Scott Morrison and Alan Tudge might have been hoping that they would have left the year’s biggest corruption scandal — car park rorts — behind them in the winter break, but then press gallery began doing its job — something that the government seemed entirely unprepared for.
When Tudge crept out from under a rock to hold a media conference on Wednesday, Nine’s Jonathan Kearsley was waiting for him and chased him back to the ministerial wing demanding answers about his role in formulating a list of marginal seats where the car parks were to be allocated, in consultation with Scott Morrison. If the footage looked like a dodgy tradie being pursued by an A Current Affairs reporter, that was entirely appropriate, except that Tudge had rorted far more money than any tabloid TV crook ever has.
Yesterday it was Morrison’s turn to look like a spiv turning tail, as journalists peppered him with questions about his role in the rort, forcing him to shut down a press conference on what should have been a positive story on the government’s Closing The Gap implementation plan. Under fire from all sides, Morrison abandoned the presser so quickly he left Ken Wyatt far behind as he raced back to the sanctuary of the PMO.
Labor raised the scandal in question time, asking the current minister Paul Fletcher — a stand-out dullard even in this awful cabinet — about how the projects were selected. Fletcher’s response, which his staff must have declared, with high-fives, to be a comedy masterpiece, was to read from an old ANAO report about a Labor program. Except, what he read out illustrated how the government is trying to distract from the rorting of hundreds of millions of dollars.
“So the minister had the authority,” said Fletcher before, with the comedic timing of a rotted corpse, confessing he’d read the wrong report. “The minister was acting within authority.”
That echoed what Morrison had tried to say before retreating under fire. “Ministers were authorised to make the decisions and the minister made the decision,” he insisted.
Fletcher has talked about ministerial authority before in defending the rort. It’s part of a calculated distraction, albeit an inept one. There has never been any issue about the “authority” of ministers to allocate the Urban Congestion Fund wherever they liked — the legislation under which is was provided isn’t subject to any of the usual requirements relating to grant processes.
“Authority” was one the problems Bridget McKenzie faced when she rorted the sports grants — she had no authority to actually allocate the funds, and nor did her staff or the PMO (who actually did it). Only Sports Australia had the legal authority. But none of that applies to the car park rorts.
The problem isn’t who had authority, it’s that the fund was blatantly rorted for partisan purposes. Mindlessly repeating “the minister was acting within authority” is irrelevant. Tudge and Morrison can both run from questions like common crooks but their inability to mount any kind of defence beyond a rhetorical bait-and-switch says much about their guilt in a colossal rort.
Morrison’s effort to evade another scandal — the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins, the question of who knew about it within his office and ministry, and how it was treated — worked for a while, but that too is looking increasingly problematic.
On May 25, veteran Liberal staffer and Morrison’s hand-picked head of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Phil Gaetjens, told the Senate’s Finance and Public Administration committee that his report into the scandal would “finish as soon as possible. I can’t give you a correct time because I’m relying on people to return statements and issues like that, but there’s nothing that I think will be a delay of any significance. I would expect it to be probably weeks, not days –certainly not months.”
We’re now more than two months on and there’s no sign of any report. Crikey asked Gaetjens’ department when the report would be finalised. No response was forthcoming — a common tactic across a government that resents and routinely ignores media questions.
This was the report that Morrison blatantly lied to Parliament about when he insisted Gaetjens had not updated him about it, only for Gaetjens to be forced to reveal he had indeed updated Morrison that it was on hold.
Part and parcel of the corruption of the Morrison government is its relentless hostility to scrutiny and transparency. Along with being the most corrupt government in federal history, it’s the most secretive since Malcolm Fraser opened up a new era of sunlight with the first Freedom of Information laws. That received a blow yesterday when the Federal Court struck down one of Morrison’s particularly egregious efforts at secrecy, claiming “national cabinet” was a cabinet committee and thus subject to cabinet secrecy provisions.
The corollary of secrecy and corruption is incompetence: if your main goal in governing is manipulating the levers of government to serve yourself and cover your tracks, its inevitable that, when challenged to actually perform complex tasks of government, you fail. Think Donald Trump. Think Boris Johnson. And, to the extent that you can stomach the stench of corruption, think Scott Morrison.
The incompetence and perception of corruption goes way back.
