Greens and teals show their colours as PM runs for cover
Forget Brittany Higgins – this scandal is way beyond that. The big story now is about how Labor used blatantly false claims about two Liberal women for political gain.
This scandal is not about Brittany Higgins. It has not been about Higgins for some time. Her story, the rape that a judge found happened on the balance of probabilities, and her false claims about a political cover-up, as found by two judges, is now well and truly relegated to the rear-vision mirror.
Cue a sigh of relief. Of sorts.
Those in our federal parliament who are easily bamboozled or being deliberately duplicitous can no longer avoid the fact that the big story now is about the accountability of the Albanese government. The Labor government’s rise to power was aided and abetted by Anthony Albanese and senior ministers including Mark Dreyfus, Penny Wong and Katy Gallagher exploiting false claims by Higgins that Labor knew would badly damage the then Liberal government.
The story is about Labor’s refusal even now, with the truth laid bare, to accept responsibility for its role in destroying two Liberal women based on what one judge described as “dishonest” claims.
What should we call it when a government tries to hide its role in this scandal? A cover-up?
Linda Reynolds, who was accused time after time by Labor of covering up a rape, dubbed it Gallagher-gate recently, presumably because evidence proves that Gallagher knew what Higgins had in mind even before the former Liberal staffer went on The Project. Yet Gallagher made false claims in parliament about having no part in this scandal before it hit the media.
The question arising from this next chapter is whether members of our federal parliament want to facilitate Labor’s escape from accountability.
Some challenges in life present a deep insight into the character of people. This scandal tells us a great deal about the Prime Minister’s lack of integrity. The not so artful dodger in the Lodge has exposed himself as a Prime Minister who would rather hide behind a rape than answer questions about the culpability of his most senior ministers in weaponising a lie about a cover-up, and more recently compounding the damage to Reynolds and her former chief of staff, Fiona Brown, by showing contempt towards both women.
Right under our noses the Prime Minister shrank before our eyes in two press conferences where journalists, for the first time, put him in the spotlight of this scandal. He may shrink but he cannot escape the uncomfortable truth that Labor was a protagonist in the original conflation by Higgins and media organisations that merged an allegation of a rape with an allegation of a political cover-up of rape.
The Prime Minister is running a million miles from the latter, by trying to hide behind the former as the “big story”. The allegation of a rape was indeed a big story – for the criminal courts, which failed to come to a verdict after an aborted trial, and for a defamation action, where a judge found it was proved on the balance of probabilities.
That big story is not the story any more.
Last week, the Prime Minister refused to answer the central issue: does he accept the decision of two courts that the political cover-up claim was false and, if so, why shouldn’t Wong and Gallagher apologise for their central role in exploiting a false claim to wreak much damage on Reynolds and Brown? And why is his government – which threw $2.4m at Higgins in the murkiest circumstances – doing everything in its power to avoid paying the financial compensation Reynolds and Brown are due for the shocking treatment meted out to them?
The Mean Girls
Forget Higgins. This story is about the character of the aptly named Mean Girls too. What does it take for two grown women to say they got it wrong, that they should have been more sceptical of a false and heinous claim that Reynolds and Brown had tried to cover up a rape, that they are sorry for the damage done to both women, who the courts have found actually did the right thing by Higgins?
This story writes itself by the actions of the major protagonists, including former attorney-general Dreyfus, who exercised his powers to prevent Reynolds from defending herself when Higgins sought money from the commonwealth, and incumbent Attorney-General Michelle Rowland, who oversees a department that is throwing everything at the claims for compensation by Reynolds and Brown.
The falsehoods of a young, inexperienced staffer about a political cover-up pale in comparison with the shameful behaviour of highly experienced Labor ministers who have been elected to represent their fellow Australians.
Their behaviour here does not represent the standards of decent Australians, let alone how decent Australians behave in the workplace. If a chief executive of a company behaved like this, he would be crucified by fellow workers – and by every media outlet in the country.
It is true that representative democracy means the full gamut of human behaviour – the good, the bad, the ugly, along with the incompetent and the plain dumb – is present in parliament.
