The Bug sat down for an exclusive one-on-one interview with the federal Opposition Leader in which he admitted the Liberal Party desperately needed to change tack if it ever wanted to resonate again with voters at both the federal and state levels.
We proudly present the full transcript of this amazing warts-and-all interview.
The Bug: Peter Dutton, thanks for agreeing to talk to us today.
Peter Dutton: It’s Lamb.
The Bug: Sorry?
Peter Dutton: I’ve changed my name to Peter Lamb. It’s all part of a major overhaul of who I am and what the party I proudly lead now stands for.
The Bug: Oh, right. Peter Lamb it is then. And I guess that explains the new wig? A fresh, cuddlier look as well?
Peter Lamb: Excuse me. That’s no rug. All Advanced Hair Studio plugs .. and living, growing material at that. I’ll need haircuts.
The Bug: Real human hair?
Peter Lamb: Merino.
The Bug: Right.
Peter Lamb: Look, can I be frank here?
The Bug: You’ve changed your first name too?
Peter Lamb: No. No! I’m still Peter. I meant could I speak frankly?
The Bug: Sorry. Of course. Please go ahead.
Peter Lamb: I just want to state upfront that the things I said on Insiders the day after the shock Aston result were not entirely truthful.
The Bug: Go on.
Peter Lamb: I said the party didn’t need to change its basic philosophies and all we needed to do is sell our message better. Well, that was bunkum.
The Bug: Do tell.
Peter Lamb: We desperately need to look like we’re changing our basic philosophies and changing my surname was just the beginning. I need to cast off my hard-man, far-right, ex-copper-thug persona and Lamb suits that image.
The Bug: The new hairstyle does make you look a little more human, we must admit.
Peter Lamb: Thank you. But that’s just the beginning. I am proud to announce that the Liberal Party of Australia will now be renamed the Labor-Lite Party of Australia!
The Bug: Clearly you had to do something. So you’ll be moving to the centre by doing things like now fully supporting The Voice?
Peter Lamb: Oh shit, no. Do you want the new party to collapse completely if our base ever misunderstood our ongoing advocacy for supporting indigenous Australians while denying them even a symbolic place in the governance of the nation that occupies their land? If that happened, we’d lose the great bulk of our parliamentary members and almost all of our grassroots supporters.
The Bug: The cookers, the conspiracy theorists, the sovereign citizens, the Proud Boys, the 3AW listeners, the Boltophiles, the handful of people who watch Sky News After Dark including Rowan Dean’s mother, the religious nutters including the happy-clapping evangelists, hill-singing rapturists and Opus Dei devotees, the end-of-time preppers, the general paranoid, uneducated, gun-totting, woke-hating, braindead morons out there and we’re not just talking about Gympie?
Peter Lamb: That’s right. If we lost all of them, it might take us years to build up the basic numbers needed for the Australian Electoral Commission to recognise us as a party. It’s absolutely crucial for Australian democracy for us to be competitive in 2025.
The Bug: So you really do think your image makeover and a new name will be enough?
Peter Lamb: Of course not. We’ll also be pretending to adopt a lot of the policies Labor pretends to adopt. We’ll be talking endlessly about the need to leave no-one behind while leaving them behind, our belief in international law while still insisting that refugees rot in foreign gulags, the stubborn, ongoing support for tax cuts that favour the rich, that Julian Assange has suffered enough while not actually asking anyone to let him go, that climate change is real and only our side of politics has ever done anything about it while allowing new gas and coal projects to go ahead; that we really do care about our neighbours in the Pacific and the water lapping at their doors; to say nicer things about China while sticking nuclear subs up their wazoos. We might even promise to spend more on the Arts if push comes to shove. These and many other pressing topics are ones when we can match Labor’s rhetoric!
The Bug: While doing fuck all about any of those things and staying true to yourselves and your supporters?
Peter Lamb: Exactly! Our base would expect nothing less and we must continue, like Labor, to pander to those who hold the real power in Australia!
The Bug: The voters!
Peter Lamb: Big business and Rupert Murdoch.
The Bug: Of course. Thanks for your time, today, Frank… sorry, Peter!
Peter Lamb: My pleasure. And may I say a big thank-you for not taking the obvious Dutton to Lamb cheapshot. Lesser news organisations might have been tempted to do that.
The Bug: Please! Give us some credit.
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