Perrottet apology genuine but better vetting is needed

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet. Picture: AAP

In Berlin there is a remarkable museum dedicated to the victims of Nazi oppression, including the Germans themselves. It is called the Topography of Terror and is located on Niederkirchnerstrasse, formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. It was once notorious as the site of Gestapo headquarters, and was a place of horror, torture and murder.

A single visit to the Topography of Terror, or perhaps to Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, or indeed the Sydney Holocaust Museum, which commemorate the millions sent to their deaths by Adolf Hitler’s regime, is enough to convince any reasonable person that putting on a Nazi uniform is a repugnant step to take.

Premier Dominic Perrottet, like Prince Harry some years before, no doubt wishes he had never donned Nazi garb. The Premier’s apology seems heartfelt and may be so taken, as NSW Opposition Leader Chris Minns has already accepted. But the issue that remains overall is the thorough vetting of political candidates for public office.

Undeclared things come out of the past to haunt candidates and bedevil parties. A recent example in the US is overwhelming proof of the need not only for candidate honesty, but also sharper rigour in political vetting.

George Santos was elected to congress as the Republican candidate for New York’s Third District. It was a contestable seat and the Republican win added strength to Kevin McCarthy’s agonising quest to become Speaker of the US House of Representatives. This is primarily why McCarthy and the Republican Conference in Washington DC are standing by Santos as the extent of his deceit unravels daily.

True, Santos will have to appear before the Ethics Committee of the House and explain himself. However, a Republican majority may simply conclude that while Santos did the wrong thing, it is up to his constituency to pass judgment in two years’ time.

It is an unfortunate reality that many political candidates for public office both exaggerate and embellish their biographies. First, seeking to impress their own parties, which endorse them. Second, they are seeking the support of the voters. Finally, they hope to arrive in the legislature with something of an impact courtesy of an impressive CV that makes them eligible for congressional or parliamentary promotion.

But Santos seems remarkable by any standards devised and employed. According to reports, he simply created an entirely fictitious persona to offer to the voters. Walter Mitty became real. And it worked.

Virtually everything about Santos in his campaign biography appears to have been deceptive.

Let’s start with his education. He did not attend the prestigious schools, Baruch College and New York University, from which he claimed to have graduated. Nor did he work for the blue-chip financial groups Goldman Sachs or Citigroup.

Finally, his family was not only not Jewish; his grandparents were not Holocaust survivors. Nor had his mother died in the 9/11 terrorist attack. These were monstrous fabrications.

In short, Santos is a grifter worthy of a role in The Wolf of Wall Street.

The incredible question is how on Earth he escaped scrutiny during the campaign and how he was not discovered either by his competitors inside the Republican Party, or his official opponents among the Democrats. The media, too, appears to have been asleep at the wheel, resulting in Santos now being sworn in as a congressman and perhaps surviving to serve a full term.

What might bring Santos undone is the issue of money. Vulnerability is very real here, for it is suggested that more than $US700,000 was likely transferred to the Santos campaign, possibly to meet personal expenses. Explanations are now being sought by the Federal Election Commission. Watch this space, for if Santos has violated campaign finance laws, then he is almost certain to be expelled from congress.

Santos’s necessarily brief career now rests on the accuracy of banking records.

There is a classic Australian example of a candidate who created a fictitious history and rose during the early years of the commonwealth to very great office. The reference here, of course, is to Tasmanian Labor MP King O’Malley, given immortal status by Bob Ellis and Michael Boddy in their musical play, The Legend of King O’Malley.

We can never be certain, but O’Malley’s claim to have been born in Quebec, Canada is open to question. It is far more likely that his home was to be found in Valley Falls, Kansas. Ellis and Boddy place much of his American story in Texas, where he is reputed to have founded a church while preaching temperance.

However, his claim of Canadian citizenship rendered him eligible under the British Imperial rules of the day to sit in the House of Representatives in Melbourne. Remarkably, as minister for home affairs in Andrew Fisher’s government, O’Malley had responsibility in 1913 for the founding of Canberra. Still honoured by the name of a Canberra suburb, O’Malley remains chiselled into some of the foundation stones of the nation’s parliament, although his insistence on the ACT being alcohol-free did not prove as permanent.

O’Malley is now largely forgotten, except by those who immerse themselves in the history of the ALP. But the lesson is as real in terms of candidate integrity as the more recent examples. In a disquieting historical parallel, it was alleged that O’Malley had fled the west coast of the US to escape prosecution for embezzlement.

These are not matters that should be left to an Integrity Commission or a Commission Against Corruption. We do not need the intervention of another Committee of Public Safety. We have the example in years past of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover determining that the Bureau should profile candidates for public office, and the resulting files that were generated were kept in his personal office. This was not so much a check on the veracity of political biographies but rather a source of leverage for the FBI director over the congress, as Curt Gentry details in his 1991 biography, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets.

In short, political parties – on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Pacific – need to step up. What was once left to trust and/or to chance now needs to be the subject of rigorous examination, from places of birth to places of employment.

Given the nature of American political culture, we may assume that one day George Santos will be the subject of a movie, with a working title of Catch Me If You Can 2. This is something to avoid.

Stephen Loosley is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.