Labor took a big swipe at Peter Dutton this week, but it feels like a swing and a miss.
The attack came on two fronts: Labor raised questions about the opposition leaders’s share trades from 16 years ago, and Nine newspapers published details his multimillion-dollar property portfolio built over 35 years. It smelt like a strategy cooked up by Labor HQ over a Manuka Chinese lunch. Nine, though, insists otherwise and has produced evidence of its independent efforts.
Either way, it reeked of an old-fashioned Canberra bubble way of doing business.
All well and good. But what’s the strategy?
Tricks of the trade
The dodgy share trades story was revealed on Tuesday morning via an “exclusive” from news.com.au’s political editor Samantha Maiden. The platform is Australia’s most-read news site and Maiden is a heavy hitter in Canberra. It revealed that Dutton had bought shares in three of the big four banks in the period before the Rudd government announced financial guarantees to prop up the banks in 2009. Dutton sold the shares weeks later after they jumped in value. He declared the purchases on his register of interests. We don’t know how many shares he traded and he’s not required to declare that.
The story opened up the serious question of whether Dutton had used sensitive information gained from his role as an opposition frontbencher. How exactly that might have happened wasn’t clear but it had the whiff of (alleged) insider trading.
Labor pursued the misuse of information angle via Senate estimates in Parliament and bombarded social media with questions about what Dutton knew and when. But without smoking gun evidence, the allegation lost its sting. By Wednesday night, Labor MP Andrew Charlton was making the case on the ABC’s 7.30 that Dutton was a scoundrel (not his words) because he thought of his own enrichment at a time when it was all hands to the pump to save the economy. Charlton said his jaw had “dropped to the floor” when he saw what Dutton had done.
Here’s the deal
The second hit came on Wednesday morning when the Nine papers revealed that Dutton had made $30 million worth of property transactions across 26 pieces of real estate over 35 years.This made him “one of the country’s wealthiest-ever contenders for prime minister”, the report said. Nine reported that the Dutton family had used family companies, trust funds and a self-managed superannuation scheme, and alleged that this obscured “the full extent” of its net worth because such private vehicles do not disclose their assets.
Dutton has been known as a property wheeler and dealer for years. The report put a valuation on his empire for the first time, juxtaposing his property wealth with the country’s housing crisis. None of Dutton’s actions were alleged to be illegal. The crime was one of perception. The Nine papers even suggested voters might see it as a positive for Dutton as “the son of a bricklayer made good”.
Taken together, the two exclusives showed that Dutton was a wealthier man than we might have known and that he made use of the kinds of investment vehicles normally used by the well-off. How then could he possibly relate to the daily struggles of ordinary folk?
Compliments of the house
The problem with Labor’s attack is that, when it comes to housing, it can’t politically make the obvious point that the tax system is broken because it offers huge incentives for property investors, as well as trust arrangements to increase family wealth. To do so would invite the wrath of the media (and not just the Murdochs) which knows that nothing sells like a housing scare story. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had walked the plank on that when he was forced to rule out any possible tinkering with negative gearing last year.
On top of that, story after story has demonstrated that property investment is a game that Labor and Coalition politicians play with gusto. Who doesn’t have their investment property on the side? And who doesn’t cash in on the generous allowance ($318 a night) for politicians who stay in the family-owned investment unit while Parliament is sitting?
The common cause means the housing wealth attack on Dutton was bound to be muted and certainly defanged. People in glass houses and all that.
It’s hard, for example, to see ALP parliamentarians such as Charlton prosecute the case. He founded a consulting and technology consultancy which he sold to Accenture, the global multinational professional services company. To land a berth in Parliament, Charlton moved from the family’s $16 million home in eye-wateringly-wealthy Bellevue Hill and bought a house in battlerville North Parramatta. He later purchased a sub-penthouse in Parramatta. He also reportedly bought a $12 million home in Palm beach in 2024 with his barrister wife.
Life lessons
Another lesson to be drawn is that if you raise allegations stretching back years you’d better score a bull’s-eye — especially in the age of a fragmented media and where the Murdochs run defence for conservative politicians.
On the evidence of this week it feels like it’s the two-party system which is flailing around, with both parties compromised by their actions and too frightened of media blowback to make meaningful change.
