A state MP criticised by Peter Dutton for changing electorates prior to the last Queensland election claims the Federal Liberal front-bencher’s own seat-hopping antics paints him as a hypocrite.

The ALP’s State Member for Pine Rivers, Carolyn Male, has accused Mr Dutton of lying to local voters after initially walking away from the seat of Dickson, which he has held since 2001.

Amid claims he turned his back on voters, Mr Dutton decided to recontest Dickson at the next election after failing in his bid to run for the safe LNP-held seat of McPherson on the Gold Coast.

Mr Dutton was highly critical of Ms Male after she announced she would leave her former seat of Glass House prior to this year’s Queensland election.

Like Mr Dutton, Ms Male sought preselection in a safer seat after boundary changes for her electorate favoured her rival party.

In Parliament last September Mr Dutton criticised Ms Male for “parachuting” into Pine Rivers.

Mr Dutton said residents “deserve somebody who is local, somebody who is interested in representing their own interests, and not somebody who is a seat-hopper, deciding to take residence in Pine Rivers because they do not believe they can win the seat which they are currently representing any longer.”

Ms Male said the comments had come back to haunt Mr Dutton, adding the opposition health spokesperson “deserved to be punished” by voters after being “very dishonest” to Dickson residents.

“He said all this stuff about me and he was really mean and horrible, and yet he’s gone and done exactly the same thing,” Ms Male said.  “He was either lying then or he’s lying now.

“I know there’s a lot of argy bargy in politics but if he held such a strong position about ‘people should stay in their electorate and they should stay and fight’, then he should have shown that through his actions and not try to run for a different seat.

“I think he’s just shown himself up to be a hypocrite and it’s all about him and it’s not about anything else.”

Mr Dutton defended himself against accusations he had abandoned his constituents by seeking pre-selection for McPherson.

“It had nothing to do with a lack of interest or commitment to our local area, the circumstances were brought on because the Electoral Commission made the seat into a notionally Labor seat,” Mr Dutton said.

“The choice you’re faced with is if you want to continue to make a contribution in public life or not, and that’s the reason why I was forced into making that decision.”

Mr Dutton said he was “very passionate not just about our local area but about our state and our country as well”.

“I want to continue to be an effective member of the shadow cabinet, holding the Government to account, and it’s very hard to do that if you’re not in Parliament,” he said.

“These aren’t easy decisions to be made, but I completely reject any suggestion that I don’t have a commitment or a passion for our local area. I’ve worked seven days a week for the last eight years and I want to do that into the future.”

Ms Male rejected Mr Dutton’s claims that the electoral redistribution made Dickson an “unwinnable seat” for the Liberals.

“The same thing happened to me, the boundaries changed quite drastically,” Ms Male said. “In his case it just changed by a small amount, in my case the boundaries changed by a 15 or 16 per cent swing.

“Given the new boundaries for Glass House there was absolutely no way, even if you did all the work in the world, that I could have won it.

“Here in Dickson, if he (Mr Dutton) had stayed loyal to the people and had worked, the difference was only a couple of hundred votes.”

Revised electorate boundary changes, finalised by the Electoral Commission a fortnight ago, has seen Labor’s predicted advantage in Dickson trimmed to around one per cent.

“It still makes me the underdog in the race and it just means that I’ve got to work even harder to get local support and win at the next election,” Mr Dutton said.

“I have to convince people not just of my track record and what I’ve been able to achieve locally, but what we can achieve into the future as well. It’s going to be a tough fight.”

Mr Dutton admitted he faced an uphill battle to win back the trust of local voters.

“I understand some people are upset by the circumstances and I apologise for that,” he said.

“My priority from here is to talk to those people that were upset by my decision and show them that I have the same hard work ethic in place now that I’ve had for the past eight years.”