UPDATE: Troy Buswell has resigned.
It’s always funny when politics meets a sex scandal, but nobody’s laughing after WA treasurer Troy Buswell admitted to misusing public funds in a sexual affair with Greens MP Adele Carles.
Now that Buswell’s been busted spending public money on motels and ministerial cars, he’s promised to pay it back, while Carles has offered up the dates of the affair to prove it didn’t interfere with her voting.
Buswell managed to weather snapping the bra of a pregnant ALP staffer and the infamous chair sniffing (key details of his career are here), but is this misuse of public funds the final straw?
There is much talk that WA premier Colin Barnett will be meeting Buswell this morning to fire him.
So will he resign or will Barnett fire him? Or will he manage to hold on, since the state budget is so close? And has Carles crossed the ultimate political line?
Here’s what the pundits are saying:
The West Australian
Robert Taylor: Short, spectacular career in tatters
The man who entered Parliament just five years ago with Future Premier stamped on his forehead imploded in spectacular fashion through a string of indiscretions, the cumulative weight of which eventually proved too great for even his most ardent supporters.
The Sunday Times
Joe Spagnolo: Why the Treasurer should be sacked
Premier Colin Barnett has to sack Mr Buswell.
Or at the very least Mr Barnett must launch an independent inquiry into this scandal.
The Australian
Peter van Onselen: Barnett will sacrifice more if he doesn’t sack Buswell
If, by the end of today, Barnett hasn’t sacked his Treasurer, he will pay a high political price for the lack of judgment.
James Jeffrey: Swell party it was
Amid the hurt inflicted, at least we could congratulate the nation’s most famous snedger from moving on; Strewth does not adhere to the Elvis Presley “If you can’t find a partner use a wooden chair” school of thought and we think Buswell’s actions represented progress. Of sorts.
The Daily Telegraph
Malcolm Farr: Sleeping with the political enemy
And when the object of your carnal desires is a man who would betray every tenet of the Green sisterhood—chair-sniffing Troy himself—you are personally in big political trouble as well as personal strife.
WA Today
Chalpat Sonti: What a difference a day makes – why Buswell must go
The Premier will have already made a decision by this morning. There can be only one verdict.
I’d prefer he was sacked actually. Aside from submitting a pretty lousy CV for the job of state Treasurer Buswell yesterday further degraded public office by wishing none of his latest indiscretions had gone public. Yes judgement is abysmal, he’s hurt his family, stuffed his marriage and worse still dipped into the public purse to pay for his jollies on the job. But with a bit of counselling his marriage and career would be back on track. Then the real Troy Buswell revealed himself with rhetoric on the run “I’ll check with the ‘government garage’ on how much I owe and I’ll pay it back” and “Yes, I told the Premier I’d cavorted weeks ago” as he further blurred the boundaries. Had he told the Premier he’d rorted the coffers – no. Had Colin Barnett given him the green light to continue as Treasurer – no. Troy Buswell was again disappearing into his world of fantasy. This bra-snapping, seat-sniffing philanderer and fraudster has had more workplace cautions than pricks in a dartboard and for Barnett to leave him on the front bench begs explanation. Yes, he needs help but not another handout.
what is interesting about this is that rumours of the affair have been around for months yet nobody broke the story, or even bothered chasing it.
Robert Taylor of The West Australian said: “Rumours of an affair between the WA Treasurer and Fremantle Greens MP Adele Carles had been circulating for months but most people who heard them, this reporter included, dismissed the whole idea as too ridiculous, too stupid, too far-fetched to possibly be true.”
nice investigative journalism from the newspaper that missed the WA Inc story when it was right under their nose.
once again the West were asleep at the wheel
stay Troy please stay ROLF……………..
rofl
and again in today’s West Australian columnist Paul Murry writes a rambling piece about ‘new media values’ that gives a timeline of every bit of internet gossip and stories in rival publications in some sort of daft attempt to pretend that The West knew about the story but declined to run it because they were above such tittle-tattle
This is the same Paul Murray that was editor of The West when the WA Inc story was broken by eastern states media.
So far only the ABC has linked the Buswell story to the recent fuss over health services expenses, when 60 health service employees, including 23 doctors, were sacked or resigned when found to have made fraudulent claims for entertainment and meal expenses.
If doctors and nurses are being sacked for claiming a few thousand in meal expenses, then Buswell should suffer the same fate. This issue also entangles itself with the State’s ability to run health services in light of Barnett’s recent COAG grandstanding.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/6917870/salary-rorts-scandal-costs-60-health-jobs/