Peter Dutton

He is also a descendant of Captain Richard James Coley, who was Queensland's first Sergeant-at-Arms, who built Brisbane's first private dwelling and who gave evidence confirming the mass poisonings of Aboriginal Australians at Kilcoy in 1842.

Dutton is the eldest of five children, with one brother and three sisters.

His mother Ailsa Leitch worked in childcare and his father Bruce Dutton was a builder.

Dutton finished high school at the Anglican St Paul's School, Bald Hills.

He worked cash in hand at a butcher shop during his school years, and his parents separated shortly after he graduated.

Peter Craig Dutton (born 18 November 1970) is an Australian politician who is the current leader of the Opposition, holding office as the leader of the Liberal Party of Australia since May 2022.

He previously served as the minister for Defence from 2021 to 2022 and the minister for Home Affairs from 2017 to 2021.

Dutton was born on 18 November 1970 in the northern Brisbane suburb of Boondall.

Dutton is the great-great-grandson of the pastoralist squatter and politician Charles Boydell Dutton.

Dutton joined the Young Liberals in 1988 aged 18.

At the 1989 Queensland state election, the 19-year-old Dutton ran unsuccessfully as the Liberal candidate against Tom Burns, a former state Labor leader, in the safe Labor seat of Lytton.

He became the policy vice-chair of the Bayside Young Liberals the following year and chair of the branch in 1990.

Upon leaving high school, Dutton graduated from the Queensland Police Academy in 1990.

He served as a Queensland Police officer for nearly a decade, working in the drug squad in Brisbane in the early 1990s.

He also worked in the sex offenders squad and with the National Crime Authority.

In 1999, Dutton left the Queensland Police, having achieved the rank of detective senior constable.

Documentation filed in the District Court of Queensland in 2000 describes his resignation as being prompted by a loss of driving confidence resulting from an incident in August 1998.

He was driving an unmarked Mazda 626 during a covert surveillance operation, before rolling his car while in pursuit of an escaped prisoner who was driving erratically.

Dutton also suffered numerous physical injuries during the accident, and as a result, was hospitalised briefly and bedridden for a week.

He and his father founded the business Dutton Holdings, which was registered in 2000; it operated under six different trading and business names.

He has been a member of Parliament (MP) for the Queensland seat of Dickson since 2001 and has held ministerial portfolios in the federal governments of Howard, Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison.

Dutton grew up in Brisbane.

He worked as a police officer in the Queensland Police for nearly a decade upon leaving school, and later ran a construction business with his father.

He joined the Liberal Party as a teenager and was elected to the House of Representatives at the 2001 election, aged 30.

The company bought, renovated, and converted buildings into childcare centres, and in 2002 it sold three childcare centres to the now defunct ABC Learning.

Following the 2004 election, he was appointed as Minister for Employment Participation.

He had sought damages of $250,000 from the escaped prisoner's insurance company but dropped the claim in 2005.

On leaving the police, Dutton completed a Bachelor of Business at the Queensland University of Technology.

In January 2006, he was promoted to become Assistant Treasurer under Peter Costello.

After the defeat of the Liberal-National Coalition at the 2007 election, he was appointed to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Minister for Health, a role he held for the next six years.

Upon the victory of the Coalition at the 2013 election, Dutton was appointed Minister for Health and Minister for Sport.

He was moved to the role of Minister for Immigration and Border Protection in December 2014, where he played a key role in overseeing Operation Sovereign Borders.

He was kept in that position after Malcolm Turnbull replaced Tony Abbott as Prime Minister in September 2015.

In December 2017, he was also given the restored role of Minister for Home Affairs, heading a new 'super' department with broad responsibilities brought together from other existing departments.

After the defeat of Abbott, Dutton became widely seen as the leader of the conservative faction in the Liberal Party, and began to be spoken of as a potential leader.

In August 2018, after a period of poor opinion polling for the Coalition, Dutton unsuccessfully challenged Turnbull for the leadership.

He then was defeated by Scott Morrison in a second leadership ballot days later after Turnbull chose to resign.

He was retained as Minister for Home Affairs by Morrison, later becoming Minister for Defence and Leader of the House in March 2021.

He went on to succeed Morrison as party leader unopposed after the Coalition's defeat at the 2022 election, becoming leader of the opposition.

He is the first Liberal leader to come from Queensland, and the first leader since Alexander Downer to represent a seat outside of New South Wales.