Sick of trying to keep track of the various scandals plaguing politics currently? Crikey has you covered with our ScandalTracker™ to enable you to bluff your way through any conversation about the disastrous state of contemporary politics.
The AWU raid leak. Once limited to Michaelia Cash’s office, Michael Keenan has now been roped in with a report of journalists claiming someone from his office leaked them word of the pending raid. Keenan categorically denies it. AFP continues to investigate. The world turns.
Rating: 3.5 Barnabys
Michaelia Cash. It didn’t take long for demands for Cash’s resignation to emerge on social media after her meltdown at Estimates yesterday, when she threatened to name “young women” in Bill Shorten’s office about whom there were rumours. Today Labor wants an apology. If anything the savaging from her own side (well, Tony Abbott, Peta Credlin and The Oz) was just as ferocious as Labor’s. Seriously, can we all just move on?
Rating: 1.5 Barnabys for substance, but another 0.5 for WTFness and a further 1 for Penny Wong performing the first ever live laryngectomy in a Senate estimates hearing.
Julie Bishop. Bishop and her non-partner partner. Yes, we’re back there: Bishop doesn’t live with her partner — doesn’t even reside in the same state. So he’s not her partner partner. But he’s enough of her partner that he’s occasionally benefited from taxpayer-funded travel.
Rating: 3 Barnabys for substance, and 0.5 for further adding to the electorate’s deep-seated contempt of politicians.
Bill Shorten. Shorten’s Great Barrier Reef trip funded by the Australian Conservation Foundation. The Oz is trying to puff this into something but we’re struggling to see it lasting beyond a couple of wisecracks about snorkelling by Malcolm Turnbull yesterday.
Rating: 0.5 Barnabys
Roman Quaedvlieg. Still on leave! What was a bog-standard Public Service risk-aversion-meets-natural-justice-requirement-equals-epic-inquiry story (traditionally ACMA has the monopoly on those) turned nasty when someone in the government felt at home enough to leak details against Quaedvlieg. AFP aka plod are now involved.
Rating: 2.5 Barnabys
Tony Abbott. Some pain for the Liberals this time courtesy of donations from noted Sam Dastyari fan Huang Xiangmo to the Liberal Party which may have been facilitated by Tony Abbott’s office in 2016. Given Huang is actually a constituent of Abbott’s and only his office is alleged to have played a role, we’re not quite sure what the central charge is here beyond ordinary hypocrisy.
Rating: 1 Barnaby
Barnaby Joyce. The then-Deputy Prime Minister spent $100,000 in his electorate between finding out there may be problems with his citizenship, and the calling of a by-election.
Rating: Given he’s already hit the fence on that other scandal, we score it 1 Barnaby.
Scandal tracker = 10/ 10 Barnabys. Brilliant addition 🙂
How come no rating for AFP?
Just so we can understand the rating system better, how many Dashers are there in a Barnaby?
Penny Wong “ripped her a new one”. Well deserved. Cash has inferred scandalous behavior by the women working in Shorten’s office. An apology does not undo what she has said. Cash has grossly abused the privilege Member’s of Parliament have, that they may freely bring information to the Parliament and to the public. This is not a trivial thing. Without that protection, all the women who are employed in Shorten’s office would each have the right to sue Cash for a substantial sum for the assumed damage she has done to their reputation and future career opportunities. Cash made her comments with calculated deliberation, she intended her comments to intimidate not to offend, so an apology to those who were offended is meaningless gibberish. The Parliament must take action against her so that no politician ever tries this again.
As Senate Estimates operates under Parliamentary Privilege nobody can sue.
Cash’s only risk when implicating Shorten’s staff was to reveal her true colours.
JBish’s Emirates handbag would probably just squeak past the Centrelink ‘ bona fide domestic relationship’ test. But down the pub the $30K we spent on floating him back and forth to the track stinks like so much mounting yard ordure.
A “shuttle stallion”?