Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has retained his marginal northern Brisbane seat of Dickson despite what he says was a dirty campaign run by GetUp and Labor.

May 18, 2019

Peter Dutton has won the fight of his political life to claim victory in his marginal northern Brisbane seat of Dickson.

The home affairs minister’s win comes despite an “unprecedented personal attack” by GetUp and Labor.

“I want to quote a former prime minister. His name was Paul Keating and the quote was, ‘This is the sweetest victory of all’,” he joked as he addressed about 300 jubilant supporters jammed into the showroom of a disused car yard on Saturday night.

“We’ve now been able to hold (Dickson) for seven terms.”

Mr Dutton said there was an “amazing mood” across Australia in support of Scott Morrison.

“He’s distilled our message down to one the Australian people have been able to understand,” he said.

“And people have overwhelmingly accepted that.”

Mr Dutton said Dickson voters had their “baseball bats out for Bill Shorten”.

“Queenslanders can call out a phoney and they have,” he said as six plainclothes policemen stood guard and eyeballed the cheering Liberal party supporters.

Some pollsters tipped Mr Dutton to lose the seat he has held since 2001 after his campaign got off to a rocky start when he claimed Labor candidate Ali France was using her disability as an excuse not to move into the electorate.

The divisive politician entered the election with a margin of just 1.7 per cent. 

His leadership of the coup that deposed former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was also seen to be on the nose with many voters.

Five kilometres away at the Warner Tavern in a near-empty function room decorated with red balloons and Labor posters, Ms France said winning Dickson was always “going to be a hard slog”.

“My opponent completely outspent us. I think (Peter Dutton) probably spent in excess of $1.5 million.”

“It’s very difficult for women, in general, to get into marginal seats, let alone a disabled woman,” Ms France said as a small group of diehard supporters drowned their sorrows around her.

Ms France’s grassroots campaign was consistently plagued by claims she was a puppet of the left-wing activist group GetUp

Earlier on Saturday, Mr Dutton said he had sensed a lot of anger from voters against Labor because of the tax changes they were proposing, and that had swayed a lot of people trying to plan for their retirement.

Campaigning by GetUp had also angered voters in the mortgage-belt seat, he said.