Utegate cage match: Malcolm on the back foot
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Malcolm Turnbull has stumbled into a fight to the death unprepared and, it seems, outgunned. The Opposition had Wayne Swan right where it wanted him. It appears Swan wanted John Grant’s concerns taken care of to the extent Treasury could. In that, Swan is no more guilty of impropriety than any other minister of recent years, but his denial of it in Parliament was a bad look and establish a case to be answered. This should not be lost sight of amid the dramatic developments today about the email. But, cavalierly and apparently without thought as to the longer-term repercussions, Turnbull casually targeted the Prime Minister as well. While there is much about Turnbull to admire, his tendency to half-smart politics may yet be a fatal flaw. This was an overplaying of a strong hand, and it was all Rudd needed. Since Friday evening, when he came into a press conference to declare that no email had been found and he had requested the ANAO to investigate, he has masterfully redirected all the attention that should be focussed on Swan back onto Turnbull. It’s a lesson that, if Malcolm Turnbull was able to take on Kerry Packer in his pomp and win, Kevin Rudd is no slouch at deathmatches either and knows more about politics than his opponent, who has only been around for four years. The Opposition is now trying to back away from the Charlton-Godwin email at a rate of knots. Backbencher Stuart Robert this morning remarkably said “”we’ve never actually made reference to it at all.” Eric Abetz discussed it in Hansard on Friday, and in any event seemed to have it two weeks ago when he initially grilled Grech at Senate Estimates about contact with the PMO. The Opposition is correct to say that it is a distraction, but it’s an effective distraction because they have made so much of it. And then there are the implications of the Opposition’s claims. For the Opposition’s claims to be true, the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, their offices, senior officers in PM&C and Treasury and/or workers at the companies that provide those departments’ IT services must have engaged in the biggest cover-up in Australian political history. If true, all would have to go, and possibly, in the case of the public servants concerned, their Department heads as well. And all over a simple email asking that a car dealer be contacted. As for Wayne Swan, he appears to have misled Parliament, albeit on a matter of trivia. What Swan did was unexceptionable by current ministerial standards. A Government backbencher asked for assistance for a motor dealer and he got it. The only surprising aspect of it is that Swan’s office actually took seriously Kay Hull’s similar request for help and actually did something about. That didn’t happened much under the Howard Government. But there is a prima facie case against Swan, who has to produce evidence other dealers got similar treatment to Grant. If he can’t, he’ll have to hope the news cycle moves on quickly enough for him to survive. And if he does, he will have Turnbull’s sloppy work to thank. |
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6 Comments
Bravo Malcolm and the rest of his uteless front bench
beautiful stuff - couldnt happen to a more pathetic bunch of Liberals. Turnbull’s in big do do now……hahaha
Swan will survive Bernard, this is not a cardinal sin. But Anthony Albanese has promised more revealations about Turnbulls murky past including his time as Minister for Water in the last Coalition Govt. There will be no let up on him now. He looked a tired worn out beaten down man this morning. Best he gets used to it, he has brought it all on himself and the Govt is not letting up. The absence of the Opposition members immediately after Rudd demanded their PC’s be submitted to Federal Police scrutiny was very telling as Albenese quipped, they weren’t all rushing away to meetings. The warning from the Finance Minister not to delete mails now, rang out loud and clear. Trouble is most know very little about computers.
The Labor Party needs to remember that the Libs are ruthless in there approach to politics. When you watch Joe Hockey you are reminded of the debating tactics of a private school boy, it is a game of rhetorical brinkmanship in their minds, not the truth. And it is certainly the kettle calling the black, for the Liberal Party, in relation to furthering constituent needs, check out the ETS debate, talk about representing vested interest. Why doesn’t the Labor Party play hardball and shut down the whole debate by mentioning Howard’s well known deal with Dick Cheyne and the Boeing fighter planes??? Which circumvented the whole Defense Purchasing policy, how many Billion was that? At least the Opposition have diverted the debate from the real issues, such as the end of the planet, all for their constituents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dobby_the_house_elf#Dobby
I know journalists never make mistakes, heaven forfend, but Steve Lewis and News Ltd have a few questions to answer about how hard they tried to verify this email, explosive as it was. It was at the heart of the matter and the PM deserved a little more checking I would have thought before you run a bodgied up article of the email which alleges he acted corruptly.
It smacks of Hanson pics let’s give it a run regardless of provenance. And the other mistake all are making is accepting the Lib narrative that Swanny is still in the gun. As the email trail is showing Grant got a phone call from Swanny after that he got same treatment as every other dealer desperately trying to save their businesses. Also shows Grech was the pivot man in this as was proper and that Ford credit people remember him raising the names of four or five dealers.
Grant in the end got zilch out of the process so much for being a mate.. You have to benefit for there to be corruption I would have thought,. And Grech’s stressed out appearance of Friday can be interpreted two ways not just the way it has been. In the light of what is unfolding he could have been stressed for a whole lot of other reasons. And his links to the Libs are interesting. Turnbull on AM seemed to acknowledge he was known to the Libs indeed Hockey telephoned him on Saturday allegedly to check on his well being. Yeah sure.
Also on AM Turnbull made the unchallenged claim that Grech was stressed because he was fearful of the “the rather large” treasury official sitting next to him. Was he a treasury official Malcolm or a hit man? Pretty big claim.