All the way back to the images of people huddled on beaches and kids in dinghies as the fires raged.
The devastation of the last bush fires are the illustration of how egregiously the ignorance of climate change denial could feed into a failure of the government on such a scale as to be unable to be fully described let alone quantified.
The Bush fire recovery funds were systematically rorted by the Nationals to feather their electorates, leaving people living in loaned shipping containers and no funds to help them, at all.
Every where you look, all you can see is the unethical misuse of our tax money.
From RoboDebt (started under Morrison) to sports rorts by 2 (Morrison’s office) and then we have Car parks rort, again Morrison’s office, again with colour coded spreadsheets.
Every time there is a rort, there will be a deserving group or township that misses out.($10,000,000 to the North Sydney pool out of a regional infrastructure fund) Kids in the bush being bused 120 km to learn to swim.
Corruption is generally costed as adding one third more to every project and we are all paying the cost of this.
Our anyone could ever trust and vote for this crooked Government is beyond comprehension. The blatant deliberate mismanagement of public funds has never been so bad until Morrison became PM. There were the examples from his time as Treasurer such as the Barrier Reef grant and the introduction of Robodebt, the dodgy background to the Indue card,
Morrison has form as his CV shows from previous jobs and how on earth the Liberal Party would be so complicit in promoting someone with such a record indicates there is something very very rotten in the Liberal Party and it needs to be given the WA treatment come the Federal election so it can do a thorough examination of its true values and principles in comparison with those it had been functioning from since and including the time of John Howard
Yes, it is beyond comprehension. But when the campaign starts in the weeks before the next election, it will be comprehensible again as the combined forces of the media arm of the LNP – Murdoch, Nine, Stokes, all commercial broadcasters and even the ABC – will mount every conceivable and even inconceivable attack on Labor policies (thin as they will be) and its leader (ineffectual as he is). There’ll be another almighty scare campaign based on lies, and there you have it: just enough fear in the electorate to make it stick, by just a parliamentary seat or two, to the rotting corpse of the devil it knows. How do we ever get out of this graveyard?
This sound like an absolutely and horrifyingly accurate description of what is to come. A real nightmare version of Groundhog Day.
Corruption may get forgotten with media sprays at election time. But I do not think all those suffering from prolonged lockdowns, businesses ruined, lives lost, long covid etc will forget it is Morrison’s fault inadequate national quarantine facilities ( still) and ongoing vaccine roll out failure and they will continue failing into the future while they remain in goverment..(happy to take bets on that!)
We will all sit back and watch how well Morri$sin’s gambling solution to vaccine hesitancy works.
Whether it encourages Australians to gamble on getting a vaccine that isn’t there is the first place in many regional areas and now in the areas where the Coalition have taken away the supplies from regional areas and sent them to Sydney; while those same regional areas are now getting infected with the Gladys Delta Queen’s Indian variant.
Murdoch’s Sky Racing will benefit hugely from Morri$sin’s encouraging of Australians to gamble on a prize winning vaccine as Sky Racing is the sole provider in Australia of ‘wall to wall’ racing vision across the gamut of race gambling of thoroughbred, harness, greyhound racing in pubs and clubs.
Sen. Colbeck (surely a challenger #1 dullard in a dumb government) representing the PM in Senate Questions yesterday officially deniedthat there had ever been any such plan.
Never believe a rumour until it has been officially denied.
Ha, that’s it!
Scomos chooks always come home to roost and his vaccine strollout is just another “where the BL**dy hell are ya?” without the bikini babe.
Exhumation.
For Australia‘a sake please remember: Rorts, Robotdebts, Britney, Katherine, Grace, aged care, bushfires, climate, vaccinations, quarantine, mates snouts and trough when elections roll around.
Obviously krisMD, observing Morrison’s skills at rorting their own coffers, made him, in their considered opinions, the ideal candidate to do it with alacrity to the public one and with that affirmation, the rest is very near and unfolding, history. Isn’t watching it happen before your very eyes, worth a “How good is That?”
Coffers and coffins, Morri$sin is busily padding the pockets of Murdoch et al from the taxpayers coffers which end up for some as a coffin from covid.
But rest assured Morri$in have a plan to encourage us to gamble and win; well Murdoch and Tabcorop will be the real winners, but hey it’s better than a Labor workable solution.
