In the past few days, the water buyback story (being called “watergate”) has gained momentum, so much so that it’s leading Nine’s The Sydney Morning Herald today, dominated a breakfast TV interview with the Prime Minister, and has chat show panellist Joe Hildebrand opining on how it will impact the election.
The bare bones of the story aren’t new, as Crikey has detailed elsewhere today. So why is it dominating the political news cycle now?
The story started to get traction on Twitter last week when a thread was posted that linked Energy Minister Angus Taylor to the buyback and pointed out his previous links to the EAA (the company at the centre of the controversy), and its parent company based in the Cayman Islands.
Taylor responded by sending legal letters to users who’d retweeted the thread, including journalists Margo Kingston and Michael West. The story was picked up by Ten’s Hamish Macdonald, who worked with West to report a long piece for The Project on Thursday, and the pressure hasn’t let up since.
But while there were some new bits and pieces around, what really made this a story this time around was the political context.
Firstly, then-agriculture minister now-backbencher Barnaby Joyce has had his political career come undone in the past year after the scandal of his marriage breakdown and child with a former staffer became tabloid fodder. That followed his own section 44 scandal, where he was found to be ineligible to sit in the parliament and had to recontest his seat. Joyce has already added again to the life of this story by first being unavailable for The Project, then texting in to Insiders panellist Patricia Karvelas with a statement about it on Sunday, and then giving a fiery interview to Karvelas on Radio National yesterday.
Secondly, interest in climate change has increased as an election issue as Australian farmers deal with a devastating drought. Alongside that issue is the Menindee fish kill over summer, which again brought focus onto the complicated Murray-Darling Basin Plan with striking images of the devastation. This story raises again the question of the management of water in this country, including under Joyce’s time as minister.
Thirdly, a political narrative about deals for mates has been running through the political news pages. Travel agency Helloworld is back on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald, about a donation it made to the Liberal Party during an accommodation tender process. The company, co-owned by the party’s federal treasurer, was in the headlines earlier this year when it was revealed that Finance Minister Mathias Cormann had not paid for a trip booked through the company (which he later paid for, saying he had not realised).
The cosy relationships between politicians and their business mates have been cropping up repeatedly over the past few months, and the relationship between Taylor and the company that benefited reinforces some elements of that narrative.
And, lastly, this is a story that has come up during an election campaign. Large sections of the news are dedicated to politics, party leaders are giving doorstop interviews most days, and the media is running tallies of who “wins” each day on the campaign trail.
The buybacks story fits into one of the big issues of the campaign — climate change — and has provided campaign announcements by Labor and the Greens in support of a royal commission into water, which leads to yet more coverage.
Excellent article. The Watergate saga reminded me straight away of a book I read some months ago: “Game Of Mates: How Favours Bleed the Nation” ( https://gameofmates.com/ ), by @DrCameronMurray. I’m sure Watergate will make it into the next edition if there is one. The tragedy is that he could probably put together an old-fashioned several-volume encyclopedia of “Game of Mates”.
Not to worry.
Our Murdoch Qld Curry or Maul are flushed and dog-paddling their best, to share attributable blame with Labor. In a tide of allegations over this, they’re doing “flood mitigation work” for their Limited News Party, and Cousin Jethro in particular.
Today (in the face of allegations of misrepresentation – the Curry or Maul? Never!!?) they’re piling it all back on Jethro and Scumbo – no mention of their Limited News Party prom queen Viellaris and her editor’s own “interpretation” of “explosive correspondence” :-
“Mr Joyce and Prime Minister Scott Morrison, under pressure from federal Labor, have pointed the finger at the Palaszczuk Government over the deal struck …..” = no mention of their part in peddling that crap yesterday.
Another load of self-seeking/indulgent/exculpating bullshit from Murdoch Qld’s lying toe-rag?
And these arse-wipes in our fear and smear press are “analysing” election issues? FFS.
This government is digging us into a bloody great big chasm – and Murdoch, with his media, is trying to sell us a bigger shovel, to vote for his shambles, so that they can dig deeper and faster?
What it demonstrates most is the gross corruption, now at an all time high in the Nationals for sure and in the Liberals too with the Helloworld rort. The Cubbie station style rorts have bankrupted graziers left and right. What would happen to that water? Down stream to be stolen by another Barnaby mate? Federal ICAC must come.
There must be a royal commission into the whole MDBP. Period.
The massive disasters and dishonesty of the financial services industry and the dishonesty, corruption, incompetence and servility to Capitalism that will also be disclosed by a MDBP RC will give the Conservative wrecks of Australia a much smaller political and philosophical island on which to shelter.
The Overflow (no apologies to Clancy of Banjo Patterson) was so named because the vast Interior and especially the Corner Country where SA/NSW/Qld/NT meet once regularly flooded due to the shallowness of the river beds in a drainage area comparable in size to the Missouri-Mississippi.
This was not because of rain in the region but tropical storms far away in the northern Barclay & Atherton ranges which gave the region a fecundity which graziers destroyed within a couple of generations with hard hoofed animals, mallee clearing and general overgrazing & cupidity.
The storms still dump their water south & east in the Lake Eyre drainage basin but between the levees and hardpan caused by the mammals what flooding occurs is wild and short lived, causing erosion rather than seeping into the soil for slow release.