Peter Dutton was meant to be safe from losing his seat of Dickson and both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party didn’t think otherwise until a few weeks before the election on the 3rd of May.
News.com reported on Wednesday the 7th of May:
Five days before voters in Queensland terminated Peter Dutton’s political career, Liberal Party director Andrew Hirst sounded the alarm.
“Peter should spend every cent he’s got,’’ he warned of the threat that Labor could steal his electorate of Dickson.
It was the first time there was any serious inkling he was in strife in the seat which he had occupied for 24 years. The Liberals had previously polled the seat and he had a 55-45 lead.
The campaign director said that Labor was spending big on digital ads in Dickson. That could only mean one thing. The threat was real and Labor believed they had a real chance of flipping the seat. (Click here to read more)
I followed the campaigning in Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson closely since September last year and there is no doubt that the Community Independent campaign and their candidate, Ellie Smith, played a big role, and possibly a decisive role, in removing Peter Dutton.
So, on that basis it is important to report what happened behind the scenes with the 3 key candidates which were the Liberal’s Peter Dutton, Labor’s Ali France and Community Independent Ellie Smith.
There are 2 key issues. Firstly, did Community Independent Ellie Smith entering the race help create an environment which put the seat of Dickson in play?
And secondly, did Ellie Smith’s preferences help Ali France win?
Community Independent Ellie Smith enters the race for the seat of Dickson
In September 2024 I noticed that Dickson Decides had set up a website and started raising money and planning to run a candidate in Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson.
I knew they would get support from around the country and I published a video and posted the below message on Twitter (25/9/24) to promote the video:
What the above Twitter message and video show is that the movement to unseat Peter Dutton was in play long before others thought it was. (Click here to see the above message on Twitter)
Because Community Independents, in their short history, have a record of giving seats a real shake and with Dutton potentially losing his seat it meant it was game on as supporters would rally from all over Australia which is what happened.
The Dickson Decides group were the ones driving the new movement to unseat Dutton. (It’s worth noting for supporters of the Kangaroo Court of Australia website and YouTube channel that KCA and its supporters played a part in promoting the movement to get rid of Dutton from early on.)
In early January 2025, Dickson Decides, who are the organising body behind the Dickson Community Independent, announced their Candidate Launch on the 27th of January 2025 where they named Ellie Smith as their candidate.
The election was on the 3rd of May so it only left 3 months to campaign which is not long especially when Peter Dutton held the seat for 24 years and Labor’s Ali France had also run in the 2019 and 2022 election, so both were very well-known to voters in Dickson.
There is no doubt if Ellie Smith had longer to campaign she would have done better but what is obvious is when she entered the race it changed the dynamics of the candidates in the seat and put it in play. I said in January 2025:
My guess is if the Dickson Votes Community Independent can get 20,000 votes they will be a big chance of winning with preferences.
I think if Ali France was ever going to win the seat she would have won in the last 2 elections she ran.
But in saying that if the Community Independent doesn’t win then Ali France would have to be a bigger show than the past 2 elections to get over the line with preferences.
I don’t support Labor nor Ali France but if she is elected at least she is getting rid of Peter Dutton which is a good thing. (Click here to read more)
On the 10th of April I published an article titled “Peter Dutton spends $40,000 to attack independent Ellie Smith with lies” which starts off:
Peter Dutton is obviously worried about losing his seat to independent Ellie Smith and has attacked her with lies in a mailout out to all voters in his seat of Dickson and has put up at least one billboard with the same lies, at an estimated cost of $40,000. (Click here to read more)
Ellie Smith went from announcing her candidacy at the end of January to having Peter Dutton so concerned a couple of months later he was spending $40,000 to attack her with lies.
On the 13th of April I published an article titled “Peter Dutton set to lose his seat of Dickson poll says with Labor to spend another $130,000 in Dickson” which starts off:
Peter Dutton will lose his seat of Dickson with a new poll finding Labor’s Ali France is ahead of Peter Dutton by 52-48 on a two-party preferred basis.
