There’s something about Troy. Something those of us outside of Western Australian government circles are clearly missing.
After every indiscretion, chair-sniffing, bra-snapping, squirrel-gripping, car-crashing Troy Buswell still has supporters willing to speak up for him. Here’s fellow Liberal sandgroper and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop today:
“Troy Buswell [has] a brilliant mind, he has a great ability, but like so many other very clever people he obviously has some flaws.”
In effectively consigning his political career to the scrapheap yesterday, Premier Colin Barnett called him a “brilliant person” and “outstanding minister” — “controversial from time to time but no one can doubt his intellect”.
This isn’t platitudes for a colleague or hollow sympathy for a clearly sick friend. People who really know Buswell like him and respect him. Few doubt his ability as a politician, policymaker and economic manager.
So the political process chews up and spits out another effective operator. His political career, surely, is now over. Whatever his condition, Buswell only blames himself. His party gave him enough chances. The media reported on what it had to.
But you have to wonder if we all conspire to bring down political players worth supporting.
How much dispensation can you give one person and not another?
Doesn’t such high office require certain basic standards of behaviour?
How much “support” does a drunk, groping fat white guy who can’t balance a budget in the middle of a mining boom deserve?
” … but like so many other very clever people he obviously has some flaws.”
The ultimate in cover-your arse futures in WA
What do you mean “conspire”? Did someone spike his drinks and force the car keys into his hands. There’s be a different story if he was DUI and killed someone.
If a noted wit says “Pass the salt” everybody falls about laughing is something I read years ago to show how once the group opinion is made facts to the contrary just don’t matter. I mean there are still people around who fervently believe the Howard Govt was a fiscally prudent
Having observed Buswell at closer quarters than I would have wished I believe that he is the beneficiary of this.
WA has had record revenues and reasonably constrained growth in PS wage rates ( below CPI) yet there is now a huge defict,blow out in debt and resultant down grade in credit rating.
Barnett says it is Capex. On what? the Fiona Stanley Hospital was funded before the change of Govt?. They haven’t built any rail and there is still a shortage of cars for the existing line. Buswell was the Treasure for much of this and doesn’t deserve the high ratings he has been given. The facts argue otherwise.