🚀 go-pugleaf

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/24/2829055.htm?site=news

Precedents don't matter when ministers get into trouble.

Every case will be taken on its merits and they will be saved or sacked 
depending on the political imperative.

But it's hard nevertheless to ignore the experience of Ros Kelly when 
considering the Peter Garrett fiasco.

Ros Kelly was the minister for sport in the Keating government and in the run up 
to the 1993 election, she had charge of a sports and community funding program 
that gave the minister considerable flexibility in determining where the money 
should be spent.

She was supposed to allocate $30 million over two years, but managed to spend 
the lot in just over three months, between November 1992 and January 1993.

Why the rush?

Well Keating called an election in early February. And the bulk of the money was 
spent in government-held seats. You be the judge.

The point is, the minister would have been encouraged at the highest level to 
pump out the money quickly and strategically.

So when it all went pear shaped ten months later, when the Auditor General drew 
attention to it, the instincts of the Prime Minister and the senior ministers 
was to close ranks behind her.

Why wouldn't they? After all, they had been just as culpable.

The issue raged inside and outside the parliament for three weeks and it only 
got tougher for the government when the minister admitted there were no real 
documentary records of the grants - just a few notations on a white board.

Paul Keating stood defiantly by her but fresh information flowed every day and 
the government was powerless to regain the political initiative. Ros Kelly 
eventually quit on March 1, two months after the Auditor General first reported. 
She left politics altogether 11 months later.

That scenario is essentially being played out again. Peter Garrett survives in 
part because the Prime Minister was a party, not only to the scheme itself, but 
to the indecent haste in which it was rolled out. Some close to Garrett have 
even suggested this week that the pace of the roll out happened against 
Garrett's better judgment.

How then does the Prime Minister take Garrett aside and reprimand him for having 
failed to properly administer the scheme? In a frenzied mood to spend and create 
jobs, the minister was given a task too difficult for both him and his department.

But still the debate rages and still the media remains interested, way beyond 
the normal timeframe for stories about ministers in strife.

That is partly because Garrett is a celebrity minister, and partly because the 
nature of the mess has so many strands to it. Ordinarily, when a minister is 
under pressure to resign, a single event or mistake brought about that pressure. 
The pressure coming on Garrett has so many fronts and new material emerges 
almost every day. It is a mess that will take years to sort out.

Only Garrett's resignation will give the Government the circuit breaker it 
needs. Just as Ros Kelly's did.

Garrett was not directly responsible for the four deaths and if that was the 
issue alone, then he could and should ride it out. In at least two cases, it 
seems a reasonable assumption even in the absence of a coroner's report, that 
those deaths would have happened no matter the circumstances of the Government's 
scheme.

But since then, other revelations have made his position far more dire, 
especially the matters surrounding the Minter Ellison report. It is 
extraordinary to think that such a critical report never made it to his desk.

He can't entirely blame his department for that. Neither can he blame his 
department for his handling of questions inside and outside the Parliament. His 
refusal to answer a simple question - when were you first informed of the 
existence of the Minter Ellison report - surely infuriated those tuning in.

It was evasive, unnecessarily defensive and politically inept.

Maybe it will take a "white board" situation to tip the minister over the edge. 
There is plenty of time for that to happen. This story is showing no signs of 
going away.

-- 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ipvdBnU8F8
  - KRudd at his finest.

"The Labour Party is corrupt beyond redemption!"
  - Labour hasbeen Mark Latham in a moment of honest clarity.

"This is the recession we had to have!"
  - Paul Keating explaining why he gave Australia another Labour recession.

"Silly old bugger!"
  - Well known ACTU pisspot and sometime Labour prime minister Bob Hawke 
responding to a pensioner who dared ask for more.

"By 1990, no child will live in poverty"
  - Bob Hawke again, desperate to win another election.

"A billion trees ..."
  - Borke, pissed as a newt again.

"Well may we say 'God save the Queen' because nothing will save the governor 
general!"
  - Egotistical shithead and pompous fuckwit E.G. Whitlam whining about his 
appointee for Governor General John Kerr.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU DUMB CUNT!"
  - FlangesBum on learning the truth about Labour's economic capabilities.

"I don't care what you fuckers think!"
  - KRudd the KRude Rat at his finest again.

"We'll just change it all when we get in."
  - Garrett the carrott