There are few less comfortable positions, every politician knows, than sitting astride a wedge.

It’s where Peter Dutton finds himself.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and shadow treasurer Angus Taylor during question time this week.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

His position is surely rendered even less pleasant by the festival of bottled-up viciousness and hot-poker get-squares that makes Nemesis, the current ABC-TV series on the recent years of Liberal leadership warfare, such captivating viewing.

Dutton doesn’t give the impression of being a classicist, but having been called a thug in the series by Malcolm Turnbull – a Liberal prime minister until less than six years ago – he could do worse than turn to a speech by Napoleon Bonaparte from 1814.

Shortly before being exiled to the Italian island of Elba, Napoleon told the wavering members of the French legislature to keep their criticism of him to themselves.

“Supposing even that I was in the wrong, you ought not to have reproved me publicly,” thundered the put-upon emperor.

“It is within the family that one’s dirty linen must be washed; one ought not to call everybody to see it washed.”

Dutton, alas, is no Napoleon. The Coalition’s dirty linen is flapping freely on national TV.

QOSHE - Dutton’s taxing time, wedged and tangled in dirty linen - Tony Wright
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Dutton’s taxing time, wedged and tangled in dirty linen

13 1
09.02.2024

There are few less comfortable positions, every politician knows, than sitting astride a wedge.

It’s where Peter Dutton finds himself.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and shadow treasurer Angus Taylor during question time this week.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

His position is surely rendered even less pleasant by the........

© The Sydney Morning Herald


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