Slipper trumps the handbag hit squad

Eric Lobbecke

IT should never have come to this. Even a modicum of political nous could have prevented the latest chapter in the Slipper disaster.

So desperate to cling to power by boosting its numbers in the House of Representatives by one extra vote, the Gillard government appointed a man who should never have been Speaker. And then when Slipper's reputation was completely ruined by revelations of his outrageously lewd texts to staffer James Ashby, the Julia Gillard could immediately have taken the high ground, condemned Slipper's vulgar behaviour and demanded he resign.

That didn't happen. It was left to Slipper to do one right thing by the office of Speaker. He resigned. And the Prime Minister is left looking like a goose. She will now struggle to be taken seriously about the very serious issue of misogyny. Double standards don't get much worse than this.

In question time yesterday, Gillard decided to stand by her man. It was an unedifying spectacle to watch her cling to a tarnished Speaker just to secure an extra vote on the floor of the chamber. Instead of denouncing Slipper, Gillard ramped up an attack against Tony Abbott. In an emotional voice, she said the Opposition Leader was sexist and a misogynist. She would "not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man", Gillard said. "Not now. Not ever."

Slipper's shameful texts about female genitalia should have unleashed the ire of the feisty "handbag hit squad" that so fearlessly exposes every hint of misogyny in Canberra and beyond. There is no point looking wonderfully earnest about these matters if you are not also intellectually consistent. Alas, Labor's breathtaking double standards form only one part of what has been a fiasco from beginning to end. Even before yesterday's dramatic turn of events, the conduct of the nation's Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, ensured that the Slipper affair will go down in Australian political history as the definition of desperation, poor judgment and hypocrisy.

Earlier this year, even as sexual harassment claims by Ashby against Slipper were headed for court, Roxon and other Labor ministers did not shy away from making very public remarks about the case. Roxon said Ashby had an "ulterior motive". It was a vexatious abuse of process, she said. It was a conspiracy akin to Watergate, said Anthony Albanese. Foreign Minister Bob Carr said Ashby was rehearsing his lines like a "kabuki actor". Even after the commonwealth settled with Ashby, paying him $50,000, Roxon was still offering an ongoing commentary that Ashby's claims of sexual harassment were an abuse of process.

Yet now, conveniently, there is nothing but silence and deference to what Roxon calls a "live matter before the court".

Even more curious is this: Roxon said the commonwealth settled the case with Ashby because it was becoming a "lawyers' picnic". The commonwealth, she said, had already spent $730,000 of taxpayers' money disputing Ashby's allegations of sexual harassment.

As it turned out, Roxon fuelled that expensive and greedy feast on the public purse by proceeding with a case that a more prudent attorney-general should have dropped long ago.

As this newspaper revealed yesterday, Roxon took an unusually personal interest in the case, having personal briefings with Julian Burnside QC, who represented the commonwealth.

The nation's top law officer must have known about the disgusting texts by Slipper describing female genitalia. There are reports of hundreds more texts that have not yet been made public. Given that Roxon must have known about the extent of evidence before the court, why did she proceed with the case against Ashby for as long as she did?

It seems that politics, not law, drove Roxon's case against Ashby. Indeed, it appears Labor ministers were too busy searching for Tory conspiracies in the texts between Ashby and members of the media and the Liberal Party to focus on Labor's own legal and political nightmare emerging from Slipper's texts to Ashby.

Knowing that Slipper's highly unprofessional texts to Ashby would soon be made public, Roxon should also have recognised the political damage headed Labor's way, especially given that Gillard and her fellow female ministers had launched a crusade against misogyny.

That crusade now looks more like a dirty political game. The moral outrage from the Labor sisterhood about Abbott's apparent problem with women has been exposed as a complete political con. And Roxon is left looking out of her depth both legally and politically. So keen to become Attorney-General, the nation's top law officer behaved recklessly, even allowing special access to the Federal Court building in Sydney so that Slipper could slip away from the cameras Ashby was forced to confront. Judge Steven Rares was right to be furious. Roxon was right to apologise to the court for this mistake. She is yet to apologise for her many other errors of judgment.

Errors such as this. According to the government's litigation guidelines, the commonwealth should not offer financial settlements to litigants simply to make proceedings go away. The government's Legal Services Directions state financial payouts must be made only if the commonwealth believes it has at least a reasonable prospect of losing in court. While businesses in the private sector are free to pay so-called "go away" money to vexatious litigants, the commonwealth is not free to do so. This is not seen as legitimate use of taxpayers' money. Yet this is precisely what Roxon did.

After all, Roxon and her team of lawyers lodged an application with the Federal Court after making an initial settlement offer of $15,000, saying the court should "dismiss the applicant's claim against the commonwealth on the basis that the applicant has no reasonable prospect of successfully prosecuting" his case. And then they offered Ashby even more money to make the case go away. Perhaps the Attorney-General might care to explain her position on this matter.

Earlier this year, Roxon justified her public comments condemning Ashby on the basis that she was merely describing the commonwealth's position. Surely it is time for her to now describe in similar detail why the commonwealth case came unstuck.

While she's doing that, she might also explain why the commonwealth paid Ashby an amount that exceeded the $37,500 the commonwealth's lawyers said Ashby could possibly get had he won.

How could the Prime Minister countenance Slipper remaining in the job? He was due to attend a cushy conference in Canada later this month, to represent our parliament once again. It's bad enough that Australians have to read about a man who demeans women by describing vaginas as shelled mussels. And this: "Look at a bottle of mussel meat!" Slipper texted Ashby. It's worse that Canadians would also have heard about Slipper's "Salty C . . ts in brine!" text.

Regardless of the outcome of the Federal Court case, Slipper debased women in a mortifying manner. We await the eventual outrage from Gillard, Roxon et al. Eager to tell us on Sunday that she doesn't like the Opposition Leader, presumably any day now we will hear Roxon tell us that she doesn't much like the Speaker, either. Ditto the Prime Minister. Alas, when the outrage finally comes, it won't count for much.

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