The Morrison government has held talks with major gambling company Tabcorp on designing a lottery open only to those vaccinated against Covid-19. Gambling gets the nod of course.
Anthony Albanese proposes a more direct GF style successful alternative – a $300 cash handout to those already vaccinated or who get vaccinated by December 1. That $6 billion would be the same as a GFC stimulus package for which Labor world wide was praised, but not by Murdoch and the Coalition here.
“Labor tested the idea among voters during focus-group research recently. The response was overwhelmingly positive, which is why Albanese and key shadow ministers decided to proceed.
“We need to do everything we can to encourage people to have a conversation about getting vaccinated,” Albanese told Hit FM on Wednesday. “And 300 bucks would be ample reward and also would help stimulate the economy.” TSP
Labor points to Scovid Morri$sin’s mad dog barking response to their suggestion with the wonderful imagery provided by Labor backbencher Graham Perrett described Morri$sin’s inarticulate, rabid, foaming, spitting response akin to “a dropped Scrabble box”
“The blatant deliberate mismanagement of public funds has never been so bad until Morrison became PM”
What they are doing is not mismanagement – its embezzlement.
True, so true.
Mere incompetence can be cured, corruption becomes endemic.
Even when apparently cured it can hide within the body politic, as does malaria & syphilis in our physical ones, until favourable conditions or laziness allow it to re-emerge in a stronger, more virulent form.
The common-or-garden JWH strain was easily dealth with, even within the brief R-G-R reign, but the sheer, farcical incompetence of Abbott et al dulled our awareness of the danger of the SkyFairy augmented Morrison mutation which is truly malignant and possibly incurable, short of whole body amputation.
It’s akin to the Trump effect in America
It may be my age, but that seems so long ago and hard to remember. The cultura wars are there to disorient us.
I know, how can one government fit so much incompetence and corruption into 3 years in power. (I am excusing Malcolm from this mess because he did mean well and as somewhat of an innocent in the world he would not have smelt Morrison, or if he did he would have been discreetly checking his shoes.)
Turnbull “…somewhat of an innocent in the world…”?
Colour me John McEnroe!
It was Turnbull and Morrison who gave that tin pot Reef “organisation” nearly half a Billion $ and all we know of what it was spent on was 800 grand on “administration”. So excuse Turnbull, the also NBN wrecker? Not on your life. ICAC for him too.
I used to vicariously watch Malcolm looking like his his breakfast was about to re-appear along with his lunch, as he started on about the “glass fiber to the node” destruction of our NBN, brought to us by our podium finishing in the worst PM stakes, Toned Abs.
Mal was silly enough to fall for one of those BS organizations set up to keep children out of trouble and so, the “seed money” (Our Seed Money), was supposed to be used to attract more investment from like minded investors. He obviously didn’t read the prospectus, which did disclose that the whole organization is run by the mining companies.
Ha! Mal/ Smirko, We want our money back!
That is why I think Mal was conned by Smirko.
Lucy must have been busy while this was being cooked up, because she would have made sure that Mal didn’t do something so blatantly silly.
A close friend of mine does “proceeds of crime” money laundering investigations for a state based corruption organization.
She tells me, that there are very few places she can’t track dirty money, significantly, one of them is in church funds.
It leaves me contemplating the rise and rise of the Pentecostal churches in Australia.
Indeed so true about the dirty money and religions. As for the rise and rise of the Pentecostal Australian churches the crime links there are worldwide as you would know. It is entirely consistent that Morrison is part of that global dirty money system .
Lucy is as hard as nails and she is definitely the spine behind Turnbull. Having said that they are perfectly matched when it comes to living off and feeding off those who do not have Cayman Island tax haven dirty secrets such as they themselves enjoy
Hey ratty, no doubt you’re aware of Wendy Bacon and her investigative journalism. I remember interviewing her around 1975.
The wheels within wheels of corruption are extensive and what better place to launder money than a tax free unsurveiled business. I believe Mal is every bit as devious as the rest of them.
The political advantages of Lucy Turnbull
http://www.wendybacon.com/2016/the-political-advantages-of-lucy-turnbull/
By Wendy Bacon, 3 September 2016
I find it interesting that it was reported pre the CAN notice, that the showbiz circus was on a 6 month tour expanding their corporate global empire, yet the CAN requires him to be in court on Oct 5! She fled in June and he in July apparently, and Oct is only 3 months within their 6 month business tour, hopefully they’ll never return.
