Even for those who felt strongly about his entitlement to the presumption of innocence, it is now terribly difficult to summon much sympathy for Christian Porter.

As he resigned from Scott Morrison‘s cabinet on Sunday and slunk away to the backbench – still the beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of dollars whose ultimate source he has declined to disclose to the Parliament – Porter lamented that in clearing his name, “an impossible standard was set for any person to meet”.