With even right-wing media criticising Peter Dutton for taking day trip from the Dunkley by-election to fly to Perth and spend 40 minutes at one other Gina Rinehart occasion, the opposition chief’s slavish relationship with the mining heiress is garnering growing consideration.
Most distinguished main occasion politicians have mates in enterprise. It was solely final month that the prime minister attended a personal occasion hosted by Anthony Pratt in Melbourne that includes an look by Katy Perry. Pratt is a distinguished political donor — more and more to Labor — and his father was an enormous supporter of Albanese’s predecessor as Labor chief, Invoice Shorten. However Dutton’s common journeys to Western Australia to spend time at Rinehart gatherings appear uncommon.
Along with Dutton’s journey to Perth (at his personal expense) final Thursday by way of Melbourne (as revealed by Rear Window’s Mark Di Stefano), previously few years Dutton:
- Travelled to the Pilbara as a visitor of Rinehart (June 2022)
- Was flown to Sydney by Rinehart to, in response to his declaration, attend a Bali bombing memorial (October 2022)
- Was flown by billionaire Tim Roberts to a Rinehart occasion on the Roy Hill mine (November 2023)
On account of her common funding of, and conferences with, Dutton, Rinehart seems to have been rewarded with a key function in growing what passes for Dutton’s coverage positions. Or maybe it’s the opposite manner round: Dutton has been graciously given permission by Rinehart to make use of her insurance policies.
After their June 2022 assembly, Dutton adopted Rinehart’s proposal to extend the brink of revenue pensioners would be capable of earn with out shedding funds — an final result proudly introduced on one in all Hancock’s web sites. Rinehart additionally spruiked nuclear energy earlier than the final election, forward of the Coalition underneath Dutton embracing it in opposition. In August final 12 months, Rinehart issued a full-throated name for nuclear energy as an alternative of “bird-killing wind mills and big photo voltaic panel stretches”. Rinehart’s web site carries a speech Dutton delivered to the minerals trade endorsing small modular reactors (a place now ditched by the Coalition) final 12 months.
Rinehart and Dutton additionally seem on a unity ticket on migration. Final Could, as Dutton was winding up his rhetoric about Labor’s “secret agenda for an enormous Australia”, Rinehart attacked migrants and linked them to “a housing scarcity for Australians … rents are escalating, our hospitals are insufficient with out including extra, police already can’t police crime and crime is escalating, electrical energy necessities will improve, including to unreliability and elevated prices”. This represents a major change of coronary heart for Rinehart: in 2012, the then Labor authorities gave Rinehart approval to herald 1,700 international employees on non permanent visas to work at Roy Hill.
And Rinehart’s assist for the No marketing campaign, which Dutton helped lead, is well-known.
It appears that evidently, with rising calls for for the opposition to supply some coverage past nuclear energy and growing home costs by permitting folks to entry their tremendous, Dutton has a ready-made coverage agenda at his disposal from Rinehart — albeit one which prices some huge cash to entry.