Integrity is undervalued
Rather than as recognition of talent or expertise, promotion to a ministerial portfolio has become the gift that Prime Ministers bestow upon factional allies and co-conspirators. The Turnbull government is no exception.
When questioned about the advisability of appointing Mal Brough as Special Minister of State – a job that oversees parliamentary standards and entitlements – considering his involvement in the Slipper case, a spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said “Mr Brough has advised that the AFP has not approached him and that he is not being investigated.”
The media had reported that the investigation was ongoing and last week saw the AFP raid Mr Brough’s home. The allegations against him are serious and credible with the proof already in the public arena and tested in court.
Also named on the warrant were two more Turnbull backers, Wyatt Roy and Christopher Pyne.
Wyatt Roy became the youngest Minister in the history of the Commonwealth when Malcolm Turnbull appointed him as Assistant Minister for Innovation. Christopher Pyne, despite an abysmal stint as Education Minister, was rewarded with Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science – a key portfolio if Turnbull’s rhetoric is to be believed – so these two will be working closely together (some might say again).
Arthur Sinodinos was a prime mover behind the Turnbull takeover and has been rewarded with the position of Cabinet Secretary. His obvious credentials and ability for the job are tainted by the cloud over him concerning ICAC’s investigation into his involvement in Australian Water Holdings and donations to the NSW Liberal Party of which he was Treasurer. ICAC has yet to bring down its findings. He was also until recently the subject of litigation by shareholders who dropped the case against him when asked to put up $2.4 million in security for legal costs to continue their fight.
James McGrath was another Queensland Senator who was instrumental in the demise of Abbott. He was rewarded with the position of Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister. McGrath is known as a party room operator rather than for any policy work.
In 2011 the then 38 year old campaign director was revealed as the architect behind a scheme to pay disgruntled former Labor staffer and candidate Robert Hough for dirt on government MPs. The LNP dirt file , for which he was “strongly reprimanded”, detailed a minister’s epilepsy and childhood adoption, claims about some politicians’ sexuality, sex lives, drinking habits and health matters, and included details of the schools of the children of government MPs.
Advancement in the Liberal Party does not appear to rest on merit but on the casting of a party room vote where plotting and ‘whatever it takes’ strategy are valued far more highly than integrity.
Coincidentally, the same values have been on display in the Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance.
John Faulkner gave a speech in 2012 on the necessity of integrity in politics.
If the test of integrity is failed, if polling takes precedence over principle and expedience over ethics, trust in not only the individuals involved but in the entire process of democracy is undermined.
For the health of our political system, of our democracy, political integrity is absolutely fundamental. As Alan K Simpson, Republican Senator for Wyoming, said in a slightly different context,“If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.”
Integrity is a personal choice to be honest and to adhere to moral and ethical principles. It does not ask what am I entitled to or what can I ‘legally’ get away with, but what should I do. It is a quality that should be more highly valued as part of the social contract.
Is it too much to expect from our rich and powerful and those who occupy our parliament?
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Return to home pageGood article KL. While you are not a designated ‘leader’ and probably never will be, given your ‘reluctance’, you do provide intellectual ‘leadership’ in strong measure. (As ‘concepts’, leaders and leadership should not be conflated. But often are and perhaps always will be.)
Turnbull is on a roll. An extended honeymoon. And yes ‘deals’ were done and ‘promises’ made.
But at some stage the ‘piper will have to be paid’. Won’t predict when, because ‘predictions’ of this type are just a nonsense, but Turnbull’s ‘political’ judgement has found to be wanting in the past.
He has failed to overturn many decision of Abbott and as such, at some time, must have to ‘fess up’.
They mercilessly hounded Julia Gillard for NOT being an elected Prime minister. Where is the outrage for Malcolm Turnbull not being elected.
See there’s your mistake right there. You are using the word “integrity” in the same sentence as “LNP” and we all know the LNP have no integrity.
It astonishes me how the Liberal Party get away with it.