This week the story took another ugly turn. Now we must digest another unpalatable truth about a group of women, also elected to serve the Australian people, who have outed themselves as the new enablers of the Prime Minister and the Mean Girls, women in effect running a protection racket for Wong and Gallagher and Albanese so they can avoid accountability for this scandal.
The decision by Greens leader Larissa Waters and senior teal MP Zali Steggall to refuse to hold Labor to account means their behaviour, their values, their attitude to political accountability and human decency are now front and centre in a story that is no longer about Higgins.
Waters and Steggall may not be signed-up members of the Labor government but they both looked like Labor stooges. Their attempts to avoid answering a serious question reveal a great deal about them. Their grubby politics should be laid out in full.
Waters and Steggall were asked by The Australian’s Elizabeth Pike whether, given their public claims about the need for accountability and transparency in parliament, the commonwealth’s treatment of Reynolds and Brown was fair and whether Labor should apologise now that two judges had found there was no political cover-up?
Steggall said: “I don’t have any comment in relation to the government’s dealing with (this) but I should say Brittany Higgins was found to have been assaulted in her workplace and all of us as employers take very seriously that responsibility, and I should say the ordeal she has been put through.
“And yes she was found to have defamed Ms Reynolds, but I don’t think any of us, and you in particular as a young woman, can ever consider or put yourself in the shoes of a person who has been sexually assaulted. I think the continued harassment and pursuing of this issue is disgusting.”
Waters said: “Reynolds and Fiona Brown should pledge to give any money they get out of this to sexual violence support services.”
Let’s just say the humbug and sanctimony of Waters, her unintelligible guff, the ducking and weaving from the values the Greens campaign on mean that their brand of woo-woo politics is not suited to serious issues.
Consider the irony of Steggall, a former lawyer and the most senior teal independent, claiming that it is disgusting to keep pursuing this issue. Steggall made the issues about Higgins by tut-tutting a young female journalist, telling her she couldn’t understanding what it’s like to be the victim of a sexual assault.
Steggall knows nothing about this journalist, or any other female journalist, and their experiences with sexual assault. Sexual assault is not the issue, Ms Steggall.
The story is not about Higgins.
It’s about Labor, its participation in the weaponisation of a lie and its treatment of Reynolds and Brown. And Ms Steggall, now it’s also about you.
The teals have written themselves into this tawdry scandal. They have inserted a new chapter, a perverse morality tale about the hollowing out of standards by female politicians who are letting Labor off the hook, compounding the trauma that Reynolds and Brown have already suffered by being ensnared in a lie.
If the teals – all women – are turning their backs on Labor’s complicity in and weaponisation of the nation’s biggest scandal that damaged two decent women, we must ask: what is the actual point of the teals?
Scrutiny of this scandal will continue until people in power, those elected by us to represent us, do the right thing. Given the choice, too many in parliament chose to do the wrong thing.
That includes Scott Morrison and many in his office when in government. It includes Albanese and the Labor Party in opposition and now in government.
It now includes Steggall and Waters, who appear to be running a protection racket for Wong and co, along with all the other teal MPs who this week, when asked by this newspaper, showed no interest in holding Labor to account for its cover-up.
Their names are Allegra Spender, Monique Ryan, Sophie Scamps, Kate Chaney. Nicolette Boele said this: “I think it is important that I do give it some more consideration, but I haven’t yet.”
Many Liberals, now in opposition, are gun-shy too. Opposition legal affairs spokesman Andrew Wallace told Inquirer he “will be exploring this issue through the Senate estimates process next week and if answers provided by the government are not fulsome or satisfactory, in Senate estimates next year”. Let’s see what unfolds there.
Inquirer has been told by several sources that when a proposal was put to shadow cabinet this week that the opposition call for a full independent inquiry into the scandal, shadow cabinet rejected that suggestion.
While Labor’s role features in Reynolds’s breach of duty claim against the commonwealth, former prime minister Morrison and his office are the likely subjects of Brown’s Fair Work action against the commonwealth.
Silence may be golden for those with something to hide – even if all they are hiding is a bad case of cowardice or double standards. But sooner or later, sunlight will reach them and those hiding in the darkest corners.
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