Peter Dutton faces unprecedent skewering* over attending mansion fundraiser. Truly!

The fallout from Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s decision to fly to Sydney to attend a “ritzy” fundraiser at the mansion of pub baron and absent-minded billionaire Justin Hemmes on Tuesday, while the people of his electorate prepared for the arrival of the potentially devastating Cyclone Alfred, has been swift and relentless.

Among the near-blanket media coverage of the story — which was first revealed by Mark Di Stefano in The Australian Financial Review — has been a particularly strong and damning response from conservative commentators.

The fundraiser jaunt continues Dutton’s “run of poor judgment, delayed decision-making and equivocation”, writes Geoff Chambers in The Australian. The opposition leader “should’ve jumped on a plane and headed straight” to Brisbane instead of “being the guest of honour at a fundraising event”, he concludes.

Paul Murray at Sky News pointed out the hypocrisy at play, with Dutton having gone on record earlier in the week to say what a “tin ear” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese would show if he called an election during the cyclone. “Now is [Dutton] allowed to [attend a fundraiser]? Obviously, but this is the bloke who made quite a lot of noise about the priorities of the prime minister about what was or was not urgent,” Murray said.

This was positively mild compared to some of his colleagues at Sky.

Sky News host Danica De Giorgio said Dutton was the “accidental opposition leader” after what the network described as “multiple public mistakes”. “He just does not get it, does he?” she said, incredulously.

Also on Sky, Steve Price said he was “staggered” at Dutton’s behaviour.

“I mean, it’s such a bad, bad look. These people and the premiers know better,” he told Sharri Markson.

As the saga continued — with Dutton belatedly pulling out of two further fundraisers — Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt said it “was a PR debacle, and — worse — proof that [Dutton] is broken as a leader”.

Even more worrying for Dutton, some of his colleagues seem rattled. Nationals Senator Matt Canavan, echoing points made in Crikey, conceded that Dutton’s response to the cyclone was “not the first time he has been missing in action at a time of national crisis”.

“You would expect when something of that significance happens, someone wanting to be prime minister would drop everything to show national solidarity, to calm and comfort those that have been affected by this disaster,” he told Peter Stefanovic on First Edition.

***

Wait… sorry, we’ve got this all screwed up. None of that concerned Dutton or fundraising during Cyclone Alfred at all. This is commentary that flowed through the media in the days following the publication of images of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese playing tennis in Perth and “entertaining Labor donors” the same day the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne was firebombed, and Albanese’s subsequent delay in visiting the site.

The Australian‘s commentary on Cyclone Alfred merely concerns Albanese’s ongoing ill fortune in having to delay calling the election — it mentions Dutton’s “tin ear” comments, but nothing on the Hemmes event. The Herald Sun and The Daily Telegraph have republished Samantha Maiden’s coverage of the event for news.com.au, but neither Bolt nor any other commentator has found time to make any judgements. Nor have these mastheads written a story on the issue at all. Even Queensland’s own Courier Mail, also a News Corp newspaper, hasn’t touched the subject.

Meanwhile, if any of Sky’s hosts or guests have turned their ire on Dutton, the network hasn’t found space to clip it up and share it among their hard-hitting headlines like “Peter Dutton’s government will make Australia ‘strong again’” and “Peter Dutton declares Coalition ‘ready’ for election campaign“.

Weird. We’re sure they’ll get around to it.

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