It took less than 18 months for Bridget McKenzie to return to the ministry. The Victorian Nationals senator took the fall for the sports rorts affair last year, and is the only member of the Morrison government to ever face a consequence for any sort of misconduct.
Her penance was brief. By aligning herself with Barnaby Joyce’s coup, McKenzie is back in cabinet, as minister for regionalisation, regional education, regional communications, drought and emergency management. It’s a tongue-twisting grab-bag of portfolios lumped together to reward a coup loyalist. And it means her role in administering a $100 million slush fund that screwed many in the regions she’s meant to be fighting for is all but forgotten.
An introduction to McKenzie
At a late-night sitting in 2012, Joyce called McKenzie, then a first-term senator “a flash bit of kit”. Joyce was accused of being drunk (he admitted to a few drinks, but denied inebriation) and forced to apologise.
But it’s no surprise McKenzie is on team Barnaby, riding his coat-tails back into cabinet. Throughout her career, she’s been a pragmatic political chameleon with a firm eye on the ministry. As a mature-aged student and single mother of four, she became president of the Deakin University student association — and back then her politics were different.
McKenzie was a self-described “agrarian socialist” who opposed voluntary student unionism and the Iraq War. In other words, the kind of politics one needs to succeed on any university campus. More than a decade later, those who knew her back then were shocked at her rigid opposition to same-sex marriage — despite having a gay brother.
By now McKenzie had the kind of politics one needs to succeed in the National Party.
She’d also developed a reputation as a bit of a gun nut, taking press gallery journalists shooting in a bid to convince the metropolitan elites that rural firearms owners weren’t all “rednecks” and terrorists”.
The sports rorts fall girl
Guns would ultimately lead to McKenzie’s downfall.
By 2020 she was Nationals deputy leader and agriculture minister, bumped up from the sport portfolio after the election. In mid January a damning report from the Australian National Audit Office concluded that McKenzie had funnelled money in a $100 million community sports grants project away from eligible clubs towards ones in marginal and Coalition target seats just before the 2109 election.
The program was probably unconstitutional, and spending the money probably exceeded McKenzie’s power as sports minister. For days she dug her heels in, even after reports emerged that she’d given money to a shooting club she was a member of. Even when a colour-coded spreadsheet she’d used to run the rort made its way to the media.
She initially described sports rorts as a “case of reverse pork-barrelling”. But after the headlines got worse for McKenzie, Prime Minister Scott Morrison slowly walked back his support. Just over two weeks after the ANAO’s report dropped, McKenzie was gone, taking the fall just as it was becoming apparent Morrison’s office was deeply embroiled in the sports rorts. There were 136 emails between the two offices relating to assessing grant applications.
But McKenzie’s sidelining let the government off the hook. She resigned not over the program but on advice from Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet secretary Phil Gaetjens, which found her undisclosed gun club membership was a conflict of interest.
Gaetjens, who was previously Morrison’s chief of staff, came to a totally different conclusion about the project to the ANAO. He decided that based on a look at limited evidence there was no pork-barrelling to marginal electorates.
McKenzie’s resignation meanwhile, made it look like the government had acted quickly and booted the one bad apple, even though serious questions about the PMO’s role lingered.
Then the pandemic hit, and our attention shifted.
Yesterday, with the country again distracted by COVID-19 outbreaks, the bad apple came back.
Should Bridget McKenzie have been allowed back into federal cabinet? Send your opinion to letters@crikey.com.au, and don’t forget to include your full name if you’d like to be considered for publication.
“… the bad apple came back.”
As though McKenzie is the only one! The whole point of the “bad apple” cliché is that a bad apple has to be removed quickly or it makes the whole barrel go rotten. Morrison’s cabinet, and the Coalition generally, amply demonstrate the consequences of failing to remove bad apples.
They were bad before they got to cabinet.
As far as “bad apples” go this one’s a floater, in a bowl of floaters.
The other almost literal “get out of jail free card” that gets played here is the portfolio reshuffle. This is the one where the former minister can no longer be questioned about matters pertaining to their former portfolio. They can free-range on it, a la Dutton, but they can completely escape any more formal scrutiny.
There’s something broken in the parliamentary model that allows this, if you ask me.
Not helped by hollowed out media, busy reporters and journalists, leading to lack of aggregation of research, journalism and analysis (outside of personality politics) over time, senior ‘journalists’ are spoon fed directly by the PM’s Office and may well be complicit in presenting only what the govt. (PR/media pp) deems fit for public consumption.
As far as bad apples go in the LNP electors are spoiled for choice. It is now easier to identify the sound apples on the front bench – mmh mmh mmh …… looking looking looking looking ……….
These “fermented apples” could explain voting.
Interesting article, Kishor, but why the line about Bridget McKenzie having a gay brother? Yes, one would have thought that would have made a difference to her opinion, but I – and most people – had no idea and have less interest, other than to feel entirely sympathetic and supportive of his position to live life as he wishes. “We can choose our friends, we can’t choose our relatives.” is very true especially in today’s 24 hour news cycle.
You seem to be taking that line as some sort of attack on McKenzie’s brother. That’s rather odd in several ways, not least that you apparently find it contrary to feeling “entirely sympathetic and supportive of his position to live life as he wishes”. Anyway, you ask “why the line”? While we wait to see if Napier-Raman responds, here’s my interpretation. When I read that sentence I just saw it as evidence that:
(a) McKenzie was not, as some do, taking a hostile attitude to some group of which they have little or no knowledge or experience and
(b) she was not prepared to let a potential rift in family harmony stand in the way of adopting a politically useful new pose.
As such, the line is relevant to the subject of the article and not, as you suggest, a gratuitous stab at somebody else.
Assuming you are not personally acquainted with McKenzie’s brother, I wonder do you often feel compelled to take vicarious offence at remarks concerning those you don’t know, even when the others are probably quite capable of standing up for themselves if they so choose, and there is no evidence they have actually been offended?
No, SSR, I most definitely do NOT see the line as any sort of attack on McKenzie’s brother. I accept that you see it differently. You assume correctly – I am not personally acquainted with McKenzie’s brother, or indeed, with his sister. I didn’t see this as taking vicarious offence, just strange that it was phrased in that way and I wondered why it was included at all. As you make the points (a) and (b) above, you may well be correct. However, I think I am entitled to my query, just as you are entitled to you take on it. I’m definitely not going to engage in any unpleasantness about it.
Now we know all the apples are rotten to the core, way past saving, what chance of saving the barrel itself from collapsing?
Why bother saving it, Penny? I for one would be quite happy to see the barrel become cider as hopefully it may do soon.
Any cider made from this barrel-full of rotten apples would be rancid..
Vinegar.
The barrel itself. Nott the apples rotting inside it but the structures that contains them. Our democracy. Cracking at the seams. Wood rot & worms.