And the Labor Party have their own polling, which they claim shows they are in with a chance of winning, that has motivated them to spend another $130,000 in Dutton’s seat of Dickson. (Click here to read the article)
Less than a month from the election Labor decided to spend another $130,000 on a seat they didn’t think they had a chance of winning only weeks before. What changed?
Ellie Smith was the game changer because Labor’s polling would have told them that Ellie Smith was taking votes off Dutton, which she did, and that would put the seat in play and give Ali France a chance to beat Dutton.
Did Ellie Smith’s preferences help Ali France win?
Labor’s Ali France has won the seat, at her 3rd attempt, currently has a 2.3% swing to her and has received 31,576 first preference votes to Peter Dutton’s 32,589 first preference votes. (Votes are still being counted)
Ali France won with preferences and with Community Independent Ellie Smith receiving 11,593 votes it looks like a large percentage of her votes went to Ali France when preferences were counted with Ali France currently on 50,994 votes after preferences and Peter Dutton on 40,926.
How the vote would have gone if Ellie Smith had not run no one knows.
But I doubt very much Labor or the Liberals would have spent as much campaigning in the seat as they did, if Ellie Smith had not run, as they would have both thought Dutton was certain to win.
I think the best-case scenario for Ali France, with no Ellie Smith in the contest, is she would have just scaped over the line to beat Peter Dutton. Ali France certainly wouldn’t be winning by 10,000 votes after preferences which she currently is.
Yes, Ali France might have still won but she could have lost as well which would have meant Peter Dutton was still in politics.
There is a lot of guess work above as the final numbers still aren’t in, but I thought it was important to write the above as it is not often political leaders lose their seats.
It’s also important to add Ellie Smith’s and Dickson Decides’ roles to the story as they are mostly being left out of the discussion of how Peter Dutton lost his seat when they played a positive role in making sure Dutton lost.
Just for the record, it’s not a case of Labor having a big win but more the Liberals having a big loss because of their extremely poor election campaign, candidates and policies driving voters elsewhere. But I’ll have more to say on that soon.
Please use Facebook, “X”, email and the other buttons below and help promote this article.
Kangaroo Court of Australia is independent media and is 100% crowdfunded by readers like yourself so please support on the links below. Click on the PayPal button below to donate or for other donation options click here to go to the Donations page.
Thank you for your support.
For the KCA t-shirt shop click here.
For the Fugitive Clothing t-shirt shop click here
Join the free email subscription below and you will be notified immediately I publish new articles which is normally twice a week.
Discover more from Kangaroo Court of Australia
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: Peter Dutton
Was good to see the demise of Dutton, same time can’t say I’m particularly thrilled with the government we have, corruption lies thieving still carries on and business as usual, NAAC operates in secret, no real oversight of how our debt continues to balloon out of control, expect Albonese to go on bended knee to Washington at his first opportunity when summonsed by Trump. A third rate government at the wheel.
Yes. I’m not thrilled either, but at least Albanese isn’t Peter Dutton. I think that’s the only reason Albanese won so decisively.
Community Independent candidate campaign teams have disaffected Liberals in their ranks. Poor behaviour by the Liberal campaigns, including misinformation and attempts at public vilification ensures that these disaffected Liberals never return to the “broad church” and other moderate Liberals leave.
The Liberals have wrecked themselves.
Not really.
Libs were infiltrated years ago, preselections rigged, staff chosen by the minority…—
And The People are lazy and expect others to carry the can for them.
Many Liberals were disgusted 40 +++years back and were deliberatly ignored.
The entire election was a coalition loss. nobody wanted Dutton. Albanese will ignore this and claim a mandate to do nothing, though. Already he’s trying to say the Greens are disrespectful for asking him Questions in QT. Smells very arrogant to me. I predict a term of nothing, with horrible policy rolled out backed by the coalition. The vulnerable will stay in dire straights and housing will remain an investment scheme. And the rusties are dancing with delight. Poor fella, my country.
