There’s a famous line in “Jaws” after Brody first sees the shark: “You’re going to need a bigger boat!”

With all the things that the Coalition have swept under the carpet, I can’t help but think it’s about time someone asked the Promo Minister if he has any plans to get a bigger one.

Now when I say “swept under the carpet”, I’m not entirely accurate. Large problems of ethics and corrupt behaviour are met with the suggestion that no rules were broken so what’s the big problem or, if rules were broken we’ll be told that what happened wasn’t a “hanging offence”.  Of course – as I’ve pointed out before – there are no capital crimes on the statute books in Australia, so it would be correct to say that rape and murder aren’t hanging offences but I doubt that were a government member to be found guilty of a crime that serious, nobody would be saying that they shouldn’t lose their job because well they haven’t committed “a hanging offence”.

Just like the guy who – allegedly – took a woman – allegedly – into an allegedly restricted area where the alleged CCTV allegedly showed them entering and the woman was allegedly raped. He hasn’t committed a hanging offence even if all the alleged behaviour is true.

I’m using the word “allegedly” because it saves one from a law suit because some MPs have been throwing the word “defamation” around a lot lately. I think I can say that without adding the word “allegedly”.

For example, Peter Dutton did make it clear that he regarded suggestions that he was corrupt as defamatory so I’m going to make it very clear that I’m not talking about Mr Dutton – or any other alleged government MP – in the following dialogue and I’m speaking more generally. And if there are any generals who feel that I’m talking about them, I’d like to suggest that everything I write is fiction and any resemblance to them or any member of the government is entirely coincidental.

By the way, you know that the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to be plausible… I can’t remember who said that, but whoever it was, they said it before Donald Trump was elected so one has to be impressed.

A short fiction:

“Does Mr Bent need to stand down?”

“No, I’ve looked into it and no rules were broken.”

“But he went outside the guidelines…”

“Guidelines are just that, they’re a guide. Like those lines down the middle of the road, you’re allowed to cross them from time to time if you think it’s reasonable.”

“Actually we’ve noticed that he also broke the rules.”

“Yes, but we’re the ones who wrote the rule book and if we think it’s time for a rule change, it’d be a lot of meaningless red tape if we had to change them before we ignored them entirely.”

“Doesn’t that mean that the rules are irrelevant then?”

“On the contrary, the rules are there to give us a starting point. After all, if rules didn’t change we’d still be keeping slaves and forbidding women to vote…”

“Isn’t there a difference between changing a law and ignoring a rule? I mean we didn’t just wake up one day and decide that we’d ignore the law that prevented gay people from marrying because most people thought that it was a violation of their rights.”

“Look, nobody but the left cares about this issue and while we govern for all Australians we don’t govern for those who aren’t patriotic and if you don’t want to get behind your government, whose side are you on? China’s? If you like rules so much, why don’t you move to China?”

Anyway, moving back to the real world, we had Bridget McKenzie, who was once allegedly a minister in this alleged government suggesting that the word “rorts” was unparliamentary and that if it were used outside she would sue… Not sure why she hasn’t sued all those other people using the word, but anyway… I was more intrigued by the idea that changes were made by an unnamed member of staff after she’d signed off. Is it normal for members of a minister’s staff to decide that the minister doesn’t know what they’re doing and add a few million to marginal seats here and there?

Still it does make sense.

If the Prime Monster needs his wife, allegedly Jen, to explain to him that he has to think about a rape case as though he’s a father -which he is, allegedly – and to think of what he’d want to happen if it were his own alleged daughters in the same position as Brittany Higgins, then you certainly wouldn’t want any of the ministers in this government having the final say on anything!