This is how Queensland's Courier Mail looked on Tuesday. The story itself was a classic piece of News Corp storytelling—designed only to induce outrage and a dumb pleasure in its readers. The cover story went like this: Refugees on Manus Island are getting TVs by trading them for goods supplied by Australian taxpayers. Therefore Middle Australians are having a shit one, while refugees have a sick one. That's their logic.

I'm beyond unimpressed, I'm fascinated. How do a whole team of non-stroke victims who presumably weren't raised by iguanas manage to run a newspaper? HOW? The thing is built out of so many layers of thought-retarding emoti-logic that I don't know where to start. That's not true actually, here we go:

1) Noticing that people on Manus Island have TVs is not a story. Detainees also eat food and use toilet paper, but the Courier Mail isolated the whole thing to a consumer product their readers associate with luxury, thereby creating a story.

2) Why do idiots equate flat screen TVs with happiness? Like children who think happiness is a bag of Snakes Alive. If children ran the world, the mechanics of this story would operate the same with candy.

3) Refugees on Manus Island are really miserable and don't want to be on Manus or in many cases, alive. Suggesting they're having a great time at your expense is rude and weird. What is wrong with you?

4) The whole reason detention centres exist is that the government is pandering to the sort of xenophobic madness these stories perpetrate. You can't want something, then get pissed off when you get exactly what you wanted.

5) What the fuck?

We learned on Monday that Labor MP David Feeney "forgot" to declare his $2.3 million investment property to the Parliamentary Register of Members' Interests. For three years. That's a pretty shit memory, even for a politician.

After facing heavy criticism for failing to alert parliament to the fact that he is apparently filthy bloody rich (he also owns a well-situated inner city Melbourne apartment), Feeney probably isn't feeling like much of a winner this week. But the tenants who rent his negatively geared Northcote home, which is situated slap bang in the middle of the hotly contested electorate he is fighting for this election, definitely are.

Not only have the sharehouse tenants been enjoying four bedrooms, "spectacular city views" and an "abundance of period charm" on a "colossal" 900-square-metre block of land, they've also received national media attention for their bold decision to actively campaign for the Greens, placing placards for Batman candidate Alex Bhathal on Feeney's front lawn. Cheeky.

Apparently it was the Greens themselves who, upon hearing the news about Feeney failing to declare the property, opportunistically contacted his tenants and suggested they put up the placards in protest. This was a savvy move on their part, but yesterday's news that Greens leader Richard di Natale had an undeclared property of his own in 2012 does make things a little awkward.

The clear winner of this week was Literally Anyone Who Isn't Peter Dutton. From Julie Bishop to Tony Burke, from Sarah Hanson Young to Nick Xenophon, it was a banner week for People Who Have Managed To Avoid Being Even a Little Bit Like Peter Dutton.

Scott Morrison can rest easy knowing that his time as Minister for Immigration and Border Protection will be remembered as Not Being Quite As Shit As Peter Dutton's; Sophie Mirabella can chillax this week knowing that even though her chances of winning back her seat are next to nil, her constituents at least know that she's not Peter Dutton.

And sure, WA Labor candidate David Leith may have had to withdraw his candidacy for the seat of Moore by referring to detention centres as "gulags," the same week that Dutton dismissed refugees as being largely "illiterate" and "innumerate", trotting out the old scaremongering line that refugees were coming to steal our jobs, and also the contradictory idea that they're going to be lazing about on unemployment welfare, and even though Dutton appears to be receiving no major punishment for this textbook xenophobia, Leith may enjoy his unemployment safe in the knowledge that At Least He's Not Fucking Peter Dutton.

Street walks. Those gaffe-heavy gifts from the political gods in what is an otherwise unbearably long eight-week election campaign. Yes, there's perhaps nothing as deliciously awkward as watching our leaders attempting interaction with "regular, everyday folks."

It's usually the politician who plays a starring role in these run ins, but not when Bill Shorten met Margot Casey this week during a street walk in Adelaide.

Margot, who uses a mobility scooter, grilled the opposition leader about public transport accessibility for people with disabilities. Apparently pleased with his answer, she went for it during the photo-op, telling Bill "come on, proper kiss" and planting one on his cheek—not once, but twice.

It might be a bit early to call this but watching an obviously shocked Shorten say "Good on ya, Margot!" over and over and over to himself—as though experiencing some serious glitch in his processing centre—all the while trying to squirm away from her embrace, is probably going to be my favourite moment of Election 2016.

When Immigration Minister Peter Dutton kicked off the week with his "refugees are illiterate dolebludgers who are going to suck up all our welfare money while still somehow stealing good old Aussie jobs" comments, things started to look pretty dire for this election campaign.

Little did we know that our hero was about to emerge from the most unlikeliest of places: commercial breakfast TV. Karl Stefanovic took the opportunity to respond to Dutton's views with an impassioned, direct to camera monologue, calling the minister "un-Australian."

The popular TV host, himself the grandson of migrants who spent a year in an immigration camp in Wollongong, extolled the virtues of migrant Australians and their work in making Australia a "better place." "I think [Dutton] needs to apologise. Not only for those arriving now but for those who have come and now gone, who have given blood, sweat and tears and handed down their values to the next generation who are many of our leaders today," said Stefanovic. It was a surprisingly moving speech from Stefanovic, who has himself courted controversy over race-related comments. Good on him, I reckon. It was heartening to see so many high-profile Australians speak out against Dutton's offensive, illogical and factually incorrect comments targeted at refugees.

So for his articulate, moving takedown of the Immigration Minister, Karl Stefanovic is my winner of the week.

For all the latest in #auspol, check out the VICE Guide to the 2016 Australian Election.