. His personal story, now familiar – the child of a single mum, raised in public housing and nurtured by community and service, faith and footy – is inspiring.

His first term was not. He has been timid, lacking imagination or reach. His act of political courage in honouring a commitment to the Indigenous Voice referendum was betrayed by his failure to prosecute it.

Aboriginal leaders fought in the trenches and the prime minister was an HQ general. This was a failure of politics more than a failure of our nation’s morality. The Voice was a hard sell for a nation not given to historical introspection, suspicious of rights, decent but not demonstrative. It needed a commanding prime minister and it did not have one.

In the fullness of time and with emotional distance I have become persuaded that the prime minister should have erred towards restraint and called off the referendum when it became clear it was lost. I concede I did not feel that way at the time and that’s why we need leaders, to do the thing we do not want them to do.

As a dear friend of mine succinctly put it: better Anthony Albanese break the hearts of Aboriginal people than to allow the Australian people to hurt their own.

The prime minister failed to shepherd us – all of us – from harm. He should have worn it, not us. The Voice defeat inflicted hurt on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and it exaggerated and validated the small rump of bigots in Australia.

That’s on Albanese.

Dutton has played to that rump: that’s on him. He did it during the Voice debate and he did it during the election campaign. His cynicism eventually got what it deserved on polling night.

The Voice is a fault line in Australian politics. We have yet to reckon with its existential impact. Aboriginal issues do not figure prominently in the minds of everyday Australians. Most barely know us. Yet the place of the original people of this land is inseparable from the question of whatever may constitute a shared national identity.

The Voice referendum and this federal election speak to the need for a revived Australian compact. This is the challenge of leadership. Albanese alone cannot deliver this.

Progressivism is good at change – and change is necessary. Conservatism’s virtue is strengthening connection, building on vertical bonds that go deep, a tradition of mutual affection. It should be a conservatism of preservation, not destruction. Australia’s so-called conservatives don’t get that. They mistook a “No” to the Voice as a “Yes” to bigotry.

Yet Australia is not defined by the Voice result and nor should Indigenous people be. The election has shown we are not a reflexively hateful nation. We have turned a page. It behoves us to extend gratitude and generosity to each other. We should think better of ourselves.

It starts with a recognition – as the prime minister said in his victory speech – that we are Australians: diverse, and with our cultures, faiths and histories, but ultimately bound by a common destiny. For Indigenous people, Australia’s future is our future. For other Australians, Australia’s past is your past. Justice and reconciliation are our shared task.

The suffering of Indigenous people – the most impoverished and imprisoned of all Australians – is a blight on us.

Nations should know who they are. That’s at the heart of our compact.

The Voice tilted at an Australia that Australians did not understand. Dutton tilted at an Australia he did not understand. We are a practical not philosophical people, suspicious of government fiat but not of each other.

There will always be differences and disagreements, but they need not be hateful. There are necessary debates about policy, particularly when it comes to Closing the Gap, which has strayed from a socioeconomic measure to metaphysical questions beyond the ken of politics and the Australian people. That’s a failing of the left.

There are those on the right who foment fear and hate. They lay claim to conservatism but beat up on the most vulnerable. That conservatism has no future. It is not even conservatism. It is a cruel, reactionary politics. It proffers a nasty vision for our nation.

Peter Dutton thought that’s who Australians were. Last weekend, we overwhelmingly told him no.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on May 10, 2025 as "The Australian heart".

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