Extract from ABC News
Analysis
It was at some point shortly after 8am on Thursday that the full extent of the political chaos currently seeming to engulf the Prime Minister's mind became crystal clear.
"Can you categorically say," asked Sabra Lane, the host of the ABC's AM program, "that your office hasn't been backgrounding against one of [Brittany Higgins] loved ones?"
"No one," Scott Morrison primly responded. "There has been no one in the gallery, nothing has been raised with my office from anyone in the gallery making any of those accusations or any discomfort about anything that my office has done."
People make allegations "all the time second, third-hand," he said. "But there's no one who has raised that with my Chief of Staff out of the gallery, no."
What? Huh? Who knew? Apparently, among all the new processes that we have seen created in recent weeks in response to this increasingly bizarre and sickening look into the heart of the government — the reviews, the inquiries, the sudden obsession with the concept of the Rule of Law — there was one we had all missed.
We (the media) had been failing to complain to the Prime Minister's chief of staff about the Prime Minister's staff "backgrounding" (in this case, roughly translated as bad mouthing) Brittany Higgins's partner.
In the great prime ministerial schema of blame shifting, and not knowing anything about anything, the whole game had shifted out of his office, out of his ministry, out of his government, out of the public service, and into the lap of the media.
The processes behind the discoveries
The process-creation process — particularly in a government that, based on its revealed preferences for handing out grants, does not regularly practise process — has been one of the more interesting insights we have gained in these last few sordid weeks of misgovernment, misogyny, missing leadership and political incompetence.
Sure, there has been the wonder of watching the Prime Minister's journey of discovery into the world of women. For example, over the last month, the Prime Minister told us on Tuesday, "I have been listening carefully".
"Let me tell you what I have heard. Women are too afraid to call out bad behaviour for fear of losing a job or being intimidated in the workplace ... Women who are afraid to walk to their car from the train, and they carry their keys in their hand like a knife for fear of being attacked ... I have heard that women are overlooked, talked over by men, whether it is in boardrooms, meeting rooms, staff rooms, in media conferences, in cabinets, or anywhere else. Overlooked and treated like they have nothing valuable to contribute. I have heard about being marginalised, women being intimidated, women being belittled, women being diminished, and women being objectified. That is not OK."
Really... who knew?
But it is the processes which are almost as galvanising as these discoveries. The processes have had the beauty, until now, of looking very official and organised, even as their purpose has appeared to be to delay or bury information and with it, accountability.
For example, the Gaetjens Review — the process by which the Prime Minister got a bureaucrat to ask his own staff what they had known about a sexual assault. Then the bureaucrat "paused" the process because he may, or may not, have been asked to do so by the police.
But the Prime Minister didn't feel it was part of the process to tell the Parliament that this had happened. And thus misled the Parliament, though of course he denies this, quoting some other process to back his case.
The PM said he had not misled because he had told the House that Mr Gaetjens "has not provided me with a further update about when I might expect that report, Mr Speaker, and he did not". "He did not give me a date or a time, Mr Speaker, about when that report would be provided, Mr Speaker."
Just told the PM that the inquiry had been stopped. Which the PM neglected to tell the House.
So who would have thought, in scrambling to distance himself from a malevolent bit of backgrounding, that on Thursday the Prime Minister would create a new process which would lead us all back to a room adjoining his office, occupied by his Chief of Staff?
That the PM would literally invite people — led once again by Brittany Higgins — to directly tell his Chief of Staff something the Prime Minister really didn't want to hear?
What sort of political klutz would do that, after deflecting the same question in Parliament 14 times over two weeks?
An edifice of processes on the edge
The writer Peter Carey has a tendency in some of his novels to build some splendid and fantastical edifice — a love letter in the form of trees, the world's greatest pet shop, a church made of glass come to mind — only for the end of the story to involve the said edifice come crashing down. And there was a sense by the end of this week that the Prime Minister's edifice of processes was also teetering.
Not only were women being allegedly assaulted and mistreated in the Coalition, not only were male staffers engaged in grotesque behaviour, but the Coalition Government appeared much too interested in covering it all up, or "managing" it, rather than addressing it.
The Brittany Higgins story was pretty straightforward. The story about who knew about it was not. The allegations of historical rape against Christian Porter were more complex, but apparently not as complicated to deal with as finding a rationale for moving him from what is an untenable position as Attorney-General when he is engaged in a major defamation action.
The story of Craig Kelly and the actions of his staffer Frank Zumbo has been going on for years, through several prime ministers, yet it has never been dealt with.
The first line of defence in most political dramas is attack. And the first line of attack by the Coalition when it has confronted all this muck in recent weeks has been that it is not a problem confined to one side of politics.
And everyone has worked on the presumption — or even the claimed knowledge — that there are lurid stories floating around in other political parties, too.
All parties have their problems
But it has come to a point to contemplate out loud why these stories haven't, to date, seen the light of day. Why is it that the best the government can do is go back to the historical allegations of rape against Bill Shorten, which have been dismissed after a police investigation, or mumble darkly about anonymous Labor women's social media chat groups?
Maybe it is just greater party 'discipline'. Maybe there are other factors we should perhaps be talking about, which might shed some light on our broader political culture, and how to change it.
Some Labor women argue that the fact that there are at least some internal complaints processes in place in the party may mean that complainants don't feel that their only option is to go to the media.
Maybe it is that there is a very different demographic in the staff profile of the major political parties: for example, more young women in Coalition offices or more, older seasoned campaigners in Labor offices.
The very fact that the government has been in office a lot more than Labor changes the career trajectories of people working for both sides of politics, and the speed with which they are burned up and out by the rigours of government.
The point is that all parties have undoubtedly got their problems. But understanding what drives the way the system has worked will ultimately be more important to fixing it than the processes set up to blind us from how they work.
Laura Tingle is 7.30's chief political correspondent.
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