The Sketch: forthright Peter Dutton breaks the fourth wall

Peter Dutton appeared to be caught in his own irresistible ­momentum during parliamentary question time yesterday. Picture: AAP

Sometimes MPs make eye contact with people watching from the galleries above during question time. Malcolm Turnbull, for example, lifted his gaze towards the press gallery yesterday as he declared, “The opposition either have the memory of a goldfish, or they think that everybody else does.” (“What a rapier wit,” cried a Labor MP, possibly not sincerely.)

Peter Dutton took things a step farther yesterday when he spotted members of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union in the public gallery and, caught in his own irresistible ­momentum, engaged one.

“There you go, mate,” he said with the bonhomie of an arresting officer. “Throw your arm up. Out on building sites, breaking arms, carrying on.”

In theatre terms, this is called breaking the fourth wall. So un­expectedly and boldly Brechtian was this move from the Immigration Minister that many of his colleagues promptly lost it.

Barnaby Joyce’s eyes bulged, Alex Hawke appeared to levitate, Turnbull’s glasses shifted on his face.

Meanwhile, one of the CFMEU Twitter accounts shot back: “The man Dutton had a go at is a mine worker from central Queensland who has been locked out of his workplace for over six months.

“Good onya spud.”

On more traditional ground, Kelly O’Dwyer took Bill Shorten’s recently expressed fear of the creation of a “left-behind society” and reshaped it into an apprehension that, thanks to Labor’s stance on company tax, Australia would be left behind by Britain, Belgium and a bunch of other countries.

But when it came to contortions, she was outperformed by Turnbull. “The reality is this: the Leader of the Opposition hates business,” he ventured.

This was a contrast to all those times Turnbull has colourfully ­accused Shorten of networking back in the day with businessmen such as Richard Pratt. Perhaps he is suggesting Shorten has adapted the biblical idea of hating the sin, loving the sinner.

In one of question time’s quieter moments, Tanya Plibersek went and sat with her citizenship-­troubled colleague Susan Lamb. At the other end of the decibel spectrum, Scott Morrison spoke like a man striving to deliver a lecture during a punch-up.

Christopher Pyne endeavoured to adapt “Let Bartlet be Bartlet”, a line about the fictional president in The West Wing: ­“Imagine if they said to the Leader of the Opposition, let the Leader of the Opposition be the Leader of the Opposition.” The sentence was clearly a labour of love for Pyne.

“He’s changed sides so often, had so many different policy positions and been on so many different sides of the Labor Party, he wouldn’t know how to let Shorten be Shorten.”

One suspects Dutton wouldn’t suffer any such identity crisis.