New high-flyer

THE Honourable Sarah Henderson MP is furious with the City of Greater Geelong.

The Honourable Member is so personally outraged that she has gone public and smacked down the newest guy in town.

Incoming CEO of City of Greater Geelong, Martin Cutter (pictured), is yet to get the code to the photocopier, but Ms Henderson has already labelled his forthcoming trip to Malaysia as “self-indulgent BS and a shocking waste of ratepayers’ money”.

Nice start, Marty. That city deal is looking stronger every day.

Public shaming is not the usual customary way for Geelong politicians to greet newcomers, but in this case our local member has every right to be incensed.

It is difficult to see why the newest bloke in Geelong must be flying to Kuala Lumpur before he has met his staff or his councillors.

But Cutter will be joining mayor Bruce Harwood on the overseas trip to Malaysia so he can meet people from Air Asia. Nice work if you can get it. Cutter is the latest in the conga-line of CoGG top dogs.

For the last five years they’ve been pushing through the City Hall revolving door faster than you can say “State Government Investigation”.

It is entirely realistic for Ms Henderson to expect that the new man in Gheringhap St should be getting up to speed with what is happening in Geelong.

Finding out who is who and what is going on for his two thousand plus staff in Geelong. This is what he’s getting paid more than $400,000 a year for, isn’t it?

Or is he a tourism expert? Wasn’t that Roger Grant? It’s hard to keep up, but Henderson is right to believe that a newly appointed local government CEO does not need to jump on a plane on the public purse, when he could make a phone call or schedule a Skype meeting.

That said, it is also hard to understand why the local member didn’t just get on the phone herself.

Why did the federal MP decide a public shaming was the best way to deal with this difference of opinion? The trip may well be a waste of our money, but is it really “BS”?

While we’re on it ... what is “BS”?

Is “self-indulgent BS” parliamentary language?

Is “self-indulgent BS” now an accepted benchmark for public political conversation in Geelong?

Will it be okay if the CEO describes the MP with the same descriptors and will Ms Henderson use the phrase “selfindulgent BS” to describe the media deal that has just been sealed by the Honourable “private means private” Barnaby Joyce, MP? Because in the same week that the Member for Corangamite is criticising local government employees, her Coalition partner has decided to do a family interview with Channel 7. This public chat about his private life is going to cost $150,000.

Joyce has blamed everybody but himself for his own actions and this week he threw his girlfriend under the bus.

He said that if the interview was all about him, he wouldn’t charge a penny. “But that is not what they wanted, they wanted an interview obviously to get Vikki’s side of the story and like most mothers she said: ‘... If everybody else is making money then (I am) going to make money out of it’.”

This quote is an extraordinary insight.

This Honourable Member does not understand the meaning of the title he employs.

Joyce spent the whole first trimester demanding privacy. He went so far as to suggest that he might not be the father, but now that unto him a child is born, he has lost his ministerial pay packet and he is rapidly rewriting the rules of public office in order to justify his grab for the cash. The $150,000 is going into a “trust”. Ironic, yes. But this is the way these people work the system.

Their noses are so deep in the feedbag they have to be reminded to come up for air.

Ms Henderson has every right to call the local government junket “self-indulgent BS”.

But if she wants to maintain the moral high ground she’s going to have to put her mate Barnaby “leave my family alone or pay me money” Joyce, in the same basket of deplorables as Mr Cutter.

Cash for comment while you’re still on the public payroll is about as dodgy as it gets.

It is unbelievable that an experienced politician can do this so publicly and get away with it.

Just ask Sam Dastyari or Stuart Robert.

Honourable Members have disappeared for far less than $150,000. Ross Mueller is a freelance writer