Peter Dutton’s big Queensland energy

Jason. Hey, it's Ruby.

Ye.

Ruby, it's great to finally hear your voice and see you in person.

It's so nice to be back, and I'm really excited to work with you. I've been admiring a journalism for a long time and I'm looking forward to this well.

I've been a devoted listener and it's great to be working with you.

Thank you. So let's get started. From Schwartz Media.

I'm Ruby Jones, back from maternity leave and this is seven am. One thing that has surprised people this year is how often Peter Dutton has been able to wrong foot labor. According to staffers, a key part of this is the fact that Dutton is from Queensland and no Liberal leader has ever come from the state. With Queensland going to an election in October, the state campaign is now a testing ground for a new kind of politics

That's coming up. It's Monday, the fifteenth of July.

Jason, this week you've been looking into the way events in Queensland informing Peter Dutton's vision for his party and for the country. Queensland is right now in the middle of an election campaign, So tell me what the election is being fought on.

So the Queensland election will be on October twenty six, Ladies and gentlemen.

This election is for our state. This election is for Queenslanders.

And the state opposition leader David Chrisp fully has identified four key issues. Is that he intends to fight this election on cost of living crisis, a health crisis, the housing crisis and what the Liberal National Party in Queensland is calling the youth crime crisis.

Friends of youth crime crisis has changed the way Queensland has lived their life. Our faith in the safety of our community has been shaken.

So youth crime has become a huge issue in Queensland and the narrative has kind of been built around a number of quite serious, very high profile crimes committed by miners in Queensland in the past few years. In February this year, a seventy year old great grandmother named Violin White was allegedly attacked by a group of five teenagers in a supermarket car park and stabbed to death while

The youth crime crisis keeps getting worse under Labor.

This was the very much a focus of both his address to the Party Faithful and Peter Dutton's address the day before.

When a young person turns eighteen, they stop offending. They know that depending on which side of Aideen they are, there will be different consequences.

Rob and David Christoph fully unveiled a policy. This is I guess he's one of his market policies as we head towards the election, that youth offenders committing adult crimes should receive adult equivalent sentences.

Today I announced we will restore consequences for actions for young criminals, adult crime, adult time.

He's calling it adult time for adult crime. While Queenslanders believe that the majority of crime is being committed by children, that isn't born out in the facts. And the main thing that's making the community unsafe is is domestic violence. This is men harming women and children in their homes. But instead of focusing on that issue, both parties in Queensland are running on youth crime. This is a really crucial state election campaign, not just for Queenslanders but for

Okay, So Peter Dutton was famously a police officer before he became a politician, so being tough on crime is.

Very much part of his rhetoric. It always has been.

Can you tell me specifically about some of the things that we've heard from him in the past about youth crime.

Well, I think right from the moment that Peter Dutton entered Parliament Federal Parliament in two thousand and one, crime LAURA and order have been staples of his public comments.

I often say to people that as a police officer, I've seen the best and the worst that society has to offer.

He also didn't hesitate to speak out on more kind of state based crime issues. In twowenty eighteen, the death of a South Sudanese teenager in Melbourne's CBD was, according to Peter Dutton, indicative of a major laura or a problem Victoria. He also said that Victorians were too frightened to go out to restaurants because of the problem surrounding African gang violence.

Now people are scared to go out to restaurants at nighttime because they're followed home by these gangs. Home invasions and cars are stolen and which need to cause what it is, of course of the African gang violence.

In May he announced a couple of initiatives that one of those was he criminalized you know, showing off of crimes on social media.

We want to give the new Safety Commissioner the power to pull content down, so the videos or the photos can be pulled down. Secondly, we want to make an offense to post them, and we want to stop people using social media as a penalty and the technology.

He also said that he would keep the age of criminal responsibility at ten years old.

If children at that age who are ten or twelve years of age out stealing cars and involved in crime, if they know and they can work out pretty quickly there's no penalty that they're facing, then they're just encouraged to continue that life of crime. And that's not what you want.

When we talk about Peter Dutton, we don't just say that he was a former police officer. It's always somehow that he's a former Queensland copper. And I think that does also remind us that Peter Duttany is the first leader of the Federal Coalition who wasn't from Sydney or Melbourne, and I think his Queensland identity is really starting to show in the way that he's leading the Federal Coalition and the policy directions that he's taking them on.

Jason Peter Dutton, we all know, began his working life as a police officer in Queensland, He's now the first Federal Coalition leader who doesn't come from either Sydney or Melbourne. So how should we think about this. How does being from Queensland impact the way that Dunne works and what he focuses on.

Well, I think Ruby, the thing about being a leader of the Federal Coalition from Melbourne or Sydney means you're probably more in tune with some of the Liberal Party's biggest traditional supporters, and that is Corporate Australia. But being from Queensland means it gives you more license to follow policies that aren't necessarily the sort of things that the

I think there are debates that Corporate Australia should be involved in, and at the moment I don't think they're paying due consideration to the views of their workforce.

Corporate Australia was very much behind the Voice referendum, the Yes campaign and Peter Dutton was diametrically opposed to the Voice and Peter Dutton's No campaign and the substantial victory that the no campaign had. I think that gave him the confidence to say, well, I can go against what corporate Australia wants and campaigns for and still win. And he's used that experience to pursue other things that big

I don't want the lights to go out. I want them to be reliable power. I want pensions to be able to pay their bills and turn the air conditioning on to get through winter. I want to make sure that businesses can grow here, not close and move to Malaysia or somewhere else in Ontario.

Peterduton wants people to see him as someone who is aligned with the interests of small business, not big business. And the more that he does that, Peter Dutton believes, the more chance he has of becoming Prime Minister next year.

Right, so, it sounds like, at least at this moment in time, this approach of ignoring some of the corporate agenda is working for Dunton.

I suppose The question is how far.

He can take this given the factions within his own party and the desires of the traditional base of the coalition.

Well so, the kinds of policies that Peter Dunton has been pursuing has left some long term observers of Liberal Party politics like Judith Brett. She was a professor of politics at the Trope University. She's spent much of her life researching the Liberal Party. She says that she doesn't really know what the Liberal Party stands for anymore. What are the Liberal Party's core beliefs. In her view, the Liberal Party is one of the great Australian political parties.

So if we talk a little bit more about if and when the coalition might get into government, do you think that this law and order agenda will translate on a national level Competer Dutton win a federal election by promising to be tough on crime.

I mean, it's a really good question because when Peter Dutton is talking about youth crime, he's signaling to young parents and parents in out of suburban areas that he's concerned about the issues that they're concerned about, and showing that he's in sick with what their concerns are. Peter Dutton has twenty one seats in Queensland, so he's got Queensland locked up pretty well. But he also needs to really win some of those inner suburban seats, the ones

Jason, thank you so much for your time.

Thanks Ruby, it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you.

Likewise, also in the news today, Donald Trump has been rushed from a stage at a political rally in Pennsylvania in what is being investigated as an assassination attempt. Two people are dead, including a suspected gunman. In video and photo footage from the event, the former president can be seen with blood his face as he was escorted off the stage by secret service. Trump held his fist in

I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. See you tomorrow.