Credlin: Libs should not fall for clever tactic

The sexual misbehaviour allegations against now-expelled Liberal senator David Van are totally different from the allegations concerning Labor minister Katy Gallagher and should not stop their pursuit, writes Peta Credlin.

The sexual misbehaviour allegations against now-expelled Liberal senator David Van are totally different from the allegations concerning Labor minister Katy Gallagher and should not stop their pursuit.

Naturally, Labor will say there’s a “plague on all our houses” and call for a truce to end any public controversy that even remotely involves sexual misconduct.

Some foolish Liberal MPs are already falling for this trap. However, this would be a big mistake that would just let Labor off the hook for, first, a senior minister arguably misleading parliament and, second, to avoid further scrutiny of the government using taxpayer funds to settle a claim over sexual misconduct allegations that helped to bring down the Morrison government.

If the multiple allegations of sexual harassment are correct, what Van did was highly improper. If they are proven, the best way for him to atone would be to resign from parliament.

But the claims against Gallagher are not that she engaged in any sexual misconduct, it’s that she co-ordinated with Brittany Higgins’ partner, David Sharaz, to weaponise the Higgins’ “I was raped in the minister’s office” allegation in an attempt to bring down the Morrison government rather than to gain justice for a potential victim.

Senator Katy Gallagher’s actions should be questioned. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

First, she knew about the rape allegations and seemingly never encouraged Higgins to go to the police rather than to the media; second, she misled parliament about what she knew; and third, she is part of a Labor government that breached standard procedure to give a taxpayer-funded payout to someone whose allegations the Labor Party used to damage its political opponents.

Unlike with Van, this is not about stock-standard disreputable human frailty, this is about serious misconduct that shouldn’t be obscured by Labor’s inevitable clever use of a spurious smokescreen.

Senator David Van in the Senate. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Because the criminal proceedings collapsed and can never plausibly be recommenced, it will probably never be clear what really happened in the minister’s office on that fateful night in 2019.

But what is clear, though, based on the now-published text messages and Gallagher’s own comments, is that she knew about the Higgins’ claims before they were made public, and that these claims were then weaponised by Labor against the then-government via dozens of hostile questions and a barrage of media assaults.

The questions for Gallagher are precisely what she did with the information she had, and who she told, and how could she justify telling the Senate that she had no advance knowledge of the allegations when clearly she did.

The questions for the government are why it made a payout to Higgins based on a claim that she could never work again as a result of the mishandling of her complaints when she had worked again, and when the government not only never sought to verify the handling of the complaints but actively stopped them being investigated.

Senators Michaelia Cash and Linda Reynolds in the Senate. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

The biggest scandal here is that not only were the then-ministers, Linda Reynolds and Michaelia Cash, who had supposedly mishandled the Higgins complaints, not requested to give their side of the story to investigators, but at least one of them, Reynolds, was pressured out of giving the evidence she wanted to provide by a government threat to withdraw legal aid funding.

From my time in government, I know that payouts like this are never made quickly, they’re never made without at least some attempt to delve into all the alleged circumstances.

The government should not be allowed to succeed in its attempt to shame the Opposition out of further pursuit of this on the basis that any discussion of sexual assault is “triggering” for women or because Van’s alleged misbehaviour somehow gives it a leave pass for misbehaviour of a very different and much more governmentally serious kind.

The media shouldn’t fall for this obvious ploy, and the Opposition certainly shouldn’t be bluffed out of doing its job.

Walter Sofronoff KC, who’s already examining how the Higgins-Lehrmann prosecution was handled, would be doing a public service if he were to broaden his inquiry to include this payout.

Otherwise, it must go to the new Integrity Commission so that we can be sure that taxpayers haven’t been used by this government.

PASSING LIFE-ALTERING LAWS BY STEALTH

The single-chamber Queensland parliament has just passed a new law allowing people to change the sex on their birth certificate, without gender re-assignment surgery, and allowing children as young as 12 to change their sex, by court order, without the consent of their parents.

Unsurprisingly, for Labor governments that are fond of social engineering by stealth, it’s been rushed through the parliament without any serious public consultation and with strong criticism from medical experts.

And that’s the issue, isn’t it? We now have Labor states falling over themselves to accommodate trans activism by allowing people to change the nominated gender on their birth certificates – in Victoria’s case, every year – not just in defiance of biology, but without any serious public debate.

When have the voters been asked whether they think biological males should be able to use female facilities, or compete in female sports, just because they call themselves women? Picture: Thinkstock

When have the voters ever been asked what they think about the gender fluidity that’s now officially taken for granted? When have the voters ever been asked whether it’s right to prescribe life-altering hormones and other drugs for minors, sometimes without parental permission? When have the voters ever been asked whether they think that biological males – who merely self-identify as women – should be able to use female facilities, or compete in female sports, just because they call themselves women?

Has any Labor leader ever been upfront with voters, before an election, about plans for laws allowing people to choose their gender, regardless of biology, or regardless of any carefully considered adult steps to undergo transition? Of course they haven’t.

With senior doctors now calling for a moratorium on the use of hormone blockers and gender treatments on children, it’s also time to call a halt to laws enabling people to change their gender on no more than their own say so, especially given that some are using this to gain an unfair advantage in sport or to take advantage of women in what should be women-only spaces.

Is it any wonder people think that government is out of control when life-altering laws like this are passed, almost by stealth.

Watch Peta on Credlin on Sky News, weeknights at 6pm