Politicians telling porkies make pigs of themselves on our taxes
Politicians from both sides of the divide are implicated in the grubbiest of corruption allegations. George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm has never felt more relevant, writes Piers Akerman.
Opinion
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“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
That quote from George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm sums up the political class in NSW today.
Politicians from both sides of the divide are implicated in the grubbiest of corruption allegations.
The Aldi bag stuffed with $100,000 in illegal cash contributions received by the NSW ALP at its Sussex Street headquarters was just the latest chapter in Labor’s long-running saga of money for influence.
That the money was not packed in the traditional brown paper bag was the only new wrinkle to this story.
The revelations should have seen the state’s Liberal-National Coalition government turning somersaults in Martin Place but Premier Gladys Berejiklian is reaping her own field of home-sown weeds.
Having shunned the conservative element of the party, having rejected reforms proposed by two former Liberal prime ministers, John Howard and Tony Abbott, and having embraced the Left-wing Moderate faction dominated by lobbyist Michael Photios, the NSW Liberals have been left in a glass house with its windows shattered by their own questionable activities and inept political judgment.
Premier Berejiklian should have been a shoo-in for a second electoral victory when Labor’s Chinese donor scandal first broke but her appalling lack of leadership on the Abortion Bill, the capitulation to the Labor-Green-leaning Photios faction on the climate change fashion and abandonment of traditional Liberal values have now made the next election questionable.
Kerry Packer famously said you only get one Alan Bond in your life (after he sold his television properties at an unrealistically high price to the former sign painter and bought them back again at below bargain basement prices). Premier Berejiklian had her Alan Bond moment with former Opposition leader Michael Daley.
Even the faction-riddled and policy-crippled NSW Labor Party might not make the same mistake again — although there is no certainty there.
Pat Garcia, the acting secretary of the NSW Labor Party, can’t take much joy yet from the forthcoming ICAC inquiry into allegations that Sports Minister John Sidoti didn’t properly declare his stake in a $70-million property development near the new Rouse Hill metro station, which he denies.
The NSW ICAC has a sad history of going off half-cocked and has been reprimanded for its improper findings. No doubt it will take its time and will attempt to ensure that it doesn’t find itself to be the villain rather than the investigator this time around.
On the federal level, the curious case of newly-elected Hong Kong-born Gladys Liu, and her links to Chinese Communist Party propaganda bodies has become mired in racially-charged accusations.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has gone out on a limb to defend the Member for Chisholm perhaps because she narrowly won the seat after it was deserted by the treacherous former Liberal Julia Banks, who chose to stand (unsuccessfully) in Flinders against Health Minister Greg Hunt at the May federal election.
Ms Liu’s victory gave the Coalition its two-seat majority. But her links to organisations with direct links to the CCP are not easy to forgive or dismiss. This is about so much more than a “clumsy interview” with my old friend and colleague Andrew Bolt.
The Chinese Communist Party is not a welcoming power, it is an acknowledged international threat and more particularly, it is a growing threat to nations in our own region.
Its ruthless pursuit of local influence in every country it has been involved with is obvious to all but our avaricious university vice-chancellors.
Too many members of our parliaments, state and federal, think it is well and good to play footsy with Chinese businesses — but they are denying the reality that the Party has an interest in almost every mainland-based Chinese corporation.
Our politicians and bureaucrats have foolishly denied this and we have not only surrendered the port of Darwin but we have sold out vast chunks of our nation, through mining, agriculture and other investments to the autocratic totalitarian regime.
As Orwell’s animals found as they gazed through the farmhouse window at the evil Farmer Jones and the clique of swine who they had followed in their revolution, it was hard to tell the difference between the pigs and the people.