Extract from The Guardian
In urging the former NSW premier to stand, the PM attacked Icac to serve his immediate political interests. It was insidious
For a story about nothing, this one has been grimly fascinating. Berejiklian may have always been a non-starter, but some Liberals in Canberra certainly wanted the former premier to be a good soldier for the Liberal party. Guardian Australia’s Sarah Martin broke that story back in October.
The overwrought conscription exercise tells us federal Liberals are chasing every single seat. Both sides of politics think next year’s election could be close enough to deliver a hung parliament. The Liberals want Warringah back, but to have a realistic prospect of blasting out the independent Zali Steggall, any Liberal candidate would need to have a high profile and good name recognition. A former premier obviously meets that criteria.
But dead-weighting the high profile and good name recognition was Berejiklian’s troubles. The former premier resigned in September after the Independent Commission Against Corruption revealed it was investigating whether she broke the law by failing to report a reasonable suspicion of corruption on the part of her ex-lover, the former Wagga Wagga MP Daryl Maguire. Berejiklian subsequently faced a grilling at the Icac in November. She has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Morrison, the most powerful politician in the country, launched a full-frontal assault on a body charged with keeping corruption out of politics
In the normal course of events, a prime minister would not be trying to conscript a former premier tangled up in an Icac process. At a practical level, this would be considered politically risky; perhaps entirely bonkers. Some prime ministers might even harbour principled objections. By this I mean there is a process under way in NSW – an institutional accountability process that helps lend legitimacy to public life. Best to not show up with some madcap recruitment scheme, bellowing wild theories from the sidelines.
Now obviously there are legitimate policy arguments to be had about the design and remit of anti-corruption bodies. Those debates can be conducted appropriately and thoughtfully in sober and proportionate fashion.
But the prime minister poleaxed sober and proportionate and thoughtful, because Morrison was hell-bent on rebranding the state’s anti-corruption body as a publicly funded voyeur. Gossip Girl Got Gladys was his pitch.
This was disgraceful behaviour. Seriously, there is no other word for it. Morrison, the most powerful politician in the country, launched a full-frontal assault on a body charged with keeping corruption out of politics – rhetorical shots fired, in broad daylight, in plain sight. Australia’s prime minister was, as the former NSW supreme court judge Anthony Whealy put it later, very obviously trashing the principles of integrity and accountability “in the most terrible fashion”.
Apparently impervious to criticism, Morrison kept going. As time passed, the story grew more elaborate. At the start of this week, the prime minister told reporters: “Gladys was put in a position of actually having to stand down and there was no findings of anything.”
Fact: she told reporters on the day she quit that an alternative scenario – one where she stood aside while Icac conducted its investigation – was “not an option”.
Fact: any findings associated with the current investigation are pending, not absent.
As well as trying to smooth the path for a reluctant Berejiklian in Warringah, we also need to be crystal clear that stoking a public backlash about the evils of prurient anti-corruption bodies also served the prime minister’s own immediate political needs. Morrison was ending the year under pressure because of his failure to legislate the federal integrity commission he promised three years ago.
During his fraught final parliamentary sitting fortnight, in between clubbing the NSW Icac (nosy buggers, who needs them?) Morrison pretended it was Labor’s fault there was no federal integrity commission. He said he couldn’t bring his proposed model to parliament because Labor wouldn’t vote for it, because Labor wanted the nasty Icac in NSW that spied on people’s boyfriends, and nobody wanted that.
You can see how the zeitgeist loop the prime minister was feeding (busy busy busy) was potentially useful to him at a few different levels.
It’s important to understand that when Morrison enters the brutal zone of pure politics – whatever it takes, never mind the corrosion, never mind the cost – he often relies on information asymmetry. He understands that time-poor swinging voters don’t really engage with how parliament and the legislative process works.
More than that, the prime minister actively encourages these voters not to gain the fluency necessary to decode his or anyone else’s intra-day political machinations. He tells them everything that happens in Canberra is irrelevant. It’s all bubble stuff. Don’t waste your energy trying to understand any of it. So it is possible that time-poor voters could hear Morrison declare that Labor was the reason they had no integrity commission after three years – and believe it, despite that being nonsense.
To be clear, in the world of facts, the opposition wasn’t Morrison’s problem. The prime minister stalled on his integrity commission proposal for two reasons. The first is the government has significant reservations about going there at all. This deep reluctance is now profoundly evident. The second is Morrison is worried about his own people crossing the floor. Some Liberals have made it clear they think the government’s current proposal is too weak. Efforts by the attorney general to beef up the government’s proposal met resistance in cabinet. The government was bogged in an uneasy internal stalemate as the parliamentary year ended.
It is insidious.
Gladys for Warringah isn’t just a mildly amusing example of Morrison hatching a cunning plan that ultimately goes to custard. Australia’s prime minister has, for the past few weeks, been publicly at war with a state anti-corruption commission, while at the same time trying to inoculate himself against entirely justifiable criticism that he’s failed to produce a credible body to watch politicians at the federal level despite promising one for three years.
Just let those basic facts settle on you for a few minutes, really think about what’s just happened. Process this case study, in all its dimensions.
You’ll get to insidious pretty quickly.
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