TAFE crisis analysis: Close and Weatherall hoping scandal will blow away — but won’t this time

SUSAN Close and Jay Weatherill are no doubt hoping the TAFE scandal goes away.

Education Minister Susan Close.

• Students gutted as TAFE SA crisis deepens

SUSAN Close and Jay Weatherill are no doubt hoping the TAFE scandal goes away.

Cop a few bad headlines, call a review, put your head down and pretend everything will be fine. It’s a strategy that has worked frighteningly well.

But this time it won’t be that easy. Federal Parliament has set up a Senate inquiry into the crisis, with a report to lob two weeks from the state election.

Unlike the child protection, Gillman land deal and Oakden aged care scandals that have come before, this will ensure the Government cannot bank on voters forgetting about the issue on voting day.

There will likely be public hearings in which students tell their stories and already former bureaucrats have detailed how Labor knew about the mess and did nothing. And Dr Close will be expected to front up and explain herself.

It is common for ministers to refuse to give evidence at parliamentary inquiries. Mr Weatherill refused to show up to a state inquiry about how the rape of a child at a western suburbs school was covered up.

But just last week Mr Weatherill called on other states to comply with its royal commission into the Murray.

It would be outrageous for Labor to demand something of others it would not do itself. Although, sadly, in modern politics, such rank hypocrisy cannot be ruled out.