‘It’s embarrassed Labor’: Bill Shorten blasts Dutton meme

Former Labor leader Bill Shorten has slammed the party over its social media attack against Peter Dutton and wife Kirilly.

Bill Shorten has blasted Victorian Labor's social media meme targeting Peter Dutton and his wife Kirilly.

Bill Shorten has branded Victorian Labor’s social media misfire against the Dutton family as an “embarrassment” to the ALP.

The former federal Labor leader and Victorian ALP veteran conceded on Wednesday that the Facebook post attacking Peter and Kirilly Dutton was an own goal that damaged the party. “Whoever did it has caused embarrassment to the whole Labor Party,” he told The Australian.

State and federal Labor MPs and party figures are questioning how Victorian Labor – long considered the best political campaigning operation in the country – has found itself amid a crisis of its own making.

Victorian Labor has come under sustained criticism from Labor and Liberal MPs since it attacked the Duttons on Monday with a meme based on a five-year-old newspaper report.

The meme carried the heading “We all know that one couple” and a secondary line stating “Justifying dating your new partner to your friends who don’t like him” above a 2019 newspaper photo quoting Ms Dutton saying of her husband: ‘‘He is not a monster.’’

The original Queensland-based Sunday Mail newspaper front page was headlined “My Pete’s no monster’’.

Victorian Labor state secretary Steve Staikos initially defended the meme on Monday, denying it was an attack on Ms Dutton and saying it was “supposed to be a comedic meme”.

Mr Staikos declined to respond to Mr Shorten’s criticisms of the meme on Wednesday but The Australian understands that in the wake of the bipartisan storm of protest over the attack, party chiefs will review Labor’s social media strategy.

The Victorian Labor attack ad.

Anthony Albanese ordered Victorian Labor to delete the post hours after it was published and declared “families should be off-­limits”.

Despite initially refusing to criticise the post and describing it as a matter for ALP headquarters, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan on Tuesday evening condemned the attack.

“The post has been removed, that’s appropriate. Families must be off-­limits,” she said in a ­statement.

State Labor launched its personal attack on the Duttons as support for the party in Victoria, a traditional stronghold, plunges, suggesting several seats could be in danger at this year’s federal election.

Labor sources said there were a lot of serious questions being asked internally about how the “stuff up” was allowed to happen and concerns were emerging about the possibility it could be symptomatic of deeper problems within Victorian Labor.

“People are asking, is it a one-off stuff-up or a sign of a deeper malaise?” one Labor figure said.

Labor and Liberal MPs have been lining up to criticise the meme, with Albanese cabinet minister Jason Clare describing it as “stupid” and “wrong”.

“I’m glad it’s been taken down. A family should be off-limits. We’re on the ballot paper, not our partners,” the federal Education Minister said on Tuesday. “And that’s why when the Prime Minister saw it, he demanded it be ripped down. And I’m glad it has been.”

Victorian Liberal shadow ministers James Paterson, Dan Tehan and Sarah Henderson led the charge against Victorian Labor, Senator Paterson branding the post as “grubby gutter politics from a desperate government slipping in the polls”.

“We all know Labor’s plan for the election next year is negative personal attacks on Peter Dutton; this is just a preview,” Senator Paterson said.

“When you run out of ideas to tackle the cost of living and have no second-term agenda, that’s all that is left.”

Mr Tehan said Labor should be focused on fixing the country’s problems and the attack revealed the party had “no plan for our country” and had “run out of ideas to fix it”.

Senator Henderson, the Coalition education spokeswoman, described it as a “disgusting smear against Peter Dutton and his family which shows Labor has given up governing, with no solutions to the cost-of-living crisis Victorians are suffering”.