It’s been two weeks to the day since we last updated you on what the go is with Peter Dutton and the au pairs, and suffice to say things have escalated.

In the last 24 hours, a Senate inquiry found Dutton did indeed mislead Parliament when he said he had no personal connection to the cases he intervened in, and the Department of Home Affairs released hundreds of documents raising further questions about Dutton’s conduct.

To top it all off, just this morning the House of Representatives voted on whether to pause proceedings to consider a vote of no confidence in Peter Dutton — something Christopher Pyne described as “one of the most serious things a Parliament can consider”. The motion failed by a single vote.

In short, Dutton’s in big trouble — not that our Prime Minister, who maintains Dutton still has his full support, seems to care.

Here’s the (current) go with the au pairs.

Au Pair Recap: Here’s What You Missed

If you haven’t kept up to speed on the au pair drama over the past few weeks, we recommend having a read of our previous explainer here. The short version is that Peter Dutton has been in hot water for quite a while now, after it was revealed that back when he was Minister for Immigration, he intervened on a few occasions to stop au pairs from being deported from the country.

Now, the Minister for Immigration is allowed to intervene to stop deportations — it’s just that in these cases, it looked an awful lot like Dutton was stepping in to save au pairs who had clearly done the wrong thing, and that he was choosing these cases to intervene because his mates and former colleagues asked him to.

People were rightly worried that Dutton was basically doing favours for people he knew, so Dutton repeatedly told Parliament that he did not have a personal connection to any of the cases. He stuck to that line even as more and more information trickled out to the contrary, including from former Border Force Commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg, who described receiving a call from Dutton’s chief of staff in June 2015 asking for help for Dutton’s “mate”, although Dutton disputes that account.

Basically, it looked an awful lot like Dutton misled Parliament about his connection to the cases, and a Senate inquiry was set up to look into it. Now you’re caught up, that brings us to today.

Senate Inquiry Finds That Yep, Dutton Misled Parliament

Yesterday, the Senate committee looking into this whole mess released its report, which found that Dutton did indeed mislead Parliament when he said he had no personal connection to the au pair cases.

It came to that conclusion even though the Department of Home Affairs provided its own evidence — 169 pages of emails and documents — just hours before the report was due, too late for the committee to consider these documents as evidence. They were pretty explosive documents, too, revealing that in some cases, Dutton instructed his department to urgently prepare interventions to save an au pair from deportation at the last minute. The documents also revealed that Dutton proceeded with interventions even in cases where members of his own department wrote that they did not think it was appropriate.

All of this is a huge deal, and it might just cost Dutton his job. The committee recommended in its report that the Senate consider censuring Dutton for his actions, and that Dutton be made to explain himself, but some MPs want to go further. Labor MP Anthony Albanese told Sky News this morning that the only appropriate response from Dutton would be to resign.

“It’s very clear that Dutton’s position as a minister in this ATM government — Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison — should be at an end, and it should be at an end today,” he said. “He should do the right thing and resign.”

A Parliamentary Committee has found that @PeterDutton_MP deliberately mislead Parliament. Westminster principles provide that he now should resign. @SkyNewsAust pic.twitter.com/E5XNvDCQqW

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) September 20, 2018

Saved By His Own Vote: Dutton Just Narrowly Escaped A Vote Of No Confidence

Meanwhile, a number of MPs are trying to move a motion of no confidence in Peter Dutton, with the Greens’ Adam Bandt telling Parliament that “there’s a golden rule in this place if you’re a minister: tell the truth. Do not mislead the Parliament.” This morning, an attempt to suspend standing orders in Parliament in order to consider a no confidence motion in Dutton failed by just one vote: Dutton’s own.

That’s an incredibly close vote, and a pretty uncomfortable position for Dutton: just one MP would need to cross the floor in order to trigger a vote of no confidence, which is a big deal. As Liberal MP Christopher Pyne put it today, “a motion of no confidence in a minister, or the government, is one of the most serious things a Parliament can consider”. There’s actually never been a successful vote of no confidence in a minister like Dutton, though votes of no confidence have taken down governments and Prime Ministers before. If one was successful, Dutton would likely be forced to resign.

So Dutton 🥔 was saved by his own vote.

Stable government.#auspol https://t.co/JArvLy8HAC

— Shorten Suite 👊 (@Shorten_Suite) September 20, 2018

For now, though, the government, is sticking to its guns and insisting that Dutton’s in the clear. Just this morning, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he had full confidence in Peter Dutton. In Parliament today, Liberal MP Christopher Pyne also said that he has full confidence in Dutton, while arguing that Parliament was simply too busy to even consider discussing whether a government minister had done something wrong.

Here’s your friendly reminder, then, that this government that simply shut down Parliament to bicker about a leadership spill less than a month ago. Who knows, maybe they’ll pull another spectacular backflip and allow a vote of no confidence in Peter Dutton soon.