David Elliott should go for deserting post during fire season

David Elliott, who is responsible for emergency services and police in NSW, has judgment and attitude problems.

Illustration: Eric Lobbecke

Most Australians, especially outside NSW, won’t have heard of David Elliott. He is the NSW Minister for Emergency Services, and also has portfolio responsibilities for police. This week when the NSW south coast was being ravaged by bushfires — as it continues to be — he was overseas, on holiday in Europe.

If there is one thing this bushfire season has proven it is that ­ordinary Australians are so much more impressive than many of the politicians elected to serve them. The volunteers who have been fighting these fires, alongside paid professionals who put their lives on the line for a living, can only look on in disgust at the attitude of some political “leaders”.

The minister has jetted back now, apparently. Eventually shamed into action to do his job by deaths, destruction and the continuing devastation in his state (well over 1000 homes have burnt to the ground). Or simply shamed into coming home with his tail ­between his legs because of media coverage of his absence.

But how on earth could Elliott decide to fly out in the first place? Even just as a political decision it was mind-numbingly dumb in the wake of Scott Morrison’s grilling for his Hawaiian adventure. Morrison flew back and apologised shortly before Elliott flew out.

NSW was already in a declared state of emergency before the Emergency Services Minister jumped on his flight to Europe. It’s akin to a football coach taking a break during the finals, or a campaign director holidaying with family during a political campaign. Only Elliott’s scenario is a far more serious dereliction of duty. Because his job involves overseeing efforts to co-ordinate emergency responses, not a football game.

Let’s be clear about one thing: everyone deserves a holiday. This isn’t about that. An emergency services minister needs to time his overseas adventures not to coincide with the fire season. It is the same for anyone in the workforce. Retail managers don’t take leave during the busy shopping period, political journalists don’t holiday when election campaigns are in full flight, or when budgets are handed down. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg wasn’t on leave last month when the mid-year budget forecast was delivered, even if the Prime Minister was.

Elliott booked the holiday months ago in full knowledge fires, and drought for that matter, would be at their worst at the very time of year he wanted to see the sights of Paris and London. By the time the actual travel came around, NSW was in the midst of unprecedented fires and the Premier had declared a full state of emergency. The army had already been called in to help.

Yet Elliott still boarded that flight, issuing a statement that he’d be receiving updates from the Rural Fire Service while abroad. How comforting. The Queensland and Victorian premiers received criticism for holidaying within their home states. The fires haven’t been nearly as bad in Queensland as they have been in NSW, and Daniel Andrews was back at work before Victoria was hit by the New Year’s Eve fires. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian hasn’t taken any holidays, working right through Christmas and the New Year to ensure political oversight of Elliott’s portfolio.

He should be sacked; it’s that simple. What is the point of having an emergency services minister who goes on holidays during a state of emergency?

I wasn’t going to devote an ­entire column to a relatively unknown state MP, but sometimes you just have to call out wrong­doing.

Elliott would know that, having used coward’s castle and the protection of parliamentary privilege to attack former state ­opposition leader Luke Foley for alleged sexual assault of a female member of the NSW press gallery.

The woman in question didn’t want the issue to be publicly aired and in fact had specifically asked it not to be. But Elliott felt dutybound to throw her into the spotlight for the wider importance of naming and shaming Foley.

Just as he felt dutybound to chase a P-plate driver in November who, Elliott claims, scraped his car but didn’t stop. The 17-year-old alleged Elliott said he “worked for the cops”. Elliott admitted telling the youth “I pay for the badges, I don’t get one”. I’m pretty sure NSW taxpayers pay for the badges.

Indeed as Police Minister, ­Elliott has felt dutybound to authorise and defend strip-searches of children by police in his home state, even without their parents’ consent. Indeed, without search warrants and despite significant criticisms in the legal community. He defended the practice by saying he’d want his own children strip-searched if police felt they were at risk of doing something wrong.

Over the past four years, of the 4000 women strip-searched in NSW two-thirds didn’t have anything illicit on them. As former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer said, it is “frightening” the attitude the minister and his Police Commissioner, Mick Fuller, have on this issue. Fuller has said young people having a “fear” of police is important, and Elliott backed his comments.

Having a bad attitude is what leads politicians like Elliott to do what they do, and honestly believe they are in the right when they do. It accumulates then culminates in last week’s absence during the bushfires emergency.

The worst thing about Elliott’s failures is that they will go unpunished. The Premier doesn’t have the internal authority to sack him because he’s part of the conservative right flank in her partyroom, and has already displayed a willingness to publicly challenge her authority and judgment, such as her decision to successfully amend the archaic laws making it a criminal offence to have an abortion in NSW. So, rather than win ­applause as the first elected female premier of NSW who finally gave women the right to choose, without the taint of being a criminal when doing so, Elliott ensured ­Berejiklian’s progressive policy update was internally damaging.

Presumably Berejiklian approved Elliott’s post-Christmas leave, or at least knew about it. A sure sign he is a law unto himself and the Premier can’t do a damn thing about it.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.