If there is one thing you can count on the Coalition under Dutton to do, it’s live in the past

(First published in The New Daily 8 March 2025)

Well, those two weeks were quite the month, weren’t they?

The headlines could cause whiplash; from a focus on the alternative prime minister’s past, to election date scuttle, to Chinese military vessels niggling boundaries, to Donald Trump making it clear to the people in the back where his America stands – it’s easy to see how quickly news fatigue can set in.

Trump, who is doing exactly as intended, is following the well-worn path his once most trusted adviser Steve Bannon described as ‘flooding the zone with sh-t’, which is a strategy that boils down to hacking the media’s inability to focus when there are so many shiny headlines around.

The leopards didn’t just tell people they would eat faces, they explained how they would do it. But we have a habit in modern democracies of prescribing good faith to people running in positions we have been taught to respect.

Sure, Trump is enabling an unelected foreign billionaire to rampage through the country and by association the world, slashing foreign aid, backing in the far right, lying about allied leaders and abandoning the principles of democracy. But did you hear he’s bringing back plastic straws?

And yeah, the tech giants that own our data, dictate how we see the world and what information we are allowed are quietly rewriting maps and calendars at the behest of a Diet Coke slurping ego-maniac with the emotional regulation of a caffeinated toddler.

But the opposing party wore pink this week and held up little signs, so don’t worry about a thing.

It was almost a relief to see Australian politics follow the predictable paths of not acknowledging anything wider happening in the world, because, well ‘it’s just not the right time’.

As I write this, I am flicking between this page and the BoM weather radar where a cyclone is threatening most of the people I love in the world.

Preparations went on all week, with politicians across the political divide working together to prepare communities for what is being called a ‘once in 50-year event’ and is anything but normal.

Nothing reminds people of the precariousness of existence, or just how finite our resources really are like an impending climate disaster.

And you’re allowed to talk about that as much as you want.

You can use words like resilience and callbacks to former premier Anna Bligh’s ‘we are Queenslanders’ speech, and remind the nation that Queenslanders are “the people that they breed tough north of the border”.

The ones “that they knock down … and get up again” and that weather “may break our hearts … but it will not break our will” and community and coming together and the humour in watching dad’s move barbecues a little bit further under the verandah and setting up meet-ups to ‘blow Alfred back east’ – you can talk about all of that.

Just as long as you never, ever, talk about the reason for it.

Especially if you are Peter Dutton. Because if there is one thing you can count on the Coalition under Dutton to do, it’s live in the past.

Dutton responded to the Greens leader Adam Bandt rationally linking worsening weather events to climate change (something we used to call ‘a fact’) and very quickly used his friendly media bullhorn to accuse Bandt, and anyone else raising facts, of “playing politics with this event”.

“I think people understand that, as I say, it’s not a regular occurrence, but certainly with precedence in this part of the world. That’s the reality of weather systems,” Dutton, who has no climate policies despite being the leader of the party wanting to be the alternative government, said.

Greens MPs, like Labor and Coalition MPs, had been out helping their communities prepare, filling sandbags and talking people through evacuation procedures.

Federal Greens had asked their local MPs, if they were comfortable speaking on the climate elephant in the room and were told, resoundingly yes – because it was being raised on the streets by people trying to work out how to sandbag their properties.

Because Australians, whether Dutton wants to acknowledge it or not, are able to see what is happening.

But maybe those conversations aren’t happening in the rooms Dutton is in.

Shortly after his interview where he accused people of ‘politicising’ a cyclone, the Australian Financial Review reported Dutton had left Queensland to attend a fundraiser thrown in a Sydney billionaire’s Vaucluse mansion.

It’s never the time to talk about the reason behind our worsening climate disasters, but apparently a looming climate disaster can’t stand in the way of political fundraising.

Because if you only ever see things through a political lens, everything can be justified.

It’s not as though Dutton hadn’t already calculated the potential for political mileage himself, having earlier in the week warned Anthony Albanese against calling an election this weekend (as rumoured) while Queenslanders were facing down Cyclone Alfred.

“People probably want from their Prime Minister governing not campaigning, at a time like this,” Dutton said on Wednesday, the day after he had spent the evening hobnobbing in Vauclause.

People probably want their politicians mapping out a way through the climate crisis, at a time like this too.

But it’s not the time for that. Oh no. That would be “politicising” what is already inherently political.

Constantly claiming that ‘it’s not the time’ to speak about what is right in front of us, that it’s ‘politicising’ to speak about something that politics governs the policies for, is what got us into this mess.

And it serves political vested interests to not speak about it.

The way to beat that? The same way you tackle all bad faith politics; by cutting through the sh-t and focusing on flushing the toilet.

Politicians can claim whatever they like. They can’t hold back reality. And collectively, they can’t hold back you.

Amy Remeikis is chief political analyst for The Australia Institute. Read more from her and the institute here