It’s interesting what constitutes a scandal these days compared with just a few years ago.
For example, sending people debt notices illegally for money they didn’t owe only got a passing mention. Paying ten times the price that land was valued at was ok. Giving millions to a firm whose office was a shack in Kangaroo Island received a raised eyebrow, but let’s congratulate them on not wasting money on plush offices.
Now… perhaps it’s because of the anti-corruption commission which is allegedly looking into things and deciding that most of them may not be worth investigating… but now, we have all sorts of scandals involving the PM.
For example, he bought a house and paid a lot more than the vast majority of Australians can afford. Admittedly, there’s no suggestion that he did anything corrupt, but it was what’s called “poor optics” and that’s far worse than simple corruption.
And just recently it’s emerged that Anthony Albanese received upgrades for flights from Qantas. We know this because he declared them in his register of interests. They are different from the upgrades that Peter Dutton received because, according to reports, the PM asked for them, whereas Dutton was upgraded due to concern for the poor people in economy seats who’d be forced to spend the flight near him.
This is much, much worse than when a certain Liberal minister forgot to pay for a family holiday from “Hello World” and they forgot to charge him. I guess that is what happens when you ask the head of the company for help with your booking. They’re not used to day-to-day things like charging for airfares.
There is a further allegation that Albo didn’t declare the upgrade for his ex-wife but because she was also a politician some have suggested that she would have/should have declared them on her own register of interests. This overlooks the fact that a man is responsible for all matters of business and a woman couldn’t possibly be considered an independent entity responsible for her own…
Ok, ok, there are obvious problems with our politicians receiving anything for free from any business because of the potential conflict of interest. Certainly, there’s a case that if Albanese was soliciting free upgrades in return for certain decisions he should be referred to the NACC and the whole thing looked at.
HOWEVER, we are talking about his time as Transport Minister so it was it a long time ago and – I suspect – that the Senate won’t want to examine it by questioning Alan Joyce because some bright spark might ask if any other Minister ever personally asked for an upgrade.
Whatever it does seem like there’s a definite campaign against Albanese and that it’s not just coming from the Labor side of politics.
If that sounds like I’m a rusted-on Labor supporter, that’s just not true. There’s a quote about how if you’re not a socialist at twenty there’s something wrong with your heart, but if you’re still a socialist at forty there’s something wrong with your head. While it’s true that many people become more conservative as they age, I am starting to think that it’s the Australian political scene that’s changed. When people call the Albanese government “socialist”, I am confused as to what they think socialism is.
As I see the parties these days when compared to the 1960s:
- The Labor Party is closer to what would have been a moderate Liberal government.
- The Greens are closer to what Labor once was. A lot of idealistic policies but they don’t think they’ll win government any time soon so they don’t have to worry about the practicalities.
- The current Liberal Party is now the DLP who were basically a combination of religious fundamentalists and people worried about China and communism.
- One Nation is closer to your average 60’s country football club committee without the committee’s ability to organise the weekly raffle for the meat tray.
The recent Queensland state election is going to cause a lot of frothing at the mouth from political commentators and we’re probably only a few days away from leadership speculation and a headline “HOW CAN ALBO HANG ON?” This will be followed by amazement that he’s still there when it’s been discovered that he has a habit of taking pens from the office and using them as though they’re his own and not the taxpayers’.
Of course, Peter Dutton will complain that – if only Labor weren’t so insistent that they had a right to make decisions because they’re the government – we could have a bipartisan policy on things like nuclear energy, harsher sentences for protesters, and war with China. This will be backed by an opinion poll indicating that Dutton is more popular than he was at some point when he wasn’t, and there’ll be another round of articles about Labor changing leaders.
The Greens will consistently repeat their line from the Queensland election which I found confusing in the extreme. According to Max Chandler-Mather, Labor lost because they keep “fighting with the Greens” while simultaneously the Miles government adopted a lot of Greens policies which is why they did so well, even though they lost. I have a lot of trouble with the concept that you are “fighting” someone while you are doing what they think is good policy.
Ah well, at least the election won’t cause the same sort of civil war likely to break out in the US after the elections next week… at least, I presume it won’t!
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