....with NSW police having closed the case (so quickly), you get the feeling justice is not going to be seen because no chance is given to even trying to uncover the truth because its an inconvenient truth ....unless justice is demanded because media coverage will soon wane.
....suddenly this feels like being in an developing country (not developed country). Accused’s future in politics is devastated no matter what
The minister’s future in politics is devastated no matter what he says, no matter how passionately he defends his innocence, no matter what ‘process’ is in place. Jennifer HewettColumnist
Mar 2, 2021 – 6.48pm
Everyone has an opinion. Nobody has an answer. Certainly not an answer that can ever satisfy the welter of contradictions playing out in the furore over an alleged rape 33 years ago.
Malcolm Turnbull appreciates that. Just as he knows his helpful advice about the need for the minister “to out himself” will prove nothing beyond the total destruction of the man’s reputation and further damage to the Morrison government.
Many politicians feel disheartened and repulsed by the results. So should many of the rest of us. An ugly precedent is being set. David Rowe
Political revenge, served cold, comes in many forms, it seems.
“It’s not good enough for the Prime Minister to say it’s a matter for the police,” Turnbull told ABC radio. “The Prime Minister can’t outsource his responsibility for composing his ministry to the police.
“I think the ball is really in the court of the minister concerned. I mean, he knows who he is, everyone knows who he is.”
That fact alone puts the minister in an impossible position – even without pointed barbs from his former leader.
His future in politics is devastated no matter what he says, no matter how passionately he defends his innocence, no matter what “process” is in place.
Mob rule, courtesy of social media, has already killed him off. The sense of self-righteousness is rampant, paralysing the government’s momentum on anything else.
For now, Morrison can only repeat that a country that operates according to the rule of law and the presumption of innocence can’t just succumb to the demand for the minister to stand down.
This sense of female resentment and demand for change is certainly not limited to politics, but politicians do make irresistible targets for community outrage.
“We can’t have a situation where the mere making of an allegation, and that being publicised through the media, is grounds for governments to stand people down,” he said, arguing the minister had privately categorically denied the allegations to him.
But he realises any chance of persuading the community of that logic would have been more effective before politics became convulsed by revelations of a female staffer allegedly raped by a colleague in a ministerial office in Parliament House two years ago.
This has triggered an avalanche of emotion and anger, most acute among women reflecting on personal experiences of sexual harassment, assault or perceived prejudice.
Whether this occurred to them frequently or only once, it seems every woman, of any age, has a story to tell.
That story almost inevitably gets mixed up with the horror of rape as the violent extreme of shocking behaviour that often goes unreported and unpunished.
This sense of female resentment and demand for change is certainly not limited to politics, but politicians do make irresistible targets for community outrage.
That’s been compounded by Brittany Higgins’ allegations about her own treatment after an alleged rape. Sex? Alcohol? Sexual harassment? What a cesspit!
The suicide of another woman who made a similar allegation about a federal politician, no matter how long ago and pre-political life, compounds that image. A whirlpool of guilt by association
Not even her close friends have raised Turnbull’s bizarre suggestion of having a question mark in his mind about the “counterintuitive timing” of her suicide.
But the anonymous letter last week was brilliantly, deliberately timed for maximum effect on a government already reeling from Higgins’ accusations.
This leaves the minister trapped in a ferocious whirlpool of guilt by association and intimation, magnified by the vicious intensity of social media.
If he does, he would understand he has no choice but to immediately go to the backbench. He would also see no prospect of political redemption, no matter any supposed legalities or the police deciding there’s no case to pursue.
There can be no legal resolution to this bloodlust. No, it’s back to politics at its most brutal and community expectations, turbocharged by media, at their most unrelenting.
So Anthony Albanese is trying to blame the Morrison government for allowing “the dark cloud” to hang over Parliament without saying just what it should do.
As well as the potential for unexploded ordnances in its own ranks, a senior Labor figure had previously suffered through similar allegations of a rape committed decades earlier without stepping aside.
But demands for immediate retribution and public shaming over any allegation of sexual assault have only accelerated over the last few years – and especially over the last few weeks.
A senior politician’s claim to the presumption of innocence or even due process becomes an automatic casualty.
Government ministers are stuck fast in the same mire, steadily sinking their argument this can only be a matter for the police. Presumption of innocence a casualty
NSW police actually began investigating last year before the woman decided to withdraw her complaint. NSW police have since determined there is “insufficient admissible evidence” to act, declaring the matter closed yesterday.
The material doesn’t come within the purview of the Australian Federal Police, despite referrals by politicians of all sides.
A possible coronial inquiry in South Australia would investigate a middle-aged woman’s suicide, not an alleged rape of a 16-year-old in 1988.
Comparisons with the need for an independent legal inquiry – similar to that set up by the High Court – are absurd by any standard of available evidence.
An inquiry set up to investigate multiple examples of sexual harassment claimed by several female staffers of a former High Court judge, Dyson Heydon, is totally different to what has been alleged.
No such closure or finding is possible here.
But rather than any presumption of innocence, it’s the electric atmospherics of presumed guilt defining any possible responses from the government as well as the minister.
Many politicians feel disheartened and repulsed by the results. So should many of the rest of us. An ugly precedent is being set.
