Duttoned out, Labor puts PM on the spot over banks, insurers

Labor’s attack has Petered out. But the new Prime Minister is not getting off Scott free.

Labor has stopped asking questions of Peter Dutton about his interventions as immigration minister and dropped the issue of his eligibility to sit in parliament after weeks of breathless claims and demands for explanations, including an attempt to suspend the business of parliament.

It has shrewdly refined its parliamentary attacks on Scott Morrison and started to pursue its strategy of tying the new Prime Minister to the unpopular actions of the previous prime minister and his own time as treasurer to Malcolm Turnbull.

The strife and continued back-biting and leaking designed to undermine both Morrison and Dutton will keep creating chaos within the Coalition without Labor’s encouragement.

Labor had been sending in the popgun of immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann against the battle-hardened Dutton, allowing the perception to grow that the ALP is more concerned about keeping out au pairs than securing the nation’s borders.

Although the hyperventilation about “scandals”, “mates” and “au pairs for friends and party donors” continues in the media, Bill Shorten has eased the attack on the Home Affairs Minister and switched pressure to Morrison.

Sticking with his first question as to why Turnbull was no longer Liberal leader, Shorten was urged by Morrison to “just get over it” — and he did.

Shorten then switched to the far more effective demand that Morrison explain the disgraceful revelations before the financial services royal commission about reprehensible insurance sales and apologise for opposing the commission “26 times”.

Morrison couldn’t bluster and simply say “Get over it” when the Opposition Leader was asking about the hoodwinking of a young man with Down syndrome. The Prime Minister expressed “regret” for not calling the inquiry earlier and recognised the “hurt” people were suffering at the hands of the banks and insurance companies.

It’s impossible for the Coalition to justify Turnbull’s opposition to the royal commission and Morrison’s support for him as treasurer, and more difficult to argue he is “bringing Australia together” as daily disgraces emerge from the banks and insurance companies.

Expect to see much less of claims about au pairs and much more of the policy and political pair of Morrison and Turnbull.