PVO Is Trying To Make Peter Dutton The Victim In Scott Morrison’s Latest Scandal

Since it was revealed that former Prime Minister Scott Morrison secretly hoarded five additional portfolios behind the public’s back, we have seen countless opinion pieces from every side of politics.

Some bad, some worse, but nothing holds a candle to Peter Van Onselen’s take that we should really be sparing a thought for Peter Dutton in all of this. Believe me when I say, I’m scromiting.

In an opinion piece entitled Spare a thought for Peter Dutton over Scott Morrison fallout, PVO pens an entire article on how Dutton is somehow the victim in all of this and urges us all to think of him amid his plummeting approval rating.

“The old adage is that the role of Opposition Leader is the toughest job in politics. I’m not sure that’s right: governing is hard, as is the responsibility that goes with it. So Prime Ministers and cabinet ministers have tough jobs too,” he writes. “But spare a thought for newly minted opposition leader Peter Dutton all the same. Not only does he have to contend with weak approval ratings out this week, and the devastation of an election defeat, he’s also now forced to manage the fallout from Scott Morrison’s usurping ways.”

While it’s no secret that being the opposition leader is no easy job, when you take into account the $400,000 per year salary, Dutton certainly isn’t hard done by — especially not when you compare it to the other 90 percent of the population.

PVO claims that “not in his wildest dreams” could Dutton have expected this additional problem after taking over party leadership from Morrison. But given Morrison was hardly a trustworthy leader, to begin with, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that further scandals could come to light.

He then goes on to describe how Dutton must “walk a fine line” between calling out Morrison’s behaviour while somehow giving a “contextualised defence of his actions”, even though many people in his own party have criticised Morrison openly at this point. Throughout the piece, PVO blames the curse of the “pissed-off predecessor” as a reason why Dutton has maintained a low profile amid this scandal, even though he hasn’t exactly been kissing babies and shaking hands down at the local supermarket since assuming the party leadership.

According to the first Resolve poll since the election, Albanese is leading for preferred PM by 55-17, but it would be unfair to blame this result entirely on Scott Morrison’s recent scandal — or his leadership in general.

Throughout his long political career, he has called the Murugappan children “anchor babies”, sued a refugee advocate for defamation, boycotted the apology to the Stolen Generation, asserted that climate action protesters should have their welfare payments cut and be thrown in jail and even made extremely out-of-line jokes about the very real impacts of climate change.

So while the party, more broadly, is in absolutely shambles amid the fallout of Morrison’s leadership, we cannot pretend that Dutton walked into the role with an exemplary reputation to begin with. Dutton is many things, but the victim in Scott Morrison’s latest scandal certainly isn’t one of them.