Peter Dutton stunned by ABC reporter’s baffling exchange over Hezbollah

Peter Dutton has taken aim at the ABC for being in “greater trouble” than he’d imagined, after a terse exchange with a reporter over the status of Hezbollah as a proscribed terrorist organisation.

After some protesters at rallies on the weekend waved Hezbollah flags and held photos of slain leader Hassan Nasrallah, the Opposition Leader has been leading calls for arrests, deportations, and stronger hate symbol laws.

But it was a question from an ABC journalist that seemed to take him by surprise, prompting him to accuse the public broadcaster of not supporting bipartisan laws regarding the proscription of terrorist organisations and rebuke a female journalist.

The reporter first asked Mr Dutton to respond to accusations by some groups of the “hypocrisy” of Hezbollah’s flag being banned but not that of Israel, which she said had been behind 45,000 deaths.

Mr Dutton responded that Israel is a “democracy, and is not run by a terrorist organisation”.

“Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation. They’re a listed terrorist organisation. If people are in favour of a terrorist organisation, they should declare it and the authorities should deal with them,” he said.

The reporter then asked Mr Dutton: “What determines the fact that Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation”.

After asking which organisation the reporter worked for, Mr Dutton sought clarity about the question he’d been asked and whether it had come from Canberra.

The reporter sought to rephrase the question by referring back to those concerns, but Mr Dutton cut her off and told her to repeat the question in its original form.

After some back and forth, the reporter asked Mr Dutton if he could “just sort of explain what determines something as a terrorist organisation”.

Mr Dutton went on to spray the ABC.

“Well, I had presumed up until this point, at least, that the ABC supported the Government’s laws and the Government has passed laws – supported on a bipartisan basis, but not by the ABC it seems – in relation to the prescribing, or the listing of a terrorist organisation,” he said

“Hezbollah under Australian law is a listed terrorist organisation. Now if the ABC doesn’t support that, they should be very clear about it because I think that’s quite a departure...”

The reporter interjected to say that was not her claim, but Mr Dutton continued.

“You asked me why our country has listed Hezbollah,” he said.

“They’re a terrorist organisation, they organise terrorist attacks and if that is not clear to the ABC then I think the ABC is in greater trouble than even I first imagined.”

The reporter again said that had not been her question and apologised.

Hezbollah’s armed wing was first listed as a terrorist organisation in 2003, with the list updated to include the entire group in 2021.

An ABC spokesperson told The Nightly that the questions asked by their journalist “were not a piece of reporting nor a position being taken by the ABC.

“Hezbollah is listed as a terrorist organisation by the Australian Government and the ABC recognises that in its coverage.”