David Marler
Latest posts by David Marler (see all)
- The West Australian’s Bizarre IR Attack - 8 December 2023
- Queensland’s Nuclear Election - 5 December 2023
- Uneasy path to Treaty for Qld LNP - 6 August 2023
Scrutinising the federal opposition leader and the deputy are important, especially when they are Queensland’s Peter Dutton and David Littleproud.
Why promote Peter Dutton? and just ignore him have been some of the suggestions post-federal election to a few of my tweets over the past weeks. However, it’s worth considering that historically the Australian media isn’t terribly good at scrutinising oppositions. We know that from the Tony Abbott era of opposition. Although there is a risk of promotion, the risk of ending up with another Queensland Premier Campbell Newman or Prime Minister Today Abbott is far higher.
There’s always plenty of news reports on individuals before they become leaders but it’s not always reviewed within the context of their promotion. Take for example new deputy opposition leader, David Littleproud, who is the political descendant of Qld’s notorious former premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen. We know this because he told us but it’s tucked away in an old Warwick Daily article now absorbed into The Courier Mail.
Also a student of the aggressive Joh era politics Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is now on a mission to convince us that there’s another side to him. His supporters have been out to tell us that you can’t judge him by previous deeds.
Some recent scrutiny of Dutton and his ‘forgotten people’ or ‘forgotten Australians’ which a lot of the media missed. It may come as a surprise but this cohort doesn’t exist yet. We know this because he told us.
Another indication of where Dutton and the Coalition are headed is backwards into the culture wars.
With dominance now of the two top spots in the federal Coalition, the Queensland Liberal National Party are on the march at the federal level. We shouldn’t ignore them.
