GetUp is making a grassroots, issues-based bid to oust the home affairs minister from his safe Queensland seat

Anthony Smith is blunt in his explanation for why he wants his local MP Peter Dutton out of the parliament.

“I don’t like racism,” he told the Guardian. “I think some of the things he has said have crossed that line. The things he’s said about refugees, one of the most vulnerable groups in our society.”

Smith, a 45-year-old engineer from Queensland, says he has never been a member of a political party or “even been to a rally”, but he’s part of a hardcore group of activists plotting the political downfall of the Liberal party’s rightwing standard bearer.

On Saturday, the left-leaning activist group GetUp will formally launch its campaign to dislodge Dutton from the seat of Dickson after amassing a $225,000 warchest from its members.

It might seem a far-fetched prospect given Dutton’s status. Often touted as a future prime minister, the former Queensland cop’s role overseeing Australia’s strict border control policies have made him a source of hatred for the left but a galvanising figure on the right-flank of the Liberal party.

But Dutton’s position in Dickson is not as secure as his influence within the party.

The home affairs minister suffered a 5.12% swing against him at the last election, leaving him with a slim 1.6% margin. A recent redistribution improved his position slightly, but GetUp predict that it would only take another 1,500 voters to change their mind for him to lose the seat.

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The real question though is whether GetUp can hit the right note in its campaign to unseat a man that its national director Paul Oosting believes is “more powerful than the prime minister”.



Dutton’s status as an emblem of loathing for the left in Australia has been long cultivated.

From his decision to boycott the historic 2007 apology to the stolen generations, through to his claims while overseeing Australia’s indefinite offshore detention of refugees that white South African farmers were “persecuted” and could be given fast-track Australian visas, there is no shortage of material for GetUp to motivate their base.

But a senior Liberal National party source in Queensland told the Guardian that Dickson was “an issues-driven community” and that GetUp would need to find out what was making voters in Brisbane’s north-west tick.

“His neck of the woods has been quite conservative, but there are a lot of new people who have moved in there who are not as conservative, and don’t care so much about those conservative touchstones,” the source said.

“Whether that is enough to knock him off or not, is the unknown. But it is an issues driven community – and what issue is GetUp running that is going to impact those people’s lives? That they just don’t like him? You never know how much shit they’ll throw, but ‘I don’t like him’ is not an issue. So, we don’t know, and we can just wait and see.”

Dutton himself previously told the Guardian that GetUp’s campaign was “certainly something we seek to overcome”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A GetUp billboard targeting Tony Abbott’s policies in 2010. Photograph: Paul Miller/AAP

“In 2007 in the WorkChoices campaign, the unions were on the ground full time for months and GetUp had a huge presence at the last election in Dickson. So it just means we need to adapt, we need to raise more money than them, we need to get greater resources and we’re in the process of doing that.”

He has confidently said that the leftwing group’s presence in his electorate helped him amass some $600,000 in donations, and Oosting says he’s been surprised by the level of pushback from the Liberal party since GetUp announced that it would focus its 2019 campaign on unseating Dutton.

In recent weeks conservative Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz has asked the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to investigate the left-leaning activist group’s legal status. It follows his push for the Australian Electoral Commission to classify the group as an “associated entity” of Labor or the Greens meaning it would have to disclose donors.

To fight back, GetUp is relying on locals such as Anthony Smith to energise swinging voters. A poster for the group’s launch on Saturday says the event will “not be a ‘listen to speeches’ launch”.

“We want to share our ideas and hear about yours,” it reads.

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In practice, that may mean focusing less on the issues that matter to progressive voters in Sydney and Melbourne – namely, immigration – and instead figuring out what will make those 1,500 voters in Brisbane’s north-west change their vote.

“That’s one of the reasons why we’re starting from a really community-led campaign,” Oosting said.

“We’re trying to make sure we’re attuned to what the wider voters in Dickson care about.”

For his part, the GetUp director says he’s not underestimating the challenge.

“There was a fairly significant swing against him last time which we contributed to somewhat which means it will be harder to move it this time,” he said.

“That final group of voters will play more to Dutton’s strengths because traditionally swing voters are less politically engaged [and] he has the combination of huge amounts of money to spend and a big media profile.”