By ABC's Barrie Cassidy
Updated August 25, 2011 07:00:52
For decades, many parliamentarians of all persuasions have been rorting privileges like travel and accommodation, printing allowances and overseas study tours.
(Thinkstock: Getty Images)
Nobody had any doubt just on a year ago that the "new paradigm" of federal politics, a rare experience with minority government, would be fascinating to watch.
Because an alliance of Labor, the Greens and various independents had such competing interests, some condemned the concept from the start as unworkable at best and destructive at worst.
Others though, welcomed the obligatory dialogue and consensus politics that came with it.
The jury is still out, Labor supporters insist.
But it's not. If these were normal times, then the jury would as one, announce its verdict at election time. But these are far from normal times, and the jurors have been announcing their verdicts one by one for many months now. It appears all have said of the system so far - guilty - guilty on the grounds of unworkability, a lack of competence, misguided policy direction and now internal scandals. Any hope that the last remaining jurors will take a different approach is fading fast.
The evidence for that is everywhere anecdotally and in the opinion polls.
The Government made all sorts of pacts with the Greens and the independents, pacts that are now tearing it asunder.
The carbon tax is the biggest of them. In normal circumstances, if the Government had wanted to return to the issue, they would have done so with some subtlety and finesse. They would have found a way to achieve something like the same result without so blatantly flying in the face of Julia Gillard's now infamous pre-election promise. But because the Greens held government in their hands, they were able to demand of the Government their formula undiluted.
The same applied with Andrew Wilkie and the poker machine reforms. Almost all of the Labor MPs from New South Wales and Queensland would have known of the electoral poison inherent in that reform. But with government on the line, sanity was ignored. No subtlety, no finessing; an unequivocal pledge to support the new and instantly powerful member on his terms.
The first issue has dragged the Government to record lows; the second could yet be the final nail in the coffin.
But there is now another dimension to the minority government atmospheric, and it's on full display with the Craig Thomson issue. Hypocrisy!
OK, that is never in short supply, but right now it's at a chronic level.
Thomson is a backbencher. Thomson is not under scrutiny for anything he has done while a Member of Parliament. Thomson just happens to be the difference between government and opposition; and boy does that make a massive difference.
Consider this. In the first two years of the Howard government, seven ministers - yes ministers - resigned over anything from dodgy expense claims, failure to divest of shares in areas where they had an interest, or irregularities in their ministerial travel allowances.
Even allowing for some of these breaches being inadvertent, they happened while the guilty parties were in parliament; they cost not trade unionists but taxpayers money; and they were resolved when the individuals concerned quit the ministry. That's the point. They quit the ministry but not the parliament.
The one exception was Senator Bob Woods who resigned in March 1997 "for family reasons". Only later did it emerge that he had misused parliamentary privileges.
Take a look at the three ministers at the centre of the so-called "travel rorts affair" that consumed federal parliament in September 1997. Within weeks of the scandal breaking all three resigned.
But John Sharp did not leave politics until August 1998. David Jull retired at the 2007 election. And Peter McGauran hung on until April, 2008.
For decades, many parliamentarians of all persuasions have been rorting privileges like travel and accommodation, printing allowances and overseas study tours. The Auditor-General has routinely documented these breaches. Others have, like Thomson, been too slow to register changes in their pecuniary interests.
In all of these cases the taxpayers that politicians are supposed to serve, were the victims.
In Thomson's case, the abuses are between him, the Health Services Union and its members; albeit some of the most poorly paid in the country's workforce.
If a police investigation finds a criminal offence has been committed, then of course Thomson's career - and the future of the Government - will hinge on the outcome in the courts.
And even short of that, his colleagues now have a much better appreciation of his failings.
But we should not lose sight of the fact that Thomson - guilty or innocent - is being especially and uniquely persecuted because the Government hangs by a thread. Had that not been the case, would this ever have become a matter for the police?
In normal circumstances few people inside or outside the Parliament would give a toss about whether a backbencher once abused his privileges while working for a trade union movement.
That, after all, would be hypocritical. But these are far from normal circumstances.
Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of ABC programs Insiders and Offsiders.
Never mind the substance, feel the hypocrisy - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
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