Ok, the title’s a bit misleading because I originally had this idea about a Sherlock Holmes type mystery to look into the Brittany Higgins case but I initially rejected it for two reasons:
- It would be hard to do something with enough sensitivity that made the points without seeming like I don’t understand the seriousness of the situation.
- There is no mystery because everyone knows that Morrison is lying through his crooked teeth.
I mean, I’m not even sure that he actually had that conversation with Jen. What she supposedly said is plausible, I guess, but then we’re left wondering what on earth he was saying that gave her the need to tell him that he needed to think about this like a father.
“Jen, I don’t know what to do. It’s going to be difficult crush this woman without seeming like a heartless bastard.”
“Perhaps, dear, rather than trying to crush the woman, you should think about this like a father. Imagine if was one of your daughters…”
“Oh no, I’ve been thinking about this all wrong. Rape is serious because the victim may have a father who’s upset by it. I need to be more sensitive.”
But just when I decided that the Sherlock Holmes idea wasn’t a goer, up pops Scotty with his trademark smirk to tell us that he’d appointed Phil Gaetjens to investigate what his office knew.
In case you’ve forgotten what a sterling job Gaetjens did with his investigation of the sports rorts I’ve posted a link here. I can’t tell you what the report said because it wasn’t released but while it did find some shortcomings in the awarding of grants, there was no “political bias”.
So while I’ve rejected the Sherlock Holmes idea, I can imagine that when Hercule Poirot Phil calls them all together to announce his verdict into who knew what, it’ll probably go something like this:
”Mesdames and Messieurs, this case was very tricky and at first I was distracted by the couch and I made enquiries into whether anyone in this office knew about the steam cleaning. Madame Brown who worked in Linda Reynolds office at the time, undoubtedly knew about it when she was there but when she moved into the office of M. Morrison her knowledge was vacuumed away like the evidence of the crime, but the couch I soon realised was a herring rouge.
“No, if I were going to get to the bottom of this case I was going to have to question the people who may have been mentioned in the texts, so naturally I decided to start with Jen, even though this had nothing to do with her. When I asked her if she had any evidence that M. Morrison knew anything she replied that she has to clarify practically everything to him including things like when you’re pretending to build a chook shed do not pose with nails in your mouth, when you have in your hands a drill…
”I could have been satisfied with this but the PM wanted an exhaustive inquiry so I asked all members of his staff if they had any phone records they’d like to give me. They were all happy to give me any phone records except for the ones which they said were about a matter that could be the subject of a police investigation which only left a handful of texts about ensuring that certain people were ‘taken care of’, but due to privacy concerns they wouldn’t tell me who these people were.
“At this point, I could have given up and concluded that this mystery was just too big and there was no way that we’d ever know whether anybody in PMO knew anything, when voila, a breakthrough. One of M. Morrison’s most trusted members of staff confessed and said that he did know and that it was all his fault and he just wanted to protect his leader so he kept it to himself but now he realises it was wrong and he’s resigning to take a job at a higher rate of pay in private industry.
”Who is this person, you ask? Well, I can’t tell you because he hasn’t done it yet, but I suspect that he will before we leave this room or you’ll all be looking for another job on a lower rate of pay!!”
Yes, it seems a little far-fetched and a little like I’m mocking a serious crime. But I’d argue that. Morrison’s behaviour in appointing a hack like Gaetjens to investigate, backgrounding against Ms Higgins’ partner and suggesting that she may have been confused because she was stressed, was the real failure to take this seriously. “I was devastated,” he said, before moving on to the things he could smile about.
It’s always worth remembering that with Watergate it wasn’t the burglary that led to the downfall of Nixon; it was the coverup and the lies.
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