Another reboot, another self-inflicted disaster. The last one was the budget timing announcement, designed to reset the agenda and fire the gun for the 2019 election, ruined at the moment of its announcement by Julia Banks. Yesterday it was MYEFO, designed to at least end the year with a fiscal platform for the government’s pitch of economic management.
It was being overshadowed even as Josh Frydenberg and Mathias Cormann delivered it, courtesy of the Nationals. Frydenberg and Cormann have every right to be furious — especially the latter. The better fiscal outcome is mostly due to the good luck of better commodity prices and improvements to multinational company tax collection put in place by Labor. But Cormann has also done an outstanding job at curbing spending, right from the get-go back in 2013 but particularly over the last year as the coffers have filled and his colleagues have started eyeing off the treasure. Yesterday, as the best Finance Minister since John Fahey, he was entitled to enjoy finally delivering some good news after all the hard work of the last five years.
Andrew Broad, or James Bond, as he appears to prefer being called, had other ideas. So too did Broad’s boss, Deputy PM and all-round Mystery Man Michael McCormack. Broad is now quitting at the next election. McCormack’s leadership is under even more pressure, except that replacing McCormack with Barnaby Joyce would exchange one person with appalling lack of judgment with another.
Barnaby Joyce’s affair was a personal matter; its revelation was an abhorrent invasion of privacy without public interest, however much the media wants to pat itself on the back about its exposure. But Andrew Broad’s is a rolled-gold, old-fashioned sex scandal deserving of revelation. This is the bloke who demanded Joyce step down over his affair. This is the bloke who compared same-sex couples to mounting farm animals. He even appears to have used taxpayer money for part of his travel to Hong Kong. And there are allegations today from within the Nationals of complaints involving other women.
More politically culpable is McCormack, who knew about the scandal for weeks, and failed to tell the Prime Minister, on the basis, McCormack limply offered this morning, that the PM “had enough on his mind already”. Scott Morrison, too, is right to be furious. Like Turnbull, he was badly let down by his deputy. The Nationals knew this was going to happen, but didn’t bother telling him, and didn’t try to manage it, leaving the timing to the editors of New Idea. The political irresponsibility is staggering. This government can’t afford any mistakes, but McCormack decided to plant a bomb in their midst with a randomly-set timer. And it detonated at the worst possible moment.
McCormack then exacerbated things by claiming he’d only found out a fortnight ago. He also tried to dodge questions by saying the matter was under investigation by the Federal Police. Neither was true; he found out early in November and the AFP had — remarkably — already finished investigating and closed whatever file they’d bothered to open.
Unbelievably, this is the second time this year that a Nationals leader has kept a sex scandal from the Prime Minister, ensuring it wreaked havoc. The first time, at least, had the silver lining of removing Barnaby Joyce from the government, helping the improvement in Malcolm Turnbull’s polling. What is it about the Nationals that makes them behave so irresponsibly?
Simple: they don’t behave responsibly because they’re never held to account.
They get a quota-based free ride in the Coalition, wielding political power grossly disproportionate to the 13% of the national vote they secure (and that’s including the 8.5% of the vote they get with the Liberals in the LNP in Queensland). They’re allowed to behave as wreckers and destabilisers by the Liberals — who have plenty of those of their own, thanks — without consequences. They’re allowed to misuse taxpayer funds for regional pork-barrelling and handouts to their constituents, they’re allowed to sabotage major national initiatives like the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, they’re allowed to create political time-bombs like unregulated live exports with impunity.
And if you can act with impunity, why wouldn’t you? Why bother telling the Prime Minister a sex scandal is about to break? Why not let it erupt at the exact moment the government is trying to launch its fiscal strategy for the election? What are the Liberals going to do? If you’re never held accountable, you act as if you don’t need to be.
I don’t know which is more vomit inducing, the claim that Corman is the greatest finance minister since blah blah or the nonsense about Joyce.
