Dutton not ruling out legal action against “bizarre” Bob Carr
Defence minister Peter Dutton has slammed former NSW premier Bob Carr, who has claimed Dutton is the one behind the Liberal Party's texting scandal.
The series of texts were leaked to Network Ten's Peter van Onselen, as the texts were reportedly exchanged between Peter Dutton and Gladys Berejiklian during the 2019-2020 Australian bushfire crisis.
In the messages, Gladys refers to Prime Minister Scott Morrison as a "horrible, horrible person", with the response from Dutton, according to Carr, called the PM a "complete psycho".
Bob Carr broke the news on Twitter, saying he knows that Dutton is the one who broke the story to the media and gave permission for news outlets to use the texts.
He said, "The minister who shared the text with van Onselen and gave permission to use it was Peter Dutton. If PM Morrison has one more week in free fall the prospect of a leadership change pre-election is real."
"Party rules don’t count if most MPs think you will lead them to defeat."
Dutton responded on Twitter, saying "Bob Carr's tweet is baseless, untrue and should be deleted."
The defence minister reaffirmed his innocence in an interview with Today's Karl Stefanovic, who denied sending the messages and is contemplating legal action against the former premier.
"Was it you?" asked Karl Stefanovic.
"It was not me," Mr Dutton replied.
"He's a bizarre guy. He hasn't produced any evidence. He's now saying if it's not me, then the person needs to come forward to prove my innocence. I just find it bizarre."
Dutton said that the onus was on Carr to delete the tweets, and that the whole situation is a "farce".
"He hasn't yet taken the post down," he said.
"He's made a claim which is clearly defamatory and he now needs to produce the evidence which he can't of course because I never sent that text and it's a farce."
Karl Stefanovic asked if Dutton would consider challenging the leadership, as "that was what he was "trying to smoke you out for".
But Mr Dutton shut down those suggestions, saying "No, Karl, no."
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