Agree with all you say. Very revealing how Albo is going out of his way to attack the Greens in a very petty, spiteful tone including attacking Feruqui for attending a pro Palestinian rally outside his office. ABC dutifully transcribing the ALP line that Greens were too ‘extreme’ for supporting Gaza.
Thank you, KCA, for doing what was right for Australia.
In my mind, I see Liberal/National party ministers as spiders waiting to pounce on
the unsuspecting citizens in all of our electorates.
Another consideration is that the abovementioned coalition runs on lies and denigration,
rather than on an agenda of what would be in the best interests of Australia’s voting public.
Permitting the Lib/Nat coalition party to challenge for our government leadership role,
is not far removed from permitting a criminal act against the people of our nation.
Fancy “Scott Morrison”, Dutton’s predecessor, putting up a 3rd of a Trillion dollars
up for grabs for Nuclear Submarines, which we did not want, to be honest about it,
our nation had only sought a fleet of properly constructed Collins class submarines.
I continue to believe that the signing of the AUKUS Alliance did no favour for our nation.
Dutton was basically a media construct, from the moment he conspired with the Murdoch’s to knife his leader PM Turnbull. “Read David Crowe’s book Venom page 182, all the names are there”. Most people knew Dutton was unfit for office and unelectable. Duttons own party refused to vote him as PM then and installed Morrison instead. The entire time Dutton has been opposition leader they have had zero real policies and have had zero real media scrutiny. Meanwhile over the last few decades the LNP have been branch stacked by religious fundamentalist factions, State and Federally from Howard on, resulting in Abbotts catholic faction and then Morrisons evangelical faction. There are no moderates. My electorate has a branch stacked fundamentalist candidate with her own church. “Which LNP fundamentalist faction has control of your electorate Local Govt, State and Federally”. “Do you even know, the media won’t tell you”
Just enough people through social media, have seen through the LNP/Media charade and are fully aware of what the LNP have now become.
But don’t get too complacent, over 3,500,000 people lined up in the hot sun and voted for the LNP/One Nation/ACL/Family First Coalition. And this coalition had zero policies, zero direction, nothing but the usual culture war distractions and a that corrupted media relentlessly telling you to vote for them!
And that corrupted media is still telling you! Your votes were all wrong and the billionaire cartel bankrolling that media it is still telling the LNP to double down and go full MAGA? Like the 2022 defeat, the LNP will learn nothing from this second 2025 shellacking, the real billionaire cartel vested interests power behind the LNP will not allow them too!
Thank you KCA. Like many I know, I shared all your blog posts and always got good feedback. One of the best outcomes of this election is that Murdoch has received a clear message: “Your lies and propaganda no longer carry any weight. People are getting smarter, more wary of believing, without thought, what they read.”
It began with a tremor in Dickson. Liberal honchos assured themselves Peter Dutton was “safe as houses” – right up until the houses started catching fire. Despite a comfy 55-45 lead in early polling, a rogue Independent named Ellie Smith showed up, armed with common sense and community backing. Dutton panicked, blew $40,000 on a smear campaign, and still lost – badly.
Labor’s Ali France, third time lucky, surfed a wave of Ellie Smith’s preferences to deliver the knock-out punch. Dutton, last seen in rural Queensland lecturing vegetables about asylum seekers, vanished into the wilderness, mumbling something about “digital ads and betrayal.”
Back at Liberal HQ, it was all doom, gloom, and dry tomato juice. John Howard tried launching a TikTok dance campaign (“The Coalition Shuffle”) before throwing his hip out. Tony Abbott stormed in half-naked and fully delusional, proposing a surf-off against Albo for the Lodge. Angus Taylor pitched a Gina Rinehart coal statue in every capital.
A staffer dared to whisper: “What if we listen to voters?” The silence was deafening.
And so, the Liberal Party rebooted – by plugging their ears and doubling down on onions, nostalgia, and absolutely no idea why Australia just dumped them.
Maybe a chance in 2034 – MAYBE! HA!