Senior Liberal Christopher Pyne has taken back a comment in which he compared the Gillard government with a movie about the last days of Adolf Hitler.
On hearing news of the resignation of two senior ministers, Mr Pyne said at the weekend: "This government is starting to resemble a scene from Downfall and the prime minister is presiding over a divided and dysfunctional government."
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the comments were deeply hurtful to Holocaust survivors and called on Mr Pyne to apologise. Mr Pyne said he was not comparing the prime minister to Hitler, but the chaos in the government was similar to a scene from Downfall.
"I'm not necessarily apologising to Mark Dreyfus, because his is confected outrage designed to get a headline," he told Sky News on Monday. "But if anybody else has taken offence at that, well of course I retract the statement."
He called on Mr Dreyfus, who is Jewish, to apologise for comments he made in 2011 in which he likened Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's campaign against the carbon tax to Nazi propaganda.
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Mr Dreyfus said his comment was "very specific" and related to propaganda techniques.
