Peter Dutton and the Coalition tried to fight this election on flags and ceremonies — and the Australian people weren't having it.

In the final weeks of the campaign, Dutton ramped up a culture war targeting Welcome to Country ceremonies and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags. He sought to reignite bitterness over the Voice referendum. But the strategy failed spectacularly. In the clearest repudiation of all, Dutton appears to have suffered an eight per cent swing against him in his own seat of Dickson.

He and around thirteen of his Liberal colleagues — including a number of front-benchers — now look set to be ejected from Parliament in an historic defeat.

Labor will easily form a majority government.

This result is a national rejection of a small-minded, divisive Coalition campaign that ignored the real issues facing Australians — especially Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

While Dutton fixated on flags and welcomes, the Coalition failed to lead on jobs, housing, health care, infrastructure, education, and community safety.

Over the past three years, instead of presenting a serious policy agenda, the Liberals spent their energy tearing down the Voice without offering a comprehensive plan to address the issues that communities are crying out for action on.

As the election approached, our newsroom prepared to analyse detailed policy proposals: responses to overcrowded housing, youth detention, the shortage of health professionals in remote areas, and the crisis in family and domestic violence. But those policies never arrived.

We reached out repeatedly to Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price's office for comment. More often than not, we received no response. They had little to say.

Now, post-election, Senator Price has emerged to blame "media mudslinging" for the result and admitted the Coalition "may not have effectively communicated" its message. But it's not a communications failure — it's a policy vacuum. It's a refusal to engage seriously with the structural issues facing First Nations communities.

Senator Price also admitted her campaign had focused on "fighting the narrative of Indigenous disadvantage" — a revealing comment that underscores the gap between the Coalition's ideological focus and the lived experience of so many in our communities.

During the campaign, Dutton doubled down on his refusal to stand in front of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags if elected Prime Minister. "We unite under one flag," he said — dismissing decades of formal recognition of those flags as symbols of our shared national story.

And it got worse after Anzac Day, when Dutton chose to validate fringe voices who booed a Welcome to Country ceremony. Rather than defend respect and inclusion, he gave oxygen to their outrage, saying: "The majority view would be that they don't want it on that day."

For three years, the Coalition had the opportunity to lead. So what did they do? Where was their plan to close the education gap? To reduce suicide rates? To invest in housing and justice reinvestment? To support First Nations women and children escaping violence?

Nowhere to be seen.

Instead, Dutton and his party treated Indigenous issues as political bait — to divide, to distract, to exploit. They pushed culture wars when what we needed were policies. They offered wedge politics when communities needed real solutions.

The 2025 election result is a direct response to that failure. Voters saw through the empty slogans. They rejected a party that had nothing to offer Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people but blame, denial and silence.

If the Coalition wants to be relevant again, it must abandon its obsession with division and start doing the real work — work that improves lives, not just headlines.

Reece Harley, Managing Director, National Indigenous Times.