Almost everyone in the know is sure that Joyce was using his public commitments, requirements to travel and stay overnight, as camouflage for exercising his private peccadilloes. Unfortunately, so slack are the requirements on Ministers to report, that providing certain paperwork is completed then you’re in the clear regardless of your motivation.
As to Corman, he’ll always be the man who smoked a stogie with Hockey while compiling the worst budget in living memory and overseeing a regime where the poor are asked to pee in a jar for the meager dole payments. All while corporate tax relief is handed out, $400 million to a foundation who didn’t ask for it and $30 million is handed over to Murdoch….Oh yer he’s really kept a tight lid on spending!!
Over to you, Bernard. Care to do face facts? As For best Finance since Fahey, Lindsay Tanner might not be convinced.
I thought Tanner was wasted in Finance – that he should have been PM….. but he was a member of a Labor Party prone to jealousy, petty vendettas and revenge – that couldn’t see beyond their sepearate factional agendas – that would never let him get that far, to outshine their candles in a draught.
Agreed. Such a finding – sounds like a ‘Get Smart’ Dr Ratton of his own, original, Hymie.
“Curb spending” – as co-Keeper of the Spigot – turn off the tap and watch services and the social contract between society and elected government wither.
If only life was all theory and ideology?
As for Cousin Jethro’s “personal matters” : while flaunting one’s position to benefit one section of the electorate (that donates heavily) and parading as some sort of “family comes first” paragon – while condemning those that don;t meet your own “standards” of what’s right?
Again is there a formal course one undertakes to be able to judge these sort of “Best in Show” awards? Is there a way to measure such “qualities” – without examples and the reason for arriving at such judgements?
“Hymie” Cormann the monotone humanoid automaton – what a great “numbers man”? Who, with Chuckles Cash, stitched up that deal with Hanson for a preferenece swap for the WA election?
Then doubled up to give us “PM Morrison”?
And just what is a “rolled-gold, old-fashioned sex scandal” if it didn’t apply to what Jethro was up too – while his wife and kids were back home?
Menzies affair with Lady Fairfax was the ultimate sex scandal.
I understand that Harold Holt had a reputation for the number of affairs with much younger women rather than their seriousness. Dame Zarah did mention how she was expected to “look the other way”.
FFS, they’re INCREASING the budget for Abbott’s previous Wind Farm Commissioner, millions down the tubes to placate unscientific attackers of renewable energy.
Spending discipline my ass.
The personal is the political. Joyce made much of his supposed family values. He used his wife and daughters as political props. He opposed SSM on the grounds it undermined the sanctity of hetero marriage – for his daughters. If a public figure is an odious hypocrite, if his most solemn vows are worthless, it is a matter of public interest.
As for the encomium upon the fiscal rectitude of Matthias Cormann, well one can see where those savings were extracted sleeping on the streets of our capital cities.
Agree totally Griselda yep Bernard has missed the mark with this one. Surely Andrew, or James Bond, as he prefers is just a less important version of the Original Hypocritical BJ?
Slight amendment to that title … “Because they can get away with it … until some so-called journalist decides otherwise”
In both the Joyce & Broad incidents, it isn’t merely their gross hypocrisy in spouting “moral values” whilst cheating on their partners. It’s also the very, very strong likelihood that most of this cheating occurred whilst they were obtaining tax-payer funded allowances-like travel & away from home allowances.
After all, if a former Labor MP could be done in for stuff he did whilst he was a Union Leader, then stuff done as an MP should be even more the business of the general public.
“But Cormann has also done an outstanding job at curbing spending”.
I see Bernard continues to drink the Austerity Kool-Aid. Curbing our spending is precisely why our GDP & Wages growth continue to mostly tank, compared to other similar sized economies, & why unemployment has remained stuck above 5.5% for the majority of this government’s tenure.
Studies have utterly debunked the value of Austerity budgets-especially at times of low growth & low private sector investment. So praising Cormann for helping to wreck the economy is not doing you-or him-any favours.