Dutton media bus stuck in Sydney as campaign reaches final week
Peter Dutton’s campaign bus mounted a bike lane barrier on Pitt Street in Sydney on Monday morning, blocking rush hour traffic for over an hour and providing a handy metaphor to media companies he slammed the day before.
This bus hiccup comes the morning after Dutton labelled the ABC and Guardian “hate media” at a party rally, and locked horns with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the final election debate.
The bus mounted a bike lane divider near Martin Place, shortly before 8am on Monday morning
The Guardian’s political reporter Josh Butler couldn’t hide his glee when reporting on the wedged bus this morning.
“There’s metaphors we could make about hitting road blocks, political wedges, spinning wheels or false starts – but you won’t hear them here,” Butler wrote, despite the piece being titled ‘Dutton media bus hits a roadblock.’
Dutton and Albanese met in their fourth and final debate on Sunday evening. During the debate, hosted on Seven by political editor Mark Riley, Dutton claimed Albanese was a liar, while the PM argued Dutton would be a “risk” to the country. A panel of 60 undecided voters sided with Albanese, who gained 50% of the vote, compared to Dutton’s 25% – with the rest remaining undecided.
Meanwhile, Liberal ministers spent Monday morning winding back Dutton’s comments about the two media organisations. Shadow finance minister Jane Hume appeared on ABC AM, where she was asked about Dutton’s use of the term ‘hate media’.
“The ABC and the Guardian have been very tough on the Coalition,” she said. “That wouldn’t be a phrase that I would use, but that wasn’t my phrase.”
When pushed on whether language, Hume said: “Well, I think that that’s conjecture one way or the other. I’m not focused on that.”
Shortly after, Hume popped up on ABC News Breakfast, where she argued the term “hate media” was used “tongue in cheek”.
“I have appeared on the ABC many times,” Hume said. “I doubt you would hear that from me. However, you can safely say that was a tongue-in-cheek comment by Peter Dutton yesterday.”
Hume also denied any Donald Trump comparisons. “I don’t think so, no,” she said, at the suggestion these comments echoe Trump’s disdain for US media operations, CNN and CBS. “Look, that is entirely irrelevant. I think this is quite, frankly, a Labor beat-up. This idea that you can somehow align Peter Dutton with Donald Trump is a nonsense.”
Shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien was also asked about Dutton’s comments on ABC Radio National.
“Look, I think he was being bit flippant with that,” O’Brien said.
“I’m sure the ABC, the Guardian and others who have certainly played interviews hard would take that on the chin, as just being a comment in jest.”
At the time of publication, the ABC hadn’t covered the traffic incident, although on April 15, they did report on another Dutton bus blunder, under the almost serene headline ‘Peter Dutton’s campaign bus gently scrapes the road.
“The opposition leader’s campaign bus navigated a steep driveway, gently scraping the ground,” reads the captivating report.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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This might be one of the funniest and ironic things in his train wreck of a campaign yet haha
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