"Their outstanding quality is their tenacity," he said in February 2002.

It's a character trait Dutton has in spades.

Everything the 47-year-old Home Affairs Minister has done in his career has been characterised by a tenacious approach.

He's often said that as a Queensland police officer for almost a decade in the 1990s he saw the "best and the worst that society has to offer".

"I have seen the wonderful, kind nature of people willing to offer any assistance to those in their worst hour, and I have seen the sickening behaviour displayed by people who, frankly, barely justify their existence in our sometimes over-tolerant society."

Dutton is most often seen as the hard-nosed immigration minister who "stopped the boats" by militarising the department and taking an icy cold approach to the health and wellbeing of asylum seekers in offshore detention - sending the strongest possible signal to people-smugglers.

He's also been known for a sharp tongue, once describing a journalist as a "mad f...ing witch" - for which he later apologised.

But he also has a softer, empathetic side, such as overturning visa decisions when special cases are put to him.

Dutton is Liberal Party to his bootstraps.

Joining the party in the northern Brisbane outskirts aged 18, he found a natural fit in an organisation which valued individualism, reward for achievement and traditional values.

He was first elected to the Brisbane seat of Dickson in 2001 and went on to successive victories, in a seat full of aspiring small business people and industrial sheds.

In 2004, John Howard saw value in appointing Dutton as workforce participation minister, then later revenue and assistant treasurer before Kevin Rudd toppled the coalition government in 2007.

One of the most common refrains in Dutton's many speeches is that Labor stands for nothing because of its ultra-pragmatism - the "whatever it takes" mentality so well defined by former Labor minister Graham Richardson.

It was with that in mind he was effective in keeping the Rudd-Gillard- Rudd Labor government on its toes as opposition spokesman for finance, deregulation and health.

Then with the return of the coalition under Tony Abbott in 2013 he became health minister.

However it was as immigration minister and more recently Home Affairs he found his niche and a true outlet for his tenacity.

Australian Associated Press