Every time the nbn drops out I thank Malcolm for “practically inventing the internet”
Murdoch again. The man is as evil as the most evil who have walked this planet, I don’t say that lightly either, the misery, deaths, wars, …you name it he’s had a hand in fermenting and benefiting from them all and his latest venture is to make Australia as politically destroyed and paralysed as he has America
If I private company did this criminal charges would be laid
From someone who lived through seven months of bushfires in our area on the Mid North coast, witnessing horror in every direction Ratty , you’ve hit the nail on the head with your comments.
Further to that topic, that the Deputy NSW “leader” , John Barilaro had the audacity to comment a few days ago, ” the city is among the first to assist rural areas in times of tragedy and now is the turn of the bush to repay the favour” …referring to bushfires and drought in his Daily Telegraph article…as justification for diverting 20,000 Pfizer doses to NSW school students, is absolutely, utterly appalling.
I can honestly say that in my entire life I have never been so disheartened, disgusted and depressed by the utter disregard of elected representatives of and “for” the Australian people – as I have been since mid 2019.
Well the country people have to STOP voting for the idiot Nationals
As someone who comes from FNQ, most country people are too busy to think about their elected officials.
Mind you sometimes our representatives were sent to give an unmistakable message, such as when, during Menzies’s attempt at making the Communist party illegal and so we sent a member of the Communist party.
He was a great representative for about 20 odd years.
He always caught the train home from parliamentary sittings. No flash planes for him.
We ALL have to stop voting for both Nationals and Liberals!
Qld a big offendr
The last federal election was bought by Clive Palmer with his $68,000,000 worth of Face Book scare campaign of the government stealing a third of your inheritance with a death tax (Grim Reaper and all).
This was aimed at the miners who work 12 hour shifts and long weeks for the same money as the average politician gets for riding in the Commonwealth car. The only people getting the phase three tax cuts should be the miners.
Clive came at the state election with the same attack campaign and got called “A Liar” by the now premier.
Nothing goes down so well in Queensland as an old time spin doctor from the Joh era, taking on a young, female Labor leader, with a law degree and accountancy qualification from London University who originates from Inala (working class suburb near Ipswich).
He lost and the swing against was there too.
I look forward to the next federal election, because I am reliably informed that Clive may have some difficulties coming his way from the Federal Court. The penalties include serious jail time.
I note that he has been virtue signalling Smirko by advertising on the front page of the SMH, good luck with that Clive.
I recall the shock of ending up in North Queensland at the start of the 80s and the fear of Joh and his tentacles generated amongst government workers. Nothing of any political persuasion was mentioned in the staff rooms for fear of it getting back to the filth that was Joh and his party
Why are miners, particularly coal miners, more deserving than anyone else?
They are not more deserving they just happen to work for the profoundly psychotic lot that are at the apex of world corruption and domination.
Palmer is a huge cancerous mass gobbling up all in his way. There’s plenty he could be charged with, but the political will and the evidence isn’t there usually.
It was Ron Boswell’s parting wish. The veteran Nationals senator spent his final weeks in parliament warning of the dangers of the Palmer United Party and urging his colleagues to stand up to them.
Boswell, who famously stood up to One Nation in 2001, has argued that the PUP is nothing but a “cult” and that Clive Palmer is making a mockery of the parliament with his constant gimmicks.
The Nationals senate whip Barry O’Sullivan, who was the LNP’s treasurer in Queensland when Palmer was the party’s biggest donor, says he still retains “quite a lot of affection for Clive”. TSP 2014
They do flip flop with the wind- usually us city folk are just latte sipping lefties sitting in our ivory castles- not real Australians
I’m assuming you were being ironic, flowerpower
Absolutely!!!!
I know it’s State not federal, but paying $30 mil for the $3 mil block of land is another beauty….amd anything that Angus Taylor has been close to.
International airports are a federal responsibility, as was the purchase of the Leppington land.
Thanks for clarifying- I was too lazy to check but knew it smelt of some brand of Liberal-
The basis of the purchase is even a little strange, if you think about it.
Why would you need a second runway at an airport which will be fogged in more often than the current Sydney airport?
