But as Dutton made clear to Hadley, he doesn’t care what they say. He is focused on the job at hand - something politicians often say in media interviews where, by definition, they are taking a break from the job at hand to sell their message and burnish their personal brand. In Dutton’s case, his political brand is classic Strong Man. Dutton seems to have a defensive world view, and is finely attuned to potential threats, be they of the Muslim terrorist, African gang, or left-wing-media-bias variety. As Immigration Minister he is the country’s gatekeeper. He protects us from these threats. “I think the ABC and others report these things how they want to report them, and how they want to interpret them,” Dutton told Hadley of the white South African farmer story. Loading “Some of the crazy lefties at the ABC, and on The Guardian, Huffingpost, can express concern and draw mean cartoons about me and all the rest of it. They don’t realise how completely dead they are to me.

“We just get on with making decisions that we need to.” But far from being dead to him, Dutton’s critics are actually an essential part of his political tactics. Without critics, you can’t have controversy, and controversy is the oxygen politicians like Dutton need in order to breathe and grow. Consider his feat last week - with no warning, he came out with a left-field proposal to help an obscure sub-group of the world’s persecuted population, a group whose suffering, such as it is, is so niche it has escaped global attention for several decades, and is beneath the mention of the United Nations, which appears focused (however ineptly) on the persecution of Syrians, Rohingas and Christians in the Middle East. No one in mainstream political discourse has talked about South African farmers in decades. They are a '90s throwback.

Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video As elucidated by Dead-To-Dutton journalist Jason Wilson in The Guardian, the plight of white South African farmers is a hot issue only among the alt-right, white nationalist blogs and media which have proliferated globally in the age of Donald Trump. And while we must resist the temptation of Trump Totalism - seeing all politics through the lens of the unfortunate US presidency - there is a touch of the Trumps about Dutton. The Donald’s chief rhetorical and political tactic is to shift the terms of the debate, and draw his critics into arguments over distractions. He manipulates his political enemies into expending energy engaging with ideas which are un-serious and irrelevant, or flat-out lies. Like a Mexican wall, or the death penalty for drug dealers, or president Barack Obama personally ordering the bugging of Trump Tower.

This is what Dutton has done with his South African farmer thought bubble - for a few days the chattering classes (of which this columnist is part) debated seriously whether or not South African farmers are actually in need of asylum, labouring under the old-fashioned assumption that facts mattered. Greens Senator Nick McKim danced his steps perfectly when he came out on Thursday and labelled Dutton “racist” and “fascist”, and said the minister was “regurgitating speaking points from neo-Nazi ... or fundamentalist white nationalist websites. "You’ve got Mr Dutton and others supporting him now nakedly and clearly suggesting that Australia’s immigration policy should be conducted on the basis of the colour of somebody’s skin, and it’s a simple reversion to the White Australia policy which was actually adopted by both the Labor and Liberal parties back in the day, and I thought we’d gone past that and I think most Australians thought we’d gone past it.” On Thursday Dutton also discussed with Hadley the failure of minor parties to gain much traction in the South Australian state election. He said “independents can scream from the sidelines” but they only thrive on disruption and are not serious parties of government.