Matthew Abraham: Blackmail charges against the Digances were a stroke of good luck for the wounded Marshall government
The various legal woes of Liberal MPs have been a rolled-gold gift for state Labor. That smugness was blown right out of the water this week with the Digance charges, writes Matthew Abraham.
Opinion
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The bombshell arrests of former Labor MP Annabel Digance and her husband Greg, both charged with blackmail, is a stroke of good luck for some at least.
Not for the Digances, of course. For them it’s anything but. While both are entitled to the presumption of innocence, and it’s the job of the courts alone to decide their fate, the inescapable reality is the Strathalbyn couple face a harrowing, expensive trudge through the legal system.
And if one or both of them is found guilty of blackmailing Labor Leader Peter Malinauskas, they face a possible maximum jail term of 15 years.
No, luck isn’t the right word for them, not good luck anyway.
After too many decades spent covering politics it takes a bit to shock me but news of the Digances’ arrest at 7am Wednesday blew my socks off.
Major Crime detectives arrested the pair at their Strathalbyn property.
This followed a lengthy covert investigation which The Advertiser and Sunday Mail’s experienced journalist Nigel Hunt, who broke the story, described as the first of its type in Australian politics.
The police investigation may have been covert but the arrest wasn’t, as the couple were snapped being whisked off to court, with Ms Digance in the back seat unwisely ducking her head to avoid the cameras. Never a good look, that.
In a nutshell, the couple is alleged to have threatened to damage Mr Malinauskas with false allegations of racism, bullying, harassment and sexism unless he wangled a safe return to politics for Ms Digance, who lost the seat of Elder in the 2018 state election.
It’s alleged they demanded she be given preselection for either a safe Labor seat before next year’s election or a spot in the Senate in Canberra.
So where’s the luck in all this? It’s a stroke of good luck for Premier Steven Marshall, whose government has been muddied, wounded, lost key ministers and plunged into minority status thanks to a string of accusations against Liberal MPs.
Three former Liberals – Fraser Ellis, Troy Bell and Sam Duluk – are now sitting as independents while strenuously defending different criminal charges.
That’s been a rolled-gold gift for the Labor Opposition, which has adopted a holier-than-thou stance publicly while high-fiving privately.
The blackmail charges against the Digances blow all that smugness out of the water.
Those sorts of allegations belong in other states, not dear little South Australia.
Don’t expect the Marshall Government’s heavy-hitters to play nice on this one. You can bet the potential political turmoil from the Digance arrests would have been greeted with glee in the Premier’s circle of friends, advisers and assorted hangers-on.
Within hours of the arrests, Attorney-General Vickie Chapman, said: “Of course it’s very distressing to hear of a continuation of what may be a very toxic culture in the Labor Party.”
Ms Chapman insists she’ll push on with her select committee investigating claims made by Ms Digance only last month that she’d been subject to bullying and harassment from the ALP.
This is a ridiculous decision by our chief law officer.
How could parliament investigate the Digance complaints without trampling all over potential evidence in the blackmail court case?
Mr Malinauskas is certainly riding his luck.
He says he reported the couple to the police “not because it was the easy thing to do, I did it because it was the right thing to do”.
It was the right thing to do but it was also a high risk, politically, for the Labor leader.
Deals, promises and even threats over preselection for nice safe seats in parliament, or offers of cosy jobs to nudge someone out the door, are a fact of life in every political party. It’s the grease that makes their wheels turn. It’s rarely a transparent process.
But few political parties can match the secret and complex deal-making that is a trademark of Labor’s backroom factional players.
SA police have made it clear Mr Malinauskas is “simply the victim of an alleged blackmail” and has committed no criminal offence.
But this still promises to be an ugly court case in the months leading up to the state election next March. Who knows how it will play out?
The Digances were granted bail but Mr Digance asked the court to clarify if he was allowed to travel to Victoria to bring back a car he’d bought. No, replied Magistrate Jonathan Wells, advising it “should not be your focus at this stage”.
Oh well, it was worth a try. You never know your luck.
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