The second runway isn’t supposed to be needed for at least 30 years and even though the company has a history of litigation, 30 years would have sorted that out as it was zoned agricultural.
This smells so bad it makes Guano smell sweet..
The insane unsuitability of Badgery’s Creek (fog, topography, overbuilt environs past, present & future etc) has been well documented since a 2nd Sydney airport – a chimera from day one – was first mooted which, from memory, was at least 40yrs ago.
Even before covid blew the human right of millions to enjoy cheap holidays and exploited in poor countries via cheap air travel out of the sky it was unnecessary – now it is less a white elephant than a redundant dinosaur.
The ‘congestion’ at SKSA (a high end retail mall with some runways attached) is intentional and made more so since the Rodent sold it off to maaates, such as Macquarie bank, one of whose major actors was/is Turnbull (whom someone here thought ‘somewhat of an innocent in the world’).
The charge for retail space is far more lucrative than even the increased landing fees, the parking fees are outrageous and it has the only railway in the known world which charges 4 times as much for the short distance to the terminals compared to the many far more distant stations served by it.
Many long distance domestic flights land and are processed at the International terminal because the domestic one is clogged by regional and private aviation which would be better handled at an augmented Bankstown airport as was originally proposed in the 70s.
Billionaire family’s windfall gain ‘tip of iceberg’ for land sales near new airporthttps://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/billionaire-family-s-windfall-gain-tip-of-iceberg-for-land-sales-near-new-airport-20200922-p55xz4.html
The migrants from Croatia made good indeed
Morri$sin ended up paying 22 times more per hectare than what the NSW government shelled out for another 1.36-hectare slice of the Perichs’ dairy farming property at Bringelly for a road…the number of billionaires created was likely to increase as large land holders benefited from governments boosting spending on infrastructure to stimulate the economy in coming years.
“The number of billionaires that will be created will be embarrassing,” Liberal MP John Alexander
Auditor-General Grant Hehir released …a damning report into the federal Department of Infrastructure’s handling of the purchase of the Perichs’ land in 2018. He found that aspects of the agency’s operations “fell short of ethical standards”.
Morri$sin ended up paying 22 times more per hectare than what the NSW government shelled out for another 1.36-hectare slice of the Perichs’ dairy farming property at Bringelly for a road…the number of billionaires created was likely to increase as large land holders benefited from governments boosting spending on infrastructure to stimulate the economy in coming years.
“The number of billionaires that will be created will be embarrassing,” Liberal MP John Alexander
Auditor-General Grant Hehir released …a damning report into the federal Department of Infrastructure’s handling of the purchase of the Perichs’ land in 2018. He found that aspects of the agency’s operations “fell short of ethical standards”.
Fletcher said when asked about #Leppingtongate: “We are getting on with delivering Western Sydney Airport,” he said.
One could be forgiven for believing there were Gangland links
https://sallymcmanus.info/abbotts-wreckage/
Mind boggling in its cumulative effect upon this nation, and continued on steroids under Turnbull and Morri$sin
Excellent article thank you
Meanwhile Murdoch’s award winning dishonourables Peta Crudlin and Coand co are doing a Berjiklian shredding equivalent of incriminating evidence.
Kevin Rudd on Twitter:
Murdoch is quietly scrubbing incriminating Covid-19 misinformation videos from websites ahead of a grilling by the Senate on Friday. Dozens of videos have vanished with no correction or apology for spreading dangerous lies.
But don’t worry; we have copies
And if you go to his twitter page there is just a few of the conspiracy theory deadly madness that Peta Credlin and co are removing.
Any bets on a time for Murdoch to sack Morrison, as the leader and owner of the Liberal party he has the power and influence,( as shown with his sacking of Turnbull), to terminate Scomo
s career at any time of his choosing, watch for Dutton to announce he stands firmly behind Morrisons leadership then the game is over for Scomo, its the same with the national party, Gina Rinehart owns and controls it and no doubt behind Joyce`s rebirth to leader of her big mining party..A sound assessment.
It’s refreshing to see a news source that is prepared to call out the blatant corruption that is now effectively the government-approved modus operandi for Schmorrison and his gang of thieves.
It will be interesting, and certainly depressing, to see what kind of furball the LNP/IPA coughs up as a policy platform for the eagerly-awaited next election.
