This obscene loop in Qantas business class would cost a regular punter more than $5,500. Dutton’s office reiterated the opposition leader paid for all of it himself.
There are a few ways to parse the extravagance and sheer strangeness of Dutton’s behaviour. Firstly, one can deduce the clear personal import that the opposition leader puts in his relationship with Rinehart. Dutton’s affection for the billionaire has been on display for months, taking him across the country to be by her side.
Though, why the need to make this cross-country trip for so little time? What did Dutton have to say in person, to a roomful of admirers, that he couldn’t have done in a video message? (As he’d done previously.)
The answer is somewhere in what many Hancock associates and potential clients have known for many years: Rinehart only does deals with people who bother to show up in-person.
However, if this did, in fact, cost Dutton more than $5,500, it makes a mockery of his message about standing up for battlers being smashed by raising rates and cost-of-living pressures.
Households around the country are forgoing family holidays, or timing their weekly trip to petrol pumps, or dumping steak for mince. Food banks are seeing record numbers. Yet, here’s the Liberal party leader seemingly spaffing three weeks of average household earnings on a three-leg joy flight.
And then there’s the timing. If winning Dunkley was actually a priority for the Liberal party, why would the leader pull this move? 2GB host Ben Fordham told talkback listeners on Monday that Dutton should have “brushed” Rinehart.
“People often make up their minds in the final 48 hours and you need to be there,” Fordham said. “You don’t need to be going to WA for a birthday party... if he was away from home, he should have been in Dunkley.”
Rather than doing everything possible to win a byelection, Dutton went to the ends of Australia (and back) for his relationship with Rinehart. And doesn’t that tell you all you need to know?
