Tudge affair exposes dangers of when #MeToo goes too far
The PM should have shown political courage and stood up against the mob.
That this small gang is as unrepresentative of women as they are loud is no comfort. There comes a time when they need to be called out.
A few weeks ago, when the Prime Minister delivered an apology in parliament for the poor culture that women face in parliament, Rachelle Miller said she felt vindicated. For too long, Tudge’s former staffer, and lover, has been able to control the narrative of this imbroglio. Not anymore. In light of the Thom report, it is clear that the only vindicated party is Tudge.
We now know, according to Vivienne Thom’s report and multiple submissions and source documents seen by The Weekend Australian, including emails, texts and witness accounts, Miller was not a wronged woman, nor the victim of bullying or harassment or discrimination by Tudge.
In fact, if there was discrimination, it may have arguably worked in Miller’s favour when Tudge and his chief of staff tried to secure her a promotion.
Most importantly, too, Thom found no evidence to substantiate Miller’s most wicked allegations, that Tudge was emotionally or physically abusive towards her during their consensual relationship between June and October 2017.
As is her right, Miller chose not to participate in the Thom Inquiry, just as she chose not to co-operate with an earlier investigation into her bullying allegations by the Department of Finance that also found no evidence to support her claims.
However their private entanglement started, it is clear that after it ended in October 2017 Miller wanted something more. The three or four occasions when they fooled around appeared to cause her great frustration, with Tudge refusing to have sexual intercourse with her.
It is also clear that Miller’s public allegations against Tudge followed his refusal to start a serious relationship with her. In other words, this looks to be a case of hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.
The story of mismatched affections is as old as the hills, a sad one, to be sure, but not yet illegal. The Thom inquiry was told that then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was aware of the intimate interactions between Tudge and Miller in 2017 and did not consider these interactions constituted a breach of the Ministerial Standards that existed at the time.
Turnbull’s bonk ban came into effect after this liaison ended.
Yet, scared silly by the monstrous but small legion of female activists who have convinced Morrison that he has a “woman problem”, the Prime Minister has shown no support for Tudge.
A strategic leak, surely from the PM’s office, meant there was speculation that Morrison planned to sack Tudge on the manifestly spurious ground that the then human services minister had sought a promotion for Miller without disclosing his relationship with her.
Though Morrison’s office denied that was the case, the damage was done. Morrison’s lack of support for one of his best ministers has been remarked on privately by those closest to him.
Tudge was effectively given his marching orders via a newspaper report, despite lengthy evidence given to Thom about the background to trying to secure a promotion for Miller. Miller had apparently requested a promotion from Tudge’s chief of staff, Andrew Asten more than once. Both Tudge and Asten finally considered a promotion appropriate given Miller’s experience, her increased workload, the scope of her job, and the fact that Tudge’s portfolio of human services had moved into cabinet.
With promotions requiring sign off by the Prime Minister’s office, Asten wrote to Malcolm Turnbull’s chief of staff Drew Clarke requesting a change in allocation to cater for a senior adviser position in Tudge’s office. Sally Cray, Turnbull’s principal private secretary, wrote back to Asten declining the promotion for Miller.
Thom was informed that Tudge’s office had sought promotions for “every single one of my long-term media advisers”.
Tudge and Miller had shared one night of intimacy prior to his office seeking a promotion for her. Had a promotion not been sought, it is entirely possible Miller might have claimed she was discriminated against because of one night of fooling around with the boss.
Section 2.23 of the Ministerial Standards states that “ministers’ close relatives and partners” must not be appointed to positions in their ministerial or electorate offices, or in the offices of other members of the executive government, without the prime minister’s express approval.
Tudge maintains that at some point Turnbull’s office knew about his relationship with Miller, and also knew about his efforts to secure a promotion for Miller. And still, Tudge remained in Turnbull’s cabinet.
