Back in the mists of time, before our current glorious age of post-truth politics, to lie to Parliament was an offence considered so grievous that one had to immediately resign. But hokey traditions and ancient practices are no match for a good politician. Especially not when it’s the prime minister who’s the chief offender.
Many readers may recall that, under political pressure early this year over the alleged sexual assault of staffer Brittany Higgins in Parliament House, Scott Morrison asked his reliable Mr Fixit, Phil Gaetjens, to investigate who in his office knew about the alleged incident.
You’d think this would take a couple of days of phone calls by Gaetjens, at most, but the inquiry remains incomplete, having been halted twice — once under the pretence that it might hamper the actual investigation of the alleged crime by the Australian Federal Police, and now because of a criminal prosecution under way in the ACT.
Gaetjens even piously insisted to Senate estimates that he had paused his inquiry “for the benefit of Ms Higgins”.
Putting that aside, you’d think Morrison would want to be kept up to date on the inquiry — and Gaetjens indeed kept him informed. On March 9, according to Gaetjens in evidence to Senate estimates, he told both Morrison’s office and Morrison that he had paused his inquiry: “I emailed the prime minister’s office staff to tell them that I would be not completing the documentation, as per the commissioner’s advice, and at that same time I also told the prime minister of that.”
But nine days later, in question time, Morrison — under pressure over his bungling of the issue and wider workplace and gender issues in Parliament House — had a very different account.
“This work is being done by the secretary of my department … He has not provided me with a further update about when I might expect that report,” he told Parliament.
That’s as open-and-shut a case of lying to Parliament as you’ll ever get.
As a bonus, Morrison added that the opposition could ask Gaetjens questions about the inquiry at estimates several days later. But Gaetjens refused to answer any questions on the basis that he had paused the inquiry.
Most convenient — except for the unfortunate admission that he’d actually told Morrison all about it.
Sometimes small particular incidents are illuminating of the general. After M. Macron’s liar accusation (diplomatically a big incident), Mr Morrison immediately claimed i) that M. Macron had “sledged” Australia as a nation, and ii) that Australian journalists had been previously crowding M. Macron to take appreciative selfies. The first was, as was made clear by the use of an Australian-specific term, an example of Dr. Johnson’s dictum of patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel, with the modification that in this case it was the first refuge; from the footage M. Macron made it absolutely clear that this was an assessment solely of Mr. Morrison’s character. The second claim, despite the selfies event not actually occurring, was clearly meant to imply that unpatriotic Aussie journalists – ABC presumably – were out to get ‘im. So, both these claims were simple and unbelievably obvious lies. This reminds me of the sneaky schoolboy who has stolen someone else’s protractor set, and on discovery immediately says in quick succession ” I found it” ” He gave it to me”, “Me mother gave it to me”, “I found it in the playground” in the hope that one lie cannot be disproved. It looks awfully like Mr. Morrison lies as a simple reflex action. The disturbing thing is, it seems to make little difference; presumably we have become so inured to this kind of behaviour.
Donald, the issue here is not the lies, denials and outright obfuscation of the person (and his colleagues I’d suggest) it’s that at this time about 46% of the population follow and tend to believe him and them. I despair for the future of truth and fairness.
Today, we’re getting the “I always supported electric vehicles” lie and the “Bill Shorten wanted to make EVs mandatory” lie. Might as well expunge the word “truth” from the dictionary – it no longer serves a purpose or describes anything.
Bloody hilarious the ‘high cant’ of today’s “Save Tim Wilson in Goldstein and Sarah Henderson’s Senate Arse” session of “The Scotty FM Magic Pudding Emissions Club” – with the honourable Angas Taylor, ‘Environmental Topologist’, as a featured guest speaker.
… All right if you’re into “Listening to platitudes : forgetting actions and history” I suppose?
You missed out on Scotty FMs magic Pentecostal wand that he waves over the magic pudding to screw us all.
But it works.Still preferred PM.Unbelievable.
I wonder how many others in the media read – and take heed – of this piling of evidence of his immorality? And why not?
I seem to recall a handy ten point behaviour guide supposedly central to the practice of the Christian religion. And in between the injunction against stealing and the one about not coveting the neighbour’s ox or his arse or his wife or his wife’s arse or his ute, or his wife’s ute is one that plainly states:
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour
Now on the face of it one would think we would have the PM bang to rights on multiple charges of bearing false witness, but the PM would say. “They weren’t my neighbours. They are strangers to me. MY neighbours are members of a tiny elect of the saved. Speaking untruths to the damned is no sin.” So there we have it. Either the man is a compete sociopath, OR he is a religious extremist; a Christian takfiri with state power… or maybe both.