This article is an instalment in a new series, “Peter Dutton is racist”, on Dutton’s history of racism and the role racism has played on both sides of politics since the 1970s.
Being too provocative on race issues is a career hazard for new major party candidates — but it’s been a while since a leader took electoral punishment for an approach seen as racially contentious.
John Howard’s 1988 support for reducing Asian immigration levels was followed by an eight-point drop in his already dire Newspoll net satisfaction rating, but didn’t affect the Coalition’s vote share. It did enable the Hawke government to expose splits in the Coalition with a symbolic Parliamentary motion, which probably contributed to Howard being rolled by Andrew Peacock the next year.
Peacock in turn spent much of the 1990 campaign railing against the Multi-Function Polis, a proposed Japanese high-tech planned community. His
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