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Peter Dutton could be your next prime minister

Yes, it sounds like a bad joke, but that's what politics has become in 2017.

Andrew P Street

As the old saying probably goes, those who forget the immediate past are doomed to repeat it exactly 12 months later.

At this exact time last year the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, was criticising Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for his inability to control his backbench following a provocative speech by Tony Abbott. If this sounds familiar it's because it's happened with impressive regularity every couple of weeks since September 2015.

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But there's something that you might have missed in all the sound and fury. And it is this: there's a good chance that 2017 will close with Peter Dutton as our next prime minister.

Tony Abbott knows it, which is why he's desperately attempting to assert some sort of authority over the Liberal Party with his hilarious five point plan, aka the Do As I Say And Not Literally As I Did Back When I Was In Power God Please Look At Me list.

If the Liberals plan to get rid of Turnbull – and the horror polls today are telling them that something needs to change if they plan on maintaining government, and they've shown that they're not remotely willing to do something as cowardly as change their actual policies – then the conservatives have to have a provide a plausible leadership contender, and that talent pool is both shallow and tepid.

Dutton, however, has so many advantages for a Liberal Party splitting under internal beefs, fracturing with its Coalition partners and terrified of the rise of One Nation. For example:

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1. He's not remotely clever

Abbott and Turnbull were both Rhodes scholars, and Turnbull's big selling point was that he understood complicated things like the economy and policy.

That "knowing what you're talking about" thing is so 2015: these days you need a leader who can't construct a coherent sentence, neither understands nor trusts data, and who angrily follows their basest instincts and bitterest feelings rather than good sense or basic logic.

The man accidentally sent a text to the person it was about. He thinks climate change is an insensitive, poorly delivered joke. He can't even express policy in his own portfolio without it being wrong.

That's Trump. That's Hanson. That's Dutton.

2. He was making a point of not caring about vulnerable people before it was cool

Most of the Liberal Party have the grave disadvantage of having at least made lip service to the rights of Muslims or the successes of multiculturalism in the past.

Dutton, meanwhile, walked out on the apology to the Stolen Generation, has deported New Zealanders to Christmas Island, and there's the deaths, assaults and rapes that have occurred to those held in offshore detention on his watch.

Heck, has Pauline Hanson stripped legal aid from asylum seekers and then given them an impossible deadline to complete their highly detailed legal documents to prove their refugee status?

If today's conservative voter is looking for a leader ready to teach them uppity immigrants/original inhabitants a thing or two, Dutton is head and shoulders above the fray.

3. The right of the party have literally no choice

The Coalition is hanging by a thread at the moment and needs someone that can unite the terrified, angry, populist elements of the Nationals and the Liberals - and as a Queenslander who is technically a member of both parties, Dutton can bring the angry, angry healing.

But his biggest advantage is that the government have no other choice right now.

Turnbull neatly hobbled his two most obvious rivals when he took power by making deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop seem disloyal by association, and guaranteed Scott Morrison couldn't possibly challenge by making him treasurer. It's a poisoned chalice, for anyone that does well in the role just makes the PM look smart for having appointed them, and anyone who does badly in the role - like, say, Morrison - ruins any credibility they might have had.

Of the next generation of Liberal high-flyers, Josh Frydenberg's not ready for the gig, and Christian Porter is almost certainly about to plonked into the attorney-general chair when Turnbull announces in the next few weeks that George Brandis is taking a well-deserved trip to become the new UK High Commissioner, rather than stick around and be implicated in the increasingly dangerous-looking investigation into the Bell Group.

And sure, it's hard to imagine that Dutton will lead the Coalition to anything other than a landslide defeat - but won't it be exciting to finally have someone to replace Billy McMahon as Australia's greatest joke of a PM?

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