Sideshow to the real game
BARNABY JOYCE AFFAIR
BARNABY Joyce, the Minister responsible for overseeing the mess that is the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, should have been pinged ages ago for his mishandling of the rorts and theft that have cost the taxpayer millions.
Instead the Prime Minister picks him up on an issue that most Australians do not even want a mental image of and mostly do not care about.
When Malcolm Turnbull announces that he is going to fix any of the messes his Government has created — the NBN, NDIS, energy policy, multinational taxation/theft and so on — then I will be interested. Announcing a code of conduct for MPs who cannot keep their pants on is not news, it is something that Australians should be able to assume is under control in the first place.
Bite my tongue
READER M. Ross (Letters, February 17) reminds us of the cardinal rule of good management: “Praise in public, reprimand in private”. Accordingly, I will not admonish Malcolm in this letter.
Sex ban absurd
THE Prime Minister has ordered that Ministers not have sex with employees. How absurd! How does he propose to police that? Barnaby Joyce may have made an unwise decision involving himself sexually with an employee, but that sort of behaviour is a fact of life and cannot be ruled on by third or fourth parties. Does Joyce’s affair make him less capable of doing the job for which he was elected? I don’t think so. Why has this got so much publicity? It’s not our business.
The real problem
WHEN this affair became public, concern was about misuse of public money in creating two highly paid jobs for Ms Campion and possibly in travel and accommodation expenses for 50 unaccounted nights spent in Canberra, and whatever else we do not yet know about. Such concern was making it impossible for Joyce to stay as Deputy Prime Minister and especially as Acting Prime Minister in Turnbull’s absence.
Turnbull had to act so he banned any sexual relationship between a politician and a staffer, be they married or single. A new way to have your say themercury.com.au readers have a new way to have their say. It’s free to use, just register and have your say. For more details and to register, visit the website. Such a ban is probably unenforceable but even if it were, the likely consequences of flouting the ban are that the staffer, most likely a female, would be sacked while the politician would almost certainly get off with a slap on the wrist: a familiar story of gender imbalance. However, the cause of public concern is not the relationship, which Turnbull has already assured us is a private matter, but Joyce’s rorting of the system at our expense. Would the PM now please address the real problem?
PM judged
LOVE him or loathe him, Paul Keating was right when he said of our Prime Minister: “Malcolm lacks judgment.”
Get out more, David
DAVID Foster tells us every five minutes on TV that he spends a lot of time in pubs and clubs. That’s great, but could I suggest that he gets out a bit more to see the damage pokies cause to those who can least afford it?
Fashionably faded
NEXT time you see someone wearing faded old jeans with multiple tears and large holes in the knees, don’t offer them sympathy or a cash donation as they most likely paid up to $150 to get them like that. (Myer catalogue, February 2018).