Oh for a barefoot political leader who comes to the debate with clean hands and really doesn’t give a toss about a burgeoning housing portfolio.
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Attacking Charlton for his success is an absurd “defence” of the allegations against Dutton. Nothing yet provided by the defending parties should convince anybody to reject the allegations.
Absolutely agree with John Sneddon that attacking Charlton does not satisfy any allegation against Dutton. Voters need and deserve to know the exact details of those specific dealings by Dutton.
I smell an insider RAT
And nothing to critique about the uncanny and astute timing of the investments. . .No ‘insider trading’?
2009 was when the critique should have taken place if there was anything disastrous here.
A politician such as Morrison, Dutton, Hockey, Robert… can only be trusted as far as they can be kicked, however, if they wish to have their dubious gains go without comment, leave the political sphere.
“Canny investments” made when when the information was flowing freely and as the rest of the world fell into the economic abyss does nothing of any credit for his reputation of “Me, myself and I”.
Dutton can resign and nobody will be interested
Negative gearing for houses/properties should be limited to no more than 2 houses/properties per person.
This may make housing cheaper for first home buyers.
It should only apply to the building of a new house for renting. Outside that, a house is not a contributor to the economy. Once built no significant capital, resources or labour is used. Capital gain when sold only extracts the same amount, by the buyer, from the economy. If it now becomes the residence of the buyer that is simply fulfilling their right to have a roof over their head. If it is now another investment by the buyer, full capital gains should be taxed if the sell it.
A barracks style accommodation complex should be built for the politicians and staff to stay in Canberra.
$300+/night should easily cover it.
As a FIFO worker I’ve stayed in many camps that would suffice and there a plenty of businesses that could run them.
That would make the free marketeers happy
Difficult in the “Canberra bubble”.
Good balance. The Dutton case seems to demonstrate that politicians, particularly LNP, can’t help themselves but to create laws and circumstances that they and their cohort can take immediate advantage of. It’s about power under the ideology of “me first” dressed up as “free markets”, “business-good government-bad”, small government, deregulation, not about the greater good.
Attacking how Dutton became wealthy seems like a good idea, but it is fraught with uncertainty. We ask: how did a Queensland cop get that rich? How dodgy is that? He might even have taken advantage of insider info to buy and sell when he did. But it’s not the point. Dutton wants to be Trump-lite, a hard right, authoritarian leader. Labor should be pointing at his cruel indifference to the refugees on his watch, the indifference to the Pasifika people’s concerns with climate change and First Nation people’s reverence for country, the transparent servitude to Big Money Fossil Fuel oligarchs and how we as Australians are not in the market for a dictator, especially one who will gaslight the ignorant, ill- and uneducated, misinformed and politically illiterate constituency with a bullshit Topham Guerin series of PR social media pieces that are emotion-heavy on alleged Labor bungling and devoid of fact, let alone fact-checking.
Not my job to give strategy advice to Labor but that sounds like pretty good thinking to me Jon.
Absolutely correct John.
The voters deserve to be fully appraised of a MP’s wealth and assets, including those held in Trusts and other tax minimising arrangements. Particularly if they have a real chance of becoming the PM. Whether it changes votes or not is debatable, but transparency is always a winner. That includes how that wealth was generated.
Couldn’t agree more but they don’t have to under present parliamentary rules. The blind trust is a corker.
Whilst the use of housing as an investment with tax concessions now affecting thousands of Australians is bad, insider trading is worse. However I was far more appalled by the purchase of the shopping plaza in Townsville which was allowed to be run down without inadequate maintenance, failure to pay rates and other bills. The disregard for the small business owners and the customers is a disgrace for someone making out he is their friend. He was forced to sell at a loss and no doubt this provided a good tax deduction on capital gains.
Absolutely agree about the refugee issue. Where’s the compassion?
With all that share trading and property buying and selling, how does Dutton have time for his Parliamentary work?
Going after Dutton in this way reeks of desperation. People who don’t like him will think what a mongrel, people who do will think good on him. Makes Labor look extremely weak. Will the first politician who doesn’t have a multi million dollar portfolio please step forward.
I’m almost beginning to think that allowing property investors to make the laws for property investment was some sort of mistake