Sometimes, interesting things go on in the background to the main ring event at Cirque du Scomo.
The Herald Sun reported on the Senate committee looking into the AFP raid of a Home Affairs employee, over the Peter Dutton au pair leaks.
The Australian Federal Police is facing the humiliation of being found in contempt of the Australian parliament for a raid of the Department of Home Affairs building over leaks in the au pair saga involving MP Peter Dutton.
Apparently, the warrant mentioned the Senate Committee which is a real problem because the AFP had said they were investigating leaks to the media, not the parliamentary committee.
Under the laws of parliamentary privilege, warrants should not be executed which improperly interfere with the functioning of parliament.
The Guardian are reporting the Senate Committee has tabled its findings. Should be very interesting revelations shortly.
On a similar note, we will have to wait until February for the next instalment in Michaelia Cash’s involvement in the AFP raid on AWU headquarters. The focus has been on who told the media. Perhaps they should look at the warrants there too to see who is pulling the strings and why.
In another, but not entirely unrelated, side show, Samantha Maiden reports that Queensland MP for Wide Bay, Llew O’Brien, is looking at crossing the floor to ensure the national integrity commission gets up.
Which is somewhat ironic, as pointed out by Amy Remeikis at the Guardian, considering Mr O’Brien was not so long ago the subject of adverse findings by a police ethical standards investigation for accessing and releasing police information about potential political candidates.
There will be a lot of pressure to vote on a federal integrity body this week. Cathy McGowan has introduced it into the House of Reps and Bill Shorten sounds keen. The Coalition should agree in order to stop another banking RC revolt and so they can determine the terms of reference.
Meanwhile, in centre ring, Victorian politicians Jane Hume and Tim Wilson are not buying their leaders’ spin that the state election result was solely about state issues. Scott seems to be using a similar excuse as he did for toppling Turnbull – since he didn’t go to Victoria to campaign, it’s got nothing to do with him that they lost.
ProMo will carry on “listening” but not “hearing” and remain incapable of “doing” because his party is at war with itself and out of touch with anyone in the community who is to the left of One Nation.