In any case, was Miller his “partner” – the criteria for the ministerial standard? To repeat the unseemly details, they had some form of sexual contact, but not sexual intercourse, three or four times. Miller appears to have yearned for more, as detailed in texts and emails sent to Tudge by the woman in her 40s over a four-year period after the liaison ended. But, as the Thom inquiry was told, there was nothing about their interactions that amounted to a “relationship” in the normal sense of that word, let alone her assuming the role of his partner.
None of this is an excuse for poor decisions by Tudge and Miller, both adults. But what stinks even more is the puritanical witch-hunt that now routinely punishes a person over and over again.
This is becoming a familiar story: unjust processes kicking in to suit the politics of the day. The same conduct that did not attract punishment a few years earlier is used to impose punishment because it suits a new set of optics. It happens in the sporting world, in corporate Australia, and now this unfair practice was set to be employed by the Prime Minister.
It usually involves bleating about “community expectations” changing between date x and y. That makes sense if we’re talking about the passage of many years. Social mores change. But when barely a few years have passed, it becomes a nifty phrase, open to exploitation by two groups of people – the vengeful who want to see people retried for past actions, and the cowards who cave in to those seeking retrospective punishment.
The sham is easily exposed by asking how are these community standards measured? By surveys? If so, let’s see them. Or is the so-called pulse of the nation taken from a cosy conversation around a dinner table with like-minded people?
The outcome of the ruse on this occasion is that, with a single strategic leak, predictably denied by his office, the Prime Minister has thrown his colleague and a cabinet minister under the bus for no reason other than to appease an unrepresentative bunch of activists pushing allegations of harassment and bullying which according to the Thom Report are supported by no evidence. By deciding not to put himself forward for reinstatement into cabinet, Tudge saved Morrison from the grief of publicly sacking a very good minister. Tudge also saved the PM from having to reveal an irony noted privately within Liberal circles, including by those close to Morrison.
Given that Turnbull made no moves against Tudge, or leaked any intention to get rid of his cabinet minister, the sneaky move to leak Tudge’s likely dismissal, based on the flimsiest of evidence, renders Morrison less loyal than Turnbull. That’s quite a head-turning event.
For the sake of a few votes, Morrison made it known he was willing to snivel in the face of a bunch of graceless women. The irony is that because most women are smart enough to see exactly what has happened here, his cowardice may well lose him more votes than it wins him.
The larger point goes beyond whether Tudge is in cabinet or not. It concerns the way we conduct politics in this country.
Lynch mobs come and lynch mobs go – from the women of Salem to the Ku Klux Klan to McCarthyism – but until political leaders are prepared to stand up to this behaviour, it will get worse.
Standing up to the mob in this case is particularly hard because the mob does have legitimate complaints. Women have clearly suffered unfair treatment in parliament and its surrounds.
It cannot be doubted Parliament House has sheltered more sexual predators than it should have and there was some abominable behaviour.
But as the Tudge imbroglio demonstrates, we must not believe every allegation made about every man just because a woman makes it. Some women do lie. Some women have ulterior motives, including revenge, disappointment, frustration, for making allegations against a man. Yet today’s female activists appear hell bent on using such thin pretexts as the Tudge/Miller matter as justification for overthrowing the presumption of innocence, the rules against double jeopardy and retrospective punishment, legal professional privilege, and contractual confidentiality in a mad rush to send alleged male offenders to the gallows.
Similarly, these women, and even the PM, may not think Brittany Higgins’ alleged attacker deserves a fair trial, but that way madness lies. The PM seems to be frightened of women who think they should be free to roam the landscape pointing the bone at alleged offenders without benefit of trial or other traditional niceties.
There is another group of women who have been forgotten by the Prime Minister – women who prefer a civilised and just society over one where women have the right of instant, trial-free punishment of men they don’t like.
PM take note. Courage should not have been beyond you.
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Alan Tudge’s decision not to seek reinstatement in cabinet as Education Minister must surely represent the high-water mark of a posse of women behaving badly, and of cowardly leaders not merely hoisting, but avidly waving, the white flag at them.