And how will they justify/explain away/try to hide the multiple attempts to buy the election with more rorts?
If only their antics didn’t mean innocent people will suffer. Otherwise it might even be amusing to watch.
The only hope of change is such utter disgust for the incumbents that they lose – there is nothing to vote FOR on offer elsewhere.
Surely anything is better than this lot. And as far as nothing on offer, we don’t know, after all, most people obviously thought this lot would be better than the opposition, well we got exactly NOTHING but lies, spins and rorts not to mention hubris and incompetence by the bucket load.
So, maybe the saying “a change is as good as a holiday” would serve us well
The converse is “better the Devil you know”.
There can be no excuse of not knowing this lot but a leap into the shallow puddle, trying to make itself so small as to be invisible, is not enticing.
Better the Devil you know, eh!. How about, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet of what this “devil” will do to this country if let fully unrestrained. Are you willing to take the responsibility of the consequences of the advice to “better the Devil you know”, when you know and have seen already what that devil is capable of if encouraged and given the claimed “mandate” of the vote (no matter how slim)?
A leap into a shallow puddle would be a HUGE improvement.
Rubbish, do some homework and study Labor and Greens and good independent policies before bumping your gums about nothing good to vote for…..put the LNP last ..!!
Their (ALP, Greens, independents) instincts are always better.
An independent ICAC alone, should be enough, surely.
Neither ‘side’ will institute an “independent ICAC“.
As with loud demands for effective FoI or reform of whistle blowing laws (eg the manifesto of Kevin 07) when in opposition, they fall into abeyance once in office.
Why would any party in power offer themselves as hostages to fortune?
Bear in mind that every piece of Draconian security & surveillance legislation since 2013 has been nodded through, after theatrical claims of resistance, by Labor.
Remember their protestations about the iniquity of the stage 3 tax cuts?
Exactly. Corruption and self-serving parties are fundamental, intrinsic and unavoidable in the system of government that operates here. We’ll only get a robust independent crime and corruption commission when we stop holding elections which can be manipulated and get rid of political parties which inevitably serve themselves and their paymasters before they begin to think of the country or the public. The only credible way to do that I can see is to replace elected representatives with a body made up of randomly selected Australians who would be genuinely representative and replaced at regular intervals such that corrupting enough of them to make a difference is too difficult. The chances of that happening are even less than the chances of a robust independent crime and corruption commission.
I agree but it will never happen – too many vested interests.
The importance of limited incumbency is much neglected and it would go far, along with a random selection, to ensuring integrity.
When everyone knows that they’ll soon be back out on the street it would serve to limit outrageous excess because they would know they’d soon be bearing the brunt.
The random selection could not produce worse MPs than those who only attain preselection by less than appealing methods… like the current PM.
Unfortunately they have learned that they don’t need to justify/explain away/try to hide their corruption. It seems the majority of the Australian voting public are either not paying attention, have short attention spans or just don’t care. As long as they can keep their franking credits and negative gearing. ‘I got mine, F.U”.
The norm is that governments are voted out, not in. Can live in hope.
News and informing of corruption etc. more about a series of managed PR events that are forgotten by a well trained electorate and media….
And to think that in “his” belief system, with it’s Prosperity Theology, it is those innocent people you speak of, generally being in the lower economic strata’s of society, are the ones deserving to suffer, because they must be that way, because they do not follow the “God” of “his” belief system. None of them in particular, will be laughing, that’s for sure if he wins again.
They have knocked out the best of Christianity. Like Chris Hedges says, it’s heresy.
I find it interesting that it was reported pre the CAN notice, that the showbiz circus was on a 6 month tour expanding their corporate global empire, yet the CAN requires him to be in court on Oct 5! She fled in June and he in July apparently, and Oct is only 3 months within their 6 month business tour, hopefully they’ll never return.
… the current minister Paul Fletcher — a stand-out dullard even in this awful cabinet —
Tudge and Morrison can both run from questions like common crooks…
Two great points in an all-round excellent article. Thank you very much BK.
Well put – absolutely to the point. I just can’t understand how these corrupt people are still in Parliament. We obviously have the most apathetic populace – will anything make them sit up and take notice?
Noticing is not the same as remembering – for the next 6 longgg months.