Turning a blind eye not a good look for Labor HQ

Bill Shorten and Emma Husar. Picture: Adam Yip

The immediate reaction at senior ALP levels to Emma Husar agreeing not to recontest her seat at the next election is a huge, collective sigh of relief.

No such public admission is likely, from Bill Shorten down, but Husar had become such a political headache that a quick resolution was needed. The alternative if she had dug her heels in was a continuing stream of damaging allegations about how she treated staff in her electorate office, with more former employees going public with stories of woe.

There were other serious allegations, too — not yet fully fleshed out or investigated — that Husar could have misused her travel entitlements, and campaign funds running to some thousands of dollars could have found their way into a personal bank account.

These are not the message-distracting issues Shorten and his team wanted festering for months in the lead-up to an election that Labor has good prospects of winning.

There were other reasons for wanting the issue of Husar’s alleged staff bullying, and possibly erratic behaviour, to go away. Headline stories were niggling Shorten, day by day, about what he or his office might have known about problems in Husar’s office, and when they knew about them.

Further, if they did know more, why was more decisive action not taken earlier to remedy the situation?

Shorten says he knew nothing of specific allegations until July 18. Maybe so. His critics would say he lives in a cocoon of deniability that includes not just the Husar case but others.

After all, the signs were surely apparent: a first-time backbencher allotted a maximum of four electorate staff churns through a record 22 staff in two years, and nobody at a senior level does anything until perhaps too late?

Lobbying by former staff and their supporters eventually forced an internal party inquiry, not leadership from the top.

The Husar saga is a sad one in many ways. When she was picked as a candidate for a key western Sydney seat, where was the initial party vetting that could have discovered more about her experience and suitability? When problems were first brought to the attention of senior party officials in March last year about the MP’s altercations with staffer Blake Mooney, he was abruptly moved and a troubleshooter, Cameron Sinclair, was briefly inserted in the office to sort things out.

Why was Husar not given more help then? Instead, problems were allowed to drag on for six months, suggesting no one high up was really treating issues in Husar’s office seriously.

Meanwhile, she was living the dream for a novice politician, befriending Shorten’s wife and becoming part of Shorten’s office clique. No wonder staffers thought their complaints would not be heard when it seemed their boss had a Shorten office fan club.

Politics aside, the Husar saga raises problems about what the Finance Department, which employs staffers, was doing. Political staffers have little or no recourse to claiming unfair dismissal, and are mostly at the mercy of elected MPs.

The bureaucracy that employs them could have noticed the huge turnover of staff in Husar’s office, and conducted its own inquiries. It was pretty obvious something was going wrong.