Peter Dutton says Fairfax 'trying to bring the government down'

The Abbott government has blamed elements of the media for contributing to the Coalition’s electoral woes, with Peter Dutton accusing Fairfax of conducting “a bit of a jihad” and attempting to “bring the government down”.

The immigration minister argued Fairfax Media was “being helped by the ABC” in the task, while the social services minister, Scott Morrison, criticised an ABC interviewer for seeking to whip up a “frenzy” about the government and asking questions “in a very verballing way”.

Morrison complained the media was increasingly covering politics like it was reality television and the small business minister, Bruce Billson, said “the gossip pedlars” should “put it in Who Weekly”.

The Coalition – which has trailed Labor in major opinion polls published since last year – has suffered bad publicity in many media outlets about the ill-fated visa-check operation in Melbourne by the Australian Border Force.

Fairfax Media reported on Monday that it had been told by two cabinet ministers that talks had been held about Joe Hockey being replaced as treasurer if the Coalition does badly in the Canning byelection in Western Australia this month, a suggestion rejected by Tony Abbott.

Dutton said it would be helpful if some political commentators “started reporting on the incidents, as opposed to being players themselves”.

“I think there’s a huge move by Fairfax at the moment to try and bring the government down, that’s fair enough,” he told the ABC’s AM program on Tuesday.

“They aren’t supposed to be political players, they’re supposed to be objective reporters of the news and I think many of them have morphed into frustrated politicians themselves ... I think regardless of what Tony Abbott does, Fairfax will say it’s bad. I think regardless of what Joe Hockey or the Abbott government does, Fairfax will say it’s bad.”

When the interviewer noted that journalists were being helped by government members who were leaking and backgrounding, Dutton added: “They’re being helped by the ABC as well, there’s no question about that, some elements of the ABC.”

Dutton made even stronger remarks in an interview with Sky News. “There is a bit of a jihad being conducted by Fairfax at the moment,” he said.

The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, said the Abbott government was “becoming a giant blame factory”.

“All they want to do is blame the unions or blame the media or blame the environmentalists or blame the economists. The only people they never want to blame is themselves and that is where they should start looking,” Shorten said.

Channelling an old quote from Abbott, Shorten said: “My advice to Peter Dutton is if you want better coverage, be a better government.”

Fairfax’s the Age newspaper received some criticism from the ABC’s Media Watch program on Monday for the way it had presented allegations about the SAS record of the Liberal candidate for Canning, Andrew Hastie. Media Watch said the front page presentation was “unfair and misleading” but it did not find fault with the journalist.

Morrison said the Canning byelection was “a test for all of us” and he would not engage in speculation about Hockey’s position.

When asked by the ABC AM host, Michael Brissenden, whether he would take the treasurer’s job, Morrison said: “It’s speculative nonsense, Michael. I’m not going to indulge this fantasy of yours.”

Brissenden asked whether the leaking was a sign of a government in crisis and that a number of colleagues were worried the Coalition was heading for defeat after one term, prompting a forceful response from Morrison.

“Michael, you pose these questions in a very verballing way and I’m not about to entertain it,” the minister said. “What I will say to you is this: it is becoming commonplace for politics to be reported on like it is reality television. We as a government take it more seriously than that ... I’m not going to feed the frenzy you’re seeking to whip up, Michael.”

When pressed on the government’s standing in the opinion polls, Morrison said: “You can make forecasts, you can make predictions, you can call the end of the Abbott government if you wish to, Michael ... I’m getting that slight sentiment from you, Michael, and it doesn’t surprise me, but what we’re focused on is the job of good government for this country.”

Billson seemed reluctant to buy into the discussion about media coverage, saying the government should “focus on the job at hand”.

“We’ve got important work to do. Let’s get on with it,” the small business minister told Sky News.

Billson took aim at cabinet leakers. “For colleagues that want to background the media they can either pardon themselves from cabinet, because there are disciplines they’re not living up to, or they need to be punted,” he said.

His warning echoed comments by the NSW Liberal senator and former minister Arthur Sinodinos, who said on Monday that the prime minister “should sack any minister or adviser who is engaged in such deliberate leaking and destabilisation”.

Dutton told Seven’s Sunrise program that people could “have a fair idea who is leaking” and it could “only be for their own ambitions”.

“If you can discover who the person is, of course they should be [sacked]. We should talk about the things the government is achieving,” Dutton said.

Abbott, when opposition leader, took a dim view of the former Labor government’s complaints about unfair coverage by News Corp, which included the Daily Telegraph’s “Kick this mob out” front page at the beginning of the 2013 election campaign.

“Fundamentally, if you want good coverage, you have got to perform well and the reason why this government gets poor coverage, at least in some areas of the media, is because it has been the worst government in our history. If you want better coverage, be a better government,” Abbott said in August 2013.

Fairfax’s Sydney Morning Herald editorialised in favour of Abbott before the 2013 election, but its Melbourne stablemate – the Age – backed the Labor party. News Corp papers overwhelmingly backed Abbott.

Several Fairfax journalists responded to Dutton’s comments on Twitter by tweeting the 2013 quote from Abbott about better media coverage coming from being a better government.

Others either mocked the comments or pointed out that the Coalition’s Senate leader, Eric Abetz, had praised Fairfax and ABC investigative reports about union corruption as a contributor to the decision to launch the royal commission.