The Sketch: Poirot and the case of the Big Mac deal

Michael ‘Big Mac’ McCormack in question time in the House of Representatives on Tuesday. Picture: Gary Ramage

As the AFP investigates potential corruption by those involved in the $30m price tag on a piece of Western Sydney Airport land worth $3m, who is looking into the case of the missing transcript?

You know, the one where ­Michael McCormack said the deal “eventually will be hailed as a good decision … they’ll look back and they’ll say, probably, what a bargain that was”.

When we went looking on the Deputy Prime Minister’s website, the September 28 comments he made on 2GB weren’t in the otherwise chronical list of transcripts and media releases.

Where were they? His office said they had been erroneously placed on another date. Mon dieu! Someone call Hercule Poirot.

But Big Mac helpfully updated question time: “I would have thought my voice was loud enough when I answered this question before, twice … in time, people will look back at this ­moment and say, ‘Thankfully the commonwealth investigated in that in 2020’.”

And he pointed out: “It will cost a lot more in the future had it not been bought now.”

While our little grey cells are working, McCormack said bon voyage to his two senior press ­secretaries in August.

The “airline fractures” in the government continued when Barnaby Joyce helpfully provided his thoughts. “If people want to do something as blatant and stupid as that, then expect to be investigated and expect heads to roll,” the former deputy PM said, adding: “There will be questions ­answered … and someone is in a world of bother.”

Fly news continued to interrupt the ministerial mile high club on Nev Power’s big jet plane. Starring another Belgian. “Mr Power, are you still providing transport for ministers to and from Perth when you travel?” Labor senator Katy Gallagher asked.

The chair of the National COVID-19 Commission replied: “When I travel I, um, advise a couple of West Australian ministers and let them know when I’m travelling and they on occasions take the opportunity to travel with me.” Including Mathias Cormann, who informed the estimates hearing that it was all “appropriately declared”.

“And, if I might just make a point,” the Finance Minister said, “in the context of this pandemic I think the last direct commercial flight from Canberra to Perth went at the end of March … Given the state border arrangements in Western Australia, if we took flights indirectly through Melbourne or Sydney into Canberra we would be in constant quarantine and self-isolation.”

Mon dieu! Like a non-essential Quiet Australian who may have a funeral to attend or cancer treatment needed across a border.

“But it gives Mr Power some pretty special access to government decision-makers, doesn’t it?” Gallagher inquired.

“What are you suggesting?” Cormann replied. “Let me tell you, Mr Power as head of the COVID Commission, whatever access he needs to provide advice to us he will always have.”

“Why can’t the public know what that advice is?” Gallagher probed, adding: “This all seems a bit cosy, doesn’t it?”

EDITOR’S NOTE: An earlier version of this story stated that Mr McCormack’s comments on the Western Sydney Airport land sale had not been published on the Deputy Prime Minister’s website. This story has been clarified to specify the comments were published on the website, but erroneously placed on a different date.