Scott Morrison’s call to Mick Fuller glues him to Angus Taylor saga
Scott Morrison’s decision to ring his so-called “best friend” over the Angus Taylor saga means there’s nowhere to hide now. And if Taylor goes down for his bungle, the PM’s judgment will have to be called into question, writes Ellen Whinnett.
Opinion
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For the last month, the case of Angus Taylor and the dodgy documents has been a rather amusing mystery on the sidelines of the main Canberra game.
The questions about how he came to release documents getting the City of Sydney council’s travel bill so badly wrong have mostly revolved around how a bloke who was a Rhodes scholar could be quite so stupid.
But things went to a whole new level this week, when Prime Minister Scott Morrison got wound into the vortex by backing his Energy Minister and refusing to stand him aside when police launched an investigation into the documents.
Morrison made a statement to the House where he revealed he’d called NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller, who told him the investigation had been launched based on a referral from Labor.
On that basis, and presumably taking into account whatever Taylor had told him, Morrison said he did not believe Taylor should stand aside while the matter was investigated.
Fun fact: Fuller used to be Morrison’s neighbour and helpfully told 2GB last year that back in the day, Morrison used to take in his bins (he backtracked yesterday, saying he’d been joking about the bins).
Still, Morrison himself told 3AW in 2018 that Fuller was one of his two “best friends”.
Fuller has since defended taking the call, which he said was “extremely short”.
By thinking it was appropriate to call his bestie and ask about the inquiry into his minister, the Prime Minister is now firmly glued to Taylor as this entire mess unfolds.
If Taylor is cleared and things are resolved neatly, no harm no foul. But if he’s not, Morrison will probably have to dump him from Cabinet, and his own judgment will be called into question.
Clearly, whatever Taylor’s explanation is, the PM believes this is a risk worth taking.
To recap briefly: Taylor, as part of an ongoing bunfight with Clover Moore, the green Lord Mayor of Sydney, wrote to her essentially accusing her of hypocrisy for declaring a climate emergency at the same time as her council was spending more than $15 million a year on air travel.
Moore responded by pointing out, accurately, that the bill was actually about $300,000.
Instead of beating a quick retreat via an apology and retraction, Taylor dug in, insisting the figures had come directly from the council’s own website. Moore whacked back by releasing metadata which she said showed they did not.
The Daily Telegraph, given the false information by Taylor’s office, was furious and turned the blowtorch back on the minister. Eventually, Taylor conceded defeat and apologised, but has refused to say where he got the information and how the snafu occurred.
And here’s where it gets very interesting. Ordinarily in circumstances such as this, a junior staffer from the back office gets sacked, publicly blamed and shuffled off into some low-profile job somewhere else. But no spotty 22-year-old scapegoat has been found to take the blame here.
Taylor now says he was “advised’’ that the information came from the council’s website, and produced his own metadata to back up his claims.
No-one knows the real story. The speculation is the dodgy figure might have come from some third party and that Taylor is simply too embarrassed to admit it.
But NSW Police have taken the referral from Labor and launched Strike Force Garrad.
It’s hard to see what criminality has occurred here, unless being stupid is a crime — in which case Taylor should be convicted and given the maximum sentence.
His colleagues are baffled about why the man in charge of Australia’s emissions reduction program — a hellishly difficult job — was wasting time on a bungled hit on a council.
Labor, which has tried and mostly failed to muddy Taylor up over the so-called Jamland saga — where it was claimed he poked his nose into government processes surrounding land owned by his family members — can’t believe its luck, and has spent days pursuing the minister in parliament.
Back in the era of Tony Abbott, Taylor, the member for Hume in rural NSW, was being talked up as a future Liberal leader.
A clean-cut, charming economist who grew up on the land and had the best education — King’s School, University of Sydney, Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, working for the millionaire’s factory McKinsey — he had the perfect pedigree for a future leader of the party.
But right now, Strike Force Garrad must run its course and Taylor can only squirm on the frontbench, especially when Labor’s deputy leader Richard Marles exhorted him to go to the infamous Urban Dictionary online to find out what “garrad’’ means.
We did it so you don’t have to. UD’s definition is: “The dumbest mother----er in the whole land.’’
Ellen Whinnett is national political editor