Bad day for Michaelia Cash, Bill Shorten and Julie Bishop
Wednesday was no ordinary parliamentary sitting day. Three senior politicians — Bill Shorten, Julie Bishop and, in particular, Michaelia Cash — all finished the day looking diminished and wounded.
Jobs and Innovation Minister Cash made a complete fool of herself. She has shown in the past a lack of discipline when in attack-dog mode. When under real pressure she will say anything — and that disgraceful slur against all the women employed in the Opposition Leader’s office was her worst effort yet. To say she would go through the “rumours” about these women one by one was ugly and disgusting. What place do rumours have in parliamentary debate? On the basis of a rumour she was prepared to traduce the reputation of women she didn’t know.
I watched Peta Credlin attack Cash on Sky News on Wednesday. According to Credlin, it is hard enough to be appointed to senior positions if you are a woman. She could not believe that Cash could be so vicious and stupid.
Cash is under pressure. The Australian Federal Police report into the circumstances that led to a leak about the timing of an AFP raid on the offices of the Australian Workers Union is yet to be received. Cash would have us believe that her press secretary — who took responsibility for the leak and resigned — never told her he was leaking the information. Anyone who has ever worked in a ministerial office on either side of politics knows that this is unlikely.
It is not too difficult to believe she was capable of authorising the leak. Cash is a good old-fashioned hater. She treats anyone not in her party as an enemy and worthy of contempt. When you prove yourself to be as nasty and vindictive as she has, creating a growing band of enemies, personal and political, you are cruising for a bruising.
Determined to make a bad day so much worse, Cash petulantly, reluctantly, begrudgingly withdrew her comments “if anyone was offended”. The minister badly needs to change her ways. She must know she made a complete fool of herself and her pride and false bravado came in the way of an apology. The atmospherics of this were terrible for her. Even a belated apology would help, provided she can muster up the inner strength to at least seem sincere.
Shorten had a pretty ordinary day, too. He has a bad habit of forgetting to declare gifts on his interests register. It took him eight years to declare that the AWU had provided an official to work on his first campaign in Maribyrnong. In January he went to the Great Barrier Reef and flew over the Galilee Basin; the Australian Conservation Foundation paid for the trip. He is only one month overdue on his declaration, so that doesn’t matter. Neither does the principle of having the ACF pay. It saves the taxpayers — you and me — and I see nothing wrong in that at all.
The problem for Shorten is that he gave the impression to the ACF that he would find a way to stop the Adani coalmine going ahead on a technicality after he won the next election. Cynics might say that he sang for his supper.
Mixed messages on Adani and coalmining keep coming from the Opposition Leader and it seems to depend on the audience he is addressing. Undoing Adani may be attractive to the voters of Batman, but all sorts of issues are involved here. For instance, it must be acknowledged that the ACF was rolled by a single judge of the Federal Court when it tried to have Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg’s decision on Adani overturned. The ACF then appealed and was knocked back by the full bench of the Federal Court.
Businesses that have been through all the proper processes for approval, as in the case of Adani, have a right to push on if they can come up with the funds to do so. As Queensland’s Resources Minister Anthony Lynam said yesterday in this newspaper, “the Indian conglomerate’s project had leapt more environmental hurdles than any other resources project”.
Shorten cannot play fast and loose with Australia’s international reputation. Sovereign risk is taken seriously and if Adani is knocked back because the ACF believes it has the right to ambush the project even after it has gone through every possible process, Australia’s reputation will suffer.
Anyone who reads this column regularly will know that I am a fan of Julie Bishop. That admiration, however, does not run to condoning an obvious rort. Keeping her relationship with boyfriend David Panton betwixt and between boyfriend and partner is permitting a ripe old rort on the hapless taxpayer yet again. By billing the government for tens of thousands in travel and other expenses for him, the Foreign Minister gives the impression of treating us all as mugs.
Overseas travel is for partners, not boyfriends, and although it may be in Bishop and Panton’s best interests to ensure he does not have to declare his personal assets as a partner, it is certainly not in Australia’s interests. Bishop can’t have it both ways. At the moment Panton is a partner for overseas travel and boyfriend for financial declaration purposes. He must be one or the other. Given that the two of them are not exactly impoverished, it is a wonder that they just don’t pay the money back and put an end to such a bad story.
Bishop should declare Panton as her partner and open him up to financial disclosure or do the smart thing and stop claiming thousands of dollars for him.
These three incidents will only compound the dismal image of politicians on the make, being duplicitous and being just plain nasty.
Is behaving with integrity so difficult that it is something of a rarity these days? Sadly, we all know the answer to that one.
Berejiklian fires up aggression
In a close election race, the winner is almost always the one finishing strongly.
PM faces a rude awakening
The Coalition simply has not given voters enough to ensure their continued loyalty.