The brutish opportunism of Peter Dutton’s call for a shopper ban on Woolworths over the marking of Australia Day will be costly for the opposition leader in the political marketplace.
It wasn’t a smart strategy to threaten a corporate giant over its legitimate business decision. Other corporate giants who have backed the Liberals in the past might see this as a worrying precedent for a possible Dutton government.
And any expectations that media outlets would vigorously endorse a boycott of a major advertiser will already have disappeared.
A longer-term consequence will be that the boycott call confirms Dutton has little capacity for mediation, moderation and productive settlement.
He is from the school of “punishers” and “straighteners”, as historian Manning Clark so vividly labeled them, with a mindset intolerant of allowing any disagreement to escape a disproportionately large penalty.
Further, he is adopting a specifically designed claim of patriotism to further his political aims. He is prepared to fight for tacky Australia Day items for all. As if nothing is more patriotic than an Australian flag bikini.
Dutton has been staunchly backing a 26 January Australia Day date in what has been a scrappy national debate now fast becoming an annual event.
The Dutton date was somehow sacred, in party political terms at least.
Then along comes Woolworths saying its sales figures are showing diminished consumer interest in 26 January products.
“There has been a gradual decline in demand for Australia Day merchandise from our stores over recent years. At the same time there’s been broader discussion about 26 January and what it means to different parts of the community,” said the company on Thursday, linking fallen sales to the debate.
“We know many people like to use this day as a time to get together and we offer a huge variety of products to help customers mark the day as they choose.”
Allowing people to mark Australia Day “as they chose” was a challenge to Dutton the straightener, and he quickly came up with a punishment.
“I would advise very strongly to take your business elsewhere and go to IGA or Coles or Aldi. I think until we get common sense out of a company like Woolworths, I don’t think they should be supported by the public,” the opposition leader said Thursday.
(A slight flaw in his injunction was that Aldi also decided to be Australia Day ephemera free, and Kmart has been since last year. Why no Dutton boycott on them?)
So what further stoked the ever-present Dutton anger?
“For Woolworths to start taking political positions to oppose Australia Day is against the national interest, the national spirit,” he said, which was at a minimum questionable, if not total bunkum.
Dutton’s grandstand political strategy is obvious, but who would be suckered in by it?
Enter on cue One Nation’s Senator Pauline Hanson, who wants Woolworths to pay a price not only for ignoring Australia Day merch, but for backing the losing Yes case in October’s Indigenous Voice referendum. This, she claimed, showed the company was out of touch.
Hanson rarely shirks fondness for low-grade argument and maintained that affection on Thursday when she joined and elaborated on the boycott move.
She accused Woolworths of “dictating to Australians”, and said she was offended. But not just by Woolworths.
“Today I was in a Bunnings store where an employee told me staff had been instructed to wear no items associated with celebrating Australia Day because it might offend someone,” said Hanson on Thursday.
There is no group-wide policy to that effect, a Bunnings spokesperson said in response.
But back to Dutton and a factor in his anti-Woolies line. He has used that attack to appeal to the same people Hanson considers her One Nation tribe, a significant slab of the electorate antagonistic towards big business and big politics.
The opposition leader said the Liberals were no longer “the party of big business”. Instead, it was the “friend of the worker and the small business owners and employees in that business”.
His clear hope is that whacking Woolworths around the ears for no longer devoting a small portion of shop floor space to unwanted Australian flag towels and aprons and the like will enhance his credibility within that constituency.
The broader matter of national identity and celebration of an independent and prosperous democracy is beyond the opposition leader. People should just follow orders and be flag draped on 26 January – no other day.
It’s all about Dutton political positioning with scant genuine consideration for resolving the growing dissatisfaction with 26 January, the day in 1788 when NSW was colonised.
