the serial rorter

Paul Murray
The West Australian
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As the old saying goes: If Peter Slipper was the answer then it was a pretty stupid question. When Julia Gillard enthroned Mr Slipper as Speaker last November, the only question on her mind was how to survive a little longer in office.

The first deal she struck to form a minority Government — based on the promise of poker machine reform with Andrew Wilkie — had fallen apart, threatening a split in caucus and potentially triggering the Tasmanian independent’s threat to withdraw support.

So she threw a bone to Mr Slipper, who had been discarded by his own party as a serial rorter. That secured an insurance policy against Mr Wilkie by freeing up a Labor vote on the floor of the house — at the expense of the admirable former Speaker, Harry Jenkins.

But the salient political question now is whether the Labor Party can survive Ms Gillard. Her disastrous prime ministership has left Labor’s Federal standing at record lows, thanks to her appalling political judgment.

If Ms Gillard makes it to another election, she might be lucky to get the 26.6 per cent primary vote that Anna Bligh managed recently in Queensland, leading several commentators to question whether the party founded under that State’s Tree of Knowledge could ever recover.

The choice of Mr Slipper as the custodian of the standards of the House of Representatives wasn’t just risky. It was doomed.

Even the birds in the trees in Canberra twitter about Mr Slipper’s indiscretions. How could she not know? There’s not much business acumen in her office, but hasn’t anyone heard of due diligence?

And this isn’t just hindsight talking. Here is what I wrote on November 26, as many in the Canberra press gallery were congratulating Ms Gillard for her parliamentary dexterity:

“For the price of one vote, the cost to the reputation of the national Parliament is high. In nominating the slippery Mr Slipper as Labor’s choice, Ms Gillard has treated the office of Speaker as a convenience — a public convenience.

“The House of Representatives is hardly a gathering of the noble-minded, but Mr Slipper would not be the principled first choice for Speaker of any MP in normal circumstances.

“It would be naive to suggest that filling the Speaker’s position previously has been devoid of crass objectives. But there has never been anything approaching the lack of principle of this skulduggery.”

To those letter writers and emailers who continue to attack me as some sort of right-wing hatchet because I refuse to accept the debasement of our national Government by incompetents, I also have a question: How are you looking now?

And I remind them of another part of that November column, which has been the basis of my constant criticism of the Gillard Government that so infuriates them: “Mr Slipper’s appointment is the end result of the dismal politics of compromise that have ruled the Gillard Government’s actions ever since voters declined to return the incumbent Labor government a year ago.

“Without the numbers, every move comes with a payday for those who keep it afloat. No policy initiative follows the normal course of being judged either right or wrong or as the imperative of a government with an electoral mandate.”

Ms Gillard needs to wear as a crown of thorns every tawdry moment of this saga as it unfolds toward what will be a momentous first day of the new Parliament on May 8, Budget day.

Not only are the chooks coming home to roost, but the scandal around Mr Slipper is growing exponentially, involving now two of his staff with whom he allegedly had something other than a normal employer-employee relationship.

James Ashby, who alleges Mr Slipper hired him only to pursue a sexual relationship, also asserts in his Federal Court affidavit that his boss rorted his Cabcharge entitlements.

Another Slipper staffer, Tim Knapp, is the subject of a leak of emails to the Australian newspaper that reflect on their employer-employee relationship. He is reported as being under investigation by Australian Federal Police over illegal use of a Commonwealth fuel card in the MP’s name.

In one email, discussing a private weekend meeting, Mr Knapp writes of maybe having to introduce Mr Slipper, married with children, “as my boyfriend”. In another, declining an invitation for dinner at Mr Slipper’s home, Mr Knapp wrote “we need to keep things within the workplace to keep suspicions at a minimum”.

Part of the Greens’ deal to install Ms Gillard was based on setting up a parliamentary integrity commissioner by September last year. And isn’t one sorely needed at the moment?

Unfortunately, as with many parts of that agreement, the promise was also questionable.