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- Peter Dutton
Dutton’s contortionist act: Cancel culture and market intervention
By Tony Wright
There was a time, about two minutes ago, when right-wing shouters were awfully down on cancel culture.
They used to get themselves into a pretty serious lather about what they called virtue signalling, too.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has called on Australians to boycott Woolworths.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The economic wing occupied by these self-conscious purists, furthermore, would rather have stuck a hammer and sickle pin in its lapel than advocate for market intervention.
All so yesterday.
Pre-Dutton, you might say.
Suddenly, current Liberal leader Peter Dutton and his current followers are marching to the barricades, calling for proper Australians to boycott Woolworths.
Say again?
Cancelling one of the nation’s biggest supermarket chains?
Signalling one’s virtue by refusing to buy milk, sausages and nappies?
Golding’s view.Credit: Matt Golding
Demanding the Australian population use its combined purchasing power to sink the slipper into a multibillion-dollar business?
“I would advise very strongly to take your business elsewhere and go to IGA, Coles or Aldi,” said Dutton, setting off a chorus of “go woke, go broke” across the babbling classes.
Which has become a little awkward, given that Aldi has since decided that such tasteful Australia Day items as thongs emblazoned with the Australian flag will no longer clutter its shelves, either.
Woolworths, of course, had led with its chin in these post-Voice days by declaring it was pulling Australia Day paraphernalia from its display cabinets.
Dutton, you might imagine, very nearly broke his ankle leaping for joy when he heard that the Woolworths Group, led by pro-Voice CEO Brad Banducci, had figured there wasn’t much to be gained by selling Australia Day tack that almost no one was buying.
Dutton and his acolytes had already shown the nation how they could so skilfully divide and conquer during their anti-Voice campaign while at the very same time, accusing pro-Voice supporters of promoting division.
No circus acrobat has ever so successfully performed such a contortionist act.
And so, Woolworths (and, you’d have to assume, Aldi as well now) must not be spared the treatment in the lead-up to Australia Day, a date so sacrosanct, apparently, that January 26 has been a public holiday since… oh, 1994.
Peter Dutton was 24 in 1994, which means he spent his entire youth, plus the first four years of his career in the Queensland Police Service, before he got to enjoy a single public holiday for Australia Day.
No wonder he’s so angry.
It’s enough for the previously conservative fellow to embrace cancel culture, virtue signalling and market intervention all in one. Just to get even.
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