Malcolm Turnbull tried to smear Kevin Rudd in Utegate with a forged email that accused Rudd of asking for special treatment for a car dealer. This from the man who, as Environment Minister during the caretaker period in 2007, announced $10 million would be given to Rupert Murdoch’s nephew Matt Handbury for some rain making scam. The fact that he was part of Turnbull’s fundraising group, the Wentworth Forum, was of course coincidental.
The NSW Labor government was annihilated over Eddie Obeid but the growing number of Liberal MPs who appeared before ICAC had no bearing on Mike Baird’s election.
They have tried to smear Bill Shorten in the TURC. He answered an enormous number of questions forthrightly. Compare his performance to that of Arthur “I can’t recall” Sinodinis in front of ICAC.
They want to say that Shorten is influenced by unions when the Labor Party was established by unions to be their political voice. It is obvious that the Liberal Party is the political voice of big business. Which is more corrupt – unions or the corporate world?
They said Julia Gillard lied and couldn’t be trusted and then handed us Abbott?
And they wanted to run with “Who do you trust” as their election slogan. It seems people have short memories.
The Brough affair could come back to bite Turnbull and to some extent explain why Abbott chose not to give Brough a ministerial position.
If you look at the Search Warrant and the potential charges facing Brough courtesy of IA :
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/worm-turns-as-afp-raids-ashby-over-brough-pyne-and-roy,8390
You may be surprised, as I was, that the charge of procuring Ashby to copy Slipper’s diary is still an unresolved issue as Brough conceded that on Sixty Minutes a year ago. In a 60 Minutes “special report” with journalist Liz Hayes interviewing Mr Brough he admits that he asked Mr Ashby to distribute copies of Mr Slipper’s diary because he “believed Peter Slipper had committed a crime”.
But, what he did was a crime. So it’s a question of watch this space
The LNP has no integrity because most of the electorate has no integrity. People of integrity don’t vote for them.
It astonishes me how the Liberal Party get away with it.
I could wax lyrical about this, but I wont.
Not only have they a mentality of born to rule, they also have a mentality of being above the law, and whether in opposition or in govt. they appear to pull the strings.
The Slipper case is an example of the AFP laying charges against Slipper when the LNP was in opposition, yet when a complaint to the AFP about Bronnie Bishop was made the AFP referred the matter to the Finance dept. and nothing happened and this was when Abbott was PM.
Abbott should have been jailed long ago!
That’s the thing about politics. We view exactly the same behaviour completely differently depending on who’s doing it’. Rossleigh.
First Abbott and now Andrews are calling for Australian “boots on the ground” in Syria : what is wrong with these men to think that we should be intervening in a Middle east conflict when neighbouring countries – Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE, Turkey, Egypt – are being far more circumspect as are Russia and the USA.
Or is this just political posturing from the Right to cause instability and undermine Turnbull with the scary and deranged objective of trying to return the Abbott regime ?
Experiencing Abbott as PM was like living under a perpetual grinder; painful and soul destroying – this is why Turnbull will have a longer honeymoon than most.
As for double standards applied to Labor and the Liberals – this is nothing new – I admit the degree of hypocrisy is worse than it has ever been, the only time when Labor was treated more appallingly was during the Whitlam years. Yet these glaring disparities continue as if they are normal.
I wish I had an answer, but looking at the ultra-conservatives’ continued aversion to facts, I fear we must do as we always have – strap ourselves in and hope. The failure of capitalism along with the ramification of climate change will be the perfect storm.
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Pyne: innovation!?! I laughed until I threw up
The Judiciary are biased? Surely not!
If a lack of integrity was the only questionable practise of the LNP you could understand how the MSM and voting public could overlook the issue but they also lack moral fibre, tell whopping big lies, break election promises, rob from the poor so they can give more to the rich, have no conscience at all and their policies (or lack of) defy all logic. How did our political system become burdened with this mob of blithering bloody idiots? When I point out the facts and ask who voted for them no one puts their hand up but somehow the LNP won the election, maybe a lack of integrity is contagious!
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