There’s nothing more devastatingly effective at election time than a well-chosen slogan. With surgical precision, three or four words can sometimes make or break a political party’s campaign.
MPs and marketing gurus agonise over a magic phrase. To be clear, it doesn’t have to be evidence-based or mean anything. It just has to sound like it does. The Voice to Parliament referendum, for instance, seemed a reasonable and doable proposition until Liberal leader Peter Dutton forecast a catastrophe with a tsunami of lies, backed in by a snappy chant: “If you don’t know, vote no.”
Game over.
Coin a phrase
Then there was Tony Abbott’s “Stop the boats!” In one line, the spectre of Australia being swarmed by evil foreign hordes arriving by sea from the north was invoked. It didn’t matter that more asylum seekers were entering Australia by plane. It didn’t matter that it is legal to seek asylum in a foreign country under international law if your life is under threat. The shouty slogan told voters brown people were coming in boats and well, you know, they throw their children overboard, for god’s sake.
But perhaps the most famous political slogan of recent history was that for the ALP in 1972 which helped sweep charismatic lawyer Gough Whitlam to power: “It’s time.” Two words that promised cultural and economic reform in a catchy tune while tapping into the hopes of a nation looking for something greater than their meat-and-three-veg lives.
“Keep the bastards honest” was the holy grail in slogans pledged by straight-talking Democrats leader Don Chipp. It’s still rolled out occasionally today.
And then, from the US, came the mother of all rallying cries: “Make America Great Again.” Used in various forms since Ronald Reagan, the slogan tapped into mass anger over poverty and powerlessness. It became the calling card of bankrupted real estate developer Donald Trump. So completely was the spray-tanned sexual predator able to convince Americans that he was their salvation — assisted by latent white supremacy and that four-word chant — that last year he was elected president for the second time.
Tone of Voice
Enter Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, right-wing firebrand senator and opposition spokeswoman on Indigenous Australians. She is touted among conservatives as a future leader after helping to kill the Voice. Dutton was so impressed with her precision bombing of the referendum that within days of Trump’s inauguration he appointed her opposition spokeswoman on government efficiency — an echo of Elon Musk’s merciless DOGE in the US.
Political editor at The Australian Financial Review Phil Coorey recently wrote that the Liberals’ rush to copy Trump’s playbook had started mildly well but soon became “rat poison”.
“While there was a mild net positive by being associated with Trump soon after his election last year, by January it had become a drag, and now it is rat poison. One party source says that even the Coalition’s innocuous slogan about getting Australia ‘back on track’ now has pejorative overtones because it’s being likened to Make America Great Again.”
Senior Liberal Michaelia Cash had stopped likening Dutton to “action man” Trump. Dutton had stopped praising Trump as a “big thinker”. Apparently gleefully crashing global sharemarkets and losing trillions of dollars, triggering an international trade war, sending a deranged tech bro with a chainsaw out to axe thousands of public sector jobs, and cosying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin was not the look they were going for. Who knew.
Whoops!
Then along came Nampijinpa Price. Nine newspapers said she arrived at the suburban bowling club in Perth on the eve of the Liberal launch like “a rock star … overshadowing the main party leaders on the eve of their campaign launch”. It had seemed a great idea to invite her, given that Dutton has all the charm of a house brick. But then, flanked by Dutton and Cash, the rock star when off script:
“We have incredible candidates right around the country that I’m so proud to be able to stand beside to ensure that we can make Australia great again …”
And there it is. The slogan that must not be spoken is back in town for the Coalition.
Christmas crackers
In no time, internet memes sprang up depicting a head-bandaged Dutton-Basil Fawlty in The Germans episode hissing under his breath to a bemused Polly: “Don’t mention MAGA. I did once but I think I got away with it.”
To underline the Coalition love-in with all things Trump, pictures have emerged of Nampijinpa Price and husband Colin Lillie wearing bright red MAGA Santa hats and smiling broadly last Christmas.
Dutton has carved out the ugly black heart of Trump’s administration and transplanted what he can into the Coalition. And the millions of people around the world who have lost their superannuation, their sharemarket nest eggs, their jobs or their homes while the billionaire president plays golf know what that looks like.
No need to dog-whistle your policies to us any more, Dutts. No need to work on a new slogan or bury the old one. We know exactly who you are.
Nicole Chvastek and Denis Muller will discuss Nampijinpa Price’s MAGA gaffe and other hot button topics on a new episode of their podcast Truth, Lies and Media on Wednesday. You can catch up with other episodes here.
If Trump will of done anything positive, it will be keeping Dutt-the-dud and his gang of LNP incompetents out of office
The masochistic resenters who elected the Trumpig will boost the Duttonator for sure..don’t count him out
“Trumpig” and “Duttonator”! Love the play on words!
Trouble is there are too many conservatives who abide by J K Galbraith’s quote ‘it is a far far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought.
I wouldn’t be so sure. If the Trumping of the Voice was so easily enacted by all those who “didn’t know”, might not those same voters be seduced by MAGA and ensure a return of the Right Wing idealogues?
It’s a possibility Wendy, but I draw your attention to an article by professor Brian klass a lecturer in politics and philosophy. In his article he lays out the reasoning behind the “strong man rise in politics” he reasons that the supporters vote for the people who speak out against those groups from which they are excluded. Hence Trumps 56%+ of the male vote, as Trump spoke out against women gays trans abortion and equality.
Dutton soke out against the voice and got numbers like Trump as the whites said what’s in it for us.
In this campaign he doesn’t have the big target
Price has always been a political lightweight. It was only a matter of time before she would be exposed. Looking forward to her taking a leaf out of Dutts play book and hiding out until things cool off (after the election hopefully). Or even better doubling down and demonstrating to everyone how regressive all her political ideas are.
