Over the past 25 years of engaging with community, industry, academia, and government, I have strongly argued that substantive reconciliation involves a number of critical components, including recognising Indigenous rights, including self-determination, challenging racism and white fragility, addressing truth-telling and education, respecting Indigenous cultures and knowledges, and achieving distributive and reparative justice. On all these key components of reconciliation, a Dutton Government would be an unmitigated disaster.
Peter Dutton has long had an appalling record on reconciliation. In 2008, he was the only Liberal/ National Coalition frontbencher to boycott the Rudd Labor Government's National Apology to the Stolen Generations. He took over 14 years to apologise for this failure, and only when he became Opposition Leader.
As Minister for Health in the Abbott Government, he presided over a $160+ million cut in Indigenous health programs. As Defence Minister in the Morrison Government, he cancelled a plan to dual name several key Australian defence bases.
After months of equivocating on whether to support the Albanese Labor Government's commitment for a First Nations Voice to Parliament, Dutton announced in April 2023 that a hastily called meeting of the Liberal Party had decided not to support the Voice. This was a cynical political move calculated to attack Labor and to ward off internal and external criticism of his leadership, following the Aston by election result just days earlier, where Dutton became the first Opposition Leader in over 100 years to lose a federal seat to the Government.
The next six months saw Dutton engage in some of the most divisive political campaigning in Australian history. He attempted to confuse the electorate with significant levels of lies and misinformation. For example, he stated there is no such similar body to the Voice in the world, despite many examples of similar structures both internationally and at local and state governments in Australia. He also claimed legal experts were divided on the 'risk' of the Voice, despite the overwhelming majority of legal experts stating there was no risk.
At the same time that Dutton, and other conservative opponents of the Voice, engaged in these extraordinary levels of misinformation and confusion, Dutton also created, and used ad nauseum, one of the most anti-democratic slogans that has ever been uttered by a major political leader in this country. This slogan – "the Voice, if you don't know, vote no" – was designed to exploit the very significant levels of ignorance and apathy in relation to Indigenous matters, truth-telling, and reconciliation, that exists among so many non-Indigenous peoples.
During the Voice campaign, Dutton committed to holding another Referendum to recognise Indigenous peoples in the Constitution, despite Indigenous peoples overwhelmingly preferring a Voice over Constitutional recognition.
Unsurprisingly, after the devastating defeat of the Voice, Dutton soon backflipped on his commitment to hold this second Referendum. This backflip justified the scepticism expressed by many in the Voice campaign that this commitment was simply a political stunt designed to reduce support for the Voice Referendum.
Following the rejection of the Voice, Dutton has continued with his divisive attacks on Indigenous and reconciliation matters. He has stated that he would not stand in front of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags if elected Prime Minister, seemingly not understanding that these are official flags. He has criticised the numbers and costs of Welcomes to Country, illustrating his ignorance of both these beautiful ceremonies and their incredible contribution to Australia, and the differences between Welcomes and Acknowledgements of Country.
Of course, we have seen in recent days, the appalling racism and division that can occur in the wider community when politicians dog-whistle on cultural matters. While Dutton condemned the disgraceful booing of a Welcome to Country at the 2025 Melbourne ANZAC Day ceremony, he has though stated his opposition to these ceremonies occurring on ANZAC Day, ignoring both the importance of these ceremonies and that Indigenous peoples have long served their country in the armed services, while suffering racism and discrimination back at home.
Other examples of Dutton's obsession with fighting his culture wars include attacking businesses who aren't as jingoistically obsessed as he is in celebrating "Australia Day", promising to abolish the First Nations Ambassador role in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and looking to reverse the Department of Defence's policy of dual naming military bases (a policy he cancelled as Defence Minister). Dutton has also failed to address the appalling rise in racism caused by his divisive attacks on Indigenous matters; he has in fact exploited this racism.
During the 2025 election campaign, Dutton's Indigenous Affairs policies, apart from continuing to prosecute his culture wars, are to conduct a financial audit into Indigenous programs, and establish a Royal Commission into Indigenous family violence. These promises ignore that Indigenous programs are already subject to significant levels of strict audits and reviews, and that numerous Indigenous organisations have consistently stated a Royal Commission is unnecessary as it would politicise Indigenous Affairs and duplicate previous inquiries.
A Dutton Government would result in incalculable harm to our national journey of reconciliation.
Professor Andrew Gunstone is an international authority on reconciliation. He is Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor Reconciliation and Professor Indigenous Studies at Federation University, where he established and leads the National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth, and Justice, a national academic think-tank on reconciliation. He is also Co-Chair of Reconciliation Victoria and sits on several international, national and regional reconciliation committees.
