Wollongong MP Paul Scully has unwittingly found himself in a social media firestorm intended for a Conservative UK MP of the same name.
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Mr Scully - the Australian one - has received a barrage of scathing tweets on Tuesday morning after his UK namesake, the Minister for Small Business in Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government, appeared on BBC current affairs program Newsnight.
The British Mr Scully was interviewed by host Emma Barnett about the Prime Minister and parties the government held while the UK was in COVID lockdown, and his answers apparently failed to impress.
Criticisms of this Mr Scully ranged from "embarrassing" to words unprintable in this publication.
The Wollongong MP found himself copping a lot of the flak online because his Twitter handle is @paulscullymp, while the UK minister's handle is @scullyp.
Mr Scully said he had been mistaken for the UK minister on previous occasions, so when he got a lot of notifications early in the morning or late at night he wondered if confusion had reared up again.
When a constituent had an issue and mistakenly tagged him he redirected them so they could get assistance, but he said other commentary was best left alone.
Sharing the same name, Mr Scully said he and the minister had conversed via social media and even met in person in 2019 while he was on a holiday in the UK.
Luckily for Wollongong's Mr Scully, as Tuesday morning wore on more and more people clocked onto the fact that he was not the person they wanted to rail at - with one even offering to send a crate of beer in apology.