I would’ve loved to have seen the daggers flying out of Dudds eyes towards The Princess Price.
Yes, to the point, unlike a lot of contemporary journalism.
What Trump and Dutton dont realise, China embarked on making China great many years ago. By making us everything we would ever need at a cheap price. Their manufacturing ability is 2nd to none. So they have Trumped the USA big time with their strategy of making China great. True their has been colleterial damage in this, some have become even more poor and homeless. But the Ferrari and Rolls Royce class keep many in work. China does not care about Tariffs they have already achieved what they set out to do. We should acknowledge that fact.
Maybe something unknown to her, but from within her, was deliberately sabotaging the Right after she betrayed her own people with her anti-Voice rhetoric.
Another excellent article, Nicole! It is a pleasure reading your thoughts and reflections. As for Jacinta Price, it really is the case of a useful idiot who is well past their used by date.
it will be a sad day for Indigenous Australians if Dutton wins and still has Price on his team
Jacinta did indeed betray her own people with her blatant lies about The Voice. It puzzles me and I’m sure many
others why Jacinta has been appointed by Dutton as Shadow Minister for Government Efficiency. Surely an
essential requirement for a portfolio of this nature is a solid knowledge of Government programs, practices and
procedures. Apart from possessing a big mouth and an appetite for big noting herself I don’t think Jacinta has
convinced anyone that she has any of these essential requirements, much like most of the Coalition front bench,
including Dutton.
Pre Covid, Jacinta was on The Drum at least x 2. I remember thinking she is angling for seat in Parliament with the help of the right wing. Think my dislike of her has been justified.
Elon musk has no knowledge of government bureaucracy apart from wanting to wreck it and he runs DOGE so why not Jacinta 🤷🏾♀️
Senator price will try to kill off the voice to parliament legislation in the Senate like she killed off the voice referendum but she does not have the numbers in the senate
Interesting that there was no acknowledgment to country at the LNP launch and no mention of 40,000 years of indigenous existence on this continent but Susan Ley banged on about the history of hardworking shearers who I thought went on strike for better conditions and thus started the labor party at Barcaldine.
On a side note, it strikes me as ironic that the Australian Labor movement was born in Mr. Littleproud’s electorate.
It seems to me that Jacinta (Nampijinpa) Price is emerging as very much a Quisling-type figure, because she happily seems to betray her own people, and, who, incidentally, seems to have been caught with her fingers in the till, and is in danger of placing herself in such ‘illustrious’ company as William Joyce, Pierre Laval, and Philippe Petain. Also, there are sayings by famous people that one is tempted to think that they had Jacinta Price in mind, “Empty vessels make the most noise” (Plato), “It is better to say nothing and be thought a fool, rather than say something and remove all doubt”, Abraham Lincoln), and finally two of my favourite saying from my favourite comedian, Groucho Marx, “S(h)e may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you, S(h)e really is an idiot”, and “These are my principles, and if you don’t like them I have others”. Also, I remember a rather eccentric old supervisor of mine. When I worked in the Commonwealth Department of Transport (the 1960s and 1970s), Alf Barrett used to say about fools, “If (s)he had a brain, it would die of loneliness”. This may likely apply to Jacinta Price as well.
Brutal however may be quite correct!
It’s her smugness that I’m not happy about, she reminds me of Jane Hume, Michaleia Cash, Susan Ley and Pauline Hanson, the ugly sisters of political anal retention.
Another Trumpwit. She betrayed her own people. The quizling should be imprisoned for treason to her own people.
Hear Hear 👍
Jacinta Price – what a treasure. Ask how she knows so much about rorting the system? First hand, on the job experience perhaps. Reclaiming Port of Darwin has turned up on the policy agendas. Ask Dutton which way he was looking when that deal went down. It was on his watch.
I see Little Johnny, Mr Rabbit and ScoMo are turning up on the hustings. Well done lads that’ll seal the deal. As if we needed to be reminded. Good luck, Pete baby. Probably need it.
Jacinta Jampijinpa Price is a Territory Senator and as such is facing re-election. The NT’s two Senate positions are as near to a political sinecure as it is possible to be. One will be elected from each of the major parties unless an amazingly charismatic third person emerges or one of the main party candidates is so popular they carry their second candidate over the line. This almost happened a couple of decades ago when Bob Collins came close. Whether the scales fall from Duttons eyes regarding the emptiness behind Price’s loud mouth and he retains her in is shadow cabinet depends of course on whether he retains his seat, and retains the leadership. Three big questions there which add a soupçon of interest to an otherwise lacklustre campaign. Incidentally, I can find no-one among my acquaintances who think the buyback of the Port of Darwin is anything other than a fifteenth order election issue, promulgated by a rapidly dwindling bunch of anti-China hawks and supporters of a US defence alliance rapidly approaching its use-by date.
That’s all very well but surely the left in Australia is not going to sit there and rely on stuff-ups to get us elected? We need to have tough-minded policy discussions that can return the non-university working class to the left. That’s going to be some tough decisions for the comfortable middle class, not the least of which is challenging the neo-liberal extractivism that pays most of our wages. Let’s nix negative gearing and restore capital gains tax after the first investment property! Let’s tax wealth! Let’s ensure that the migrant intake is never larger than the rollout of schools, hospitals, clinics and public transport! Let’s have a job guarantee and a non-punitive welfare state! I could go on. Let’s talk about that, rather than the self-evident point that the other side are an aggregate of shills, apologists and bottom-feeders.
Dutton’s got Nuttin’ . He’s Mutton dressed up as Jam. Now he’s paid the Price for lying down with DOGE’s.
Dutton is mutton.