Paul Sakkal and Matthew Knott
Peter Dutton has become the first federal opposition leader to lose his seat after voters ejected him from the suburban Brisbane seat of Dickson - and the Liberal leadership - leaving his Coalition colleagues devastated.
The result has sent a shockwave through the Coalition, which will be in opposition for another term after a heavy loss on Saturday night that has left the Liberal Party searching for a new leader.
Just a few weeks ago, the Coalition believed Dutton had a serious chance of defeating Anthony Albanese’s government after just one term in power for Labor, but there is now an open contest for the leadership of the Liberal Party.
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| Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said he had called Labor candidate Ali France to congratulate her on her victory. Credit:James Brickwood |
The Coalition leader was defeated by Labor candidate Ali France, a disability advocate with an amputated leg who had already contested the seat against Dutton twice. She had to overturn a 1.7 per cent margin to win.
Dutton, 54, is the first sitting party leader to lose their seat at an election since then-prime minister John Howard was beaten in Bennelong on the same night he lost government in 2007. Nationals leader Charles Blunt lost his seat of Richmond at the 1990 election, which was won by Labor.
Dutton told Coalition supporters in Brisbane that he had called France to congratulate her on her victory, saying: “She will do a good job as a local member … I wish her all the best.”
Dutton said France’s late son, Henry, who died of leukemia last year, would be proud of his mother’s victory.
He added that he was proud of breaking the “one-term curse” in Dickson in which the seat had regularly changed hands between major parties before he entered parliament in 2001.
Before Dutton’s loss was confirmed, Coalition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume said it “will be very sad” to see Dutton leave parliament if he loses his seat as the vote returns suggest.
“Peter is a very popular colleague among his colleagues,” Hume told Channel Seven. “He is a very good man.”
Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan left open the possibility of running for the party’s leadership, as he lamented the loss of Dutton’s seat.
“If it is confirmed that Peter Dutton has lost his seat, that means it’s an extremely difficult night for us tonight,” he told the ABC.
Shadow attorney-general Michaelia Cash credited Dutton with making the Coalition competitive for most of the past three years after Scott Morrison’s 2022 defeat.
Cash told Nine: “The online campaign by Labor and the Greens against Peter Dutton was probably the most disgusting I have ever seen, and I think that has resonated with people.”
Indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jacinta Price said Dutton’s defeat was a huge loss for the party and accused Labor of waging a brutally effective negative campaign against him.
“If you sling enough mud, it will stick,” she said.
Dutton had held the seat since 2001, when at the age of 30 he took it from former Australian Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot, who had defected to Labor.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited Dickson on March 29, the day after he called the election. He received criticism at the time for spending time in a seat Labor had repeatedly fallen short of winning when most commentators believed Albanese was on the defensive and likely to lose his governing majority.
The prime minister again visited the seat in Brisbane’s outer north-west on Friday, book ending his campaign in his opponent’s seat and denying that he was playing mind games.
“No, we’re trying to win a seat,” Albanese told reporters in Brisbane.
Outside of Albanese’s two visits, Labor sent senior ministers into Dickson to knock on doors and hand out flyers, including Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who was there on Friday.
Dutton argued repeatedly during the campaign that Labor was talking a big game in his seat as a cynical ploy to raise funds from people motivated to depose him.
“If you have a look at Dickson, it had what they used to call a one-term curse,” Dutton said on Thursday. “It’s always been a marginal seat, and it’s been a marginal seat because as you look around us, there’s a diversity of suburbs and socio-demographics in my electorate. It’s a classic example of how people are really doing it tough.”
The Coalition reached a high-water mark in Queensland at the last election, reducing Labor to just five of the 30 seats in the state. Since 2022, Albanese has often visited Queensland in the hopes of turning around the party’s fortunes. Labor was last night on track to win seven to nine more seats in the state.
Early in his political career, Dutton boosted his margin steadily before a swing of nearly 9 per cent in 2007 meant he held Dickson by just 215 votes.
An unfavourable redrawing of the electorate’s boundaries before the 2010 election wiped out his margin and prompted him to seek nomination for a vacant Gold Coast seat. He was rebuffed by local branch members and was eventually easily re-elected.
Swings to and against Dutton left him with a margin of under 2 per cent at both the 2016 and the 2022 elections, before he boosted his majority at the 2019 election when Labor leader Bill Shorten performed poorly in Queensland.
Labor’s Ali France courted controversy last week when it emerged she tweeted fake images of Dutton wearing a Nazi uniform in 2017. Dutton accused Albanese of “trashing his own credibility” by defending the Labor candidate, whom Albanese called “an extraordinary person”.
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald