Defiant

• Australians could be forgiven for feeling weary of political scandals.
• For reporters and pundits, scandals generate excitement and drama, something more novel than the tedium of day-to-day political processes.

Flying high

• Consequently, the public and press have been quick to anger when politicians are caught misusing or abusing their taxpayer-funded travel entitlements.
• But his new Senate leader, John Gorton, took a different approach, tabling all the hidden documents in the Senate.
• Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who had originally appointed his “political mother” Bishop to the role, found his position weakened too.

Mining for misdemeanours

• In the colonial era, wealthy landholders and squatters sought to influence parliamentarians with monetary bribes.
• In 1869, a Victorian parliamentary select committee found that pastoralists and investors, led by the highly influential squatter and speculator Hugh Glass, had engaged in “corrupt practices”.
• Glass and his peers had kept a fund of money for bribing MPs during debates about land reform.
• In 1930, federal treasurer and former Queensland premier Ted Theodore was forced to resign, pending an inquiry into his financial affairs.

Pork-barrelling

• Is pork-barrelling – the art of directing public funds and grants to marginal electorates – a form of corruption?
• Much of it goes unpunished, but occasionally an egregious case arouses the public ire.
• Read more:
  View from The Hill: Bridget McKenzie falls – but for the lesser of her political sins

Grey areas

• But sometimes, sex scandals are newsworthy for their own sake, public administration aside.
• In 1975, Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns and one of his staff, Junie Morosi, found themselves at the centre of a media scandal.
• As his recent biographer Sean Scalmer put it, the inquiry was “a hammer blow” to this “would-be gentleman”.
• Read more:
  Welcome to the new (old) moralism: how the media's coverage of the Joyce affair harks back to the 1950s

Why scandals matter

• Scandals matter because they illuminate the tensions that shape our political processes.
• A core pillar of responsible government is that ministers are accountable to parliament.
• There have been many innovations in Australian politics in the hope of minimising corruption and avoiding scandal.

Joshua Black is affiliated with the Australian Historical Association, and the Whitlam Institute at WSU.

• LOS ANGELES, Nov. 6, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Cineverse (NASDAQ: CNVS), in partnership with Bloody Disgusting, set the North America release date for the unrated mega-slasher Terrifier 3 to hit theaters nationwide on October 25, 2024.
• The release date is 2 years after its predecessor, Terrifier 2, which was released theatrically on October 6, 2022.
• The ultra-gory, 138-minute unrated film ravaged theaters during its highly publicized theatrical run, pulling in over $11 Million in domestic box office.
• "With an unwavering commitment to delivering precisely what the fans desire, Leone has crafted an entirely independent sequel.

• US president Joe Biden has proposed a new US$105 billion (£86.5 billion) national security aid package, including $61 billion for Ukraine.
• While US support for Ukraine still receives bipartisan backing in the Senate, opposition from Republicans in the House of Representatives has, if anything, hardened.
• The speaker of the house is often considered the second most powerful role in US politics and can make or break the president’s agenda.

Power battles

• Capitol Hill (or, more specifically, house Republicans) have been in the throes of a high-stakes power battle, with Ukraine’s defences hanging in the balance.
• What’s obvious is that any closed-door negotiations over Johnson’s speakership involved constant horsetrading over the issue.
• House majority leader (the “number two man” under McCarthy) Steve Scalise separately voted three times for (and three time against) aiding Ukraine.
• The most recent candidate to drop out before Johnson’s selection, the party’s chief whip, Tom Emmer, had previously voted for financing Ukraine.

Funding under threat

• GOP hardliners wanted to “blow up the system,” and halt the flow of dollars to Kiev.
• Washington couldn’t funnel more dollars to Ukraine, or continue to bloats its deficit, when there was pandemonium.
• Yet Democrats who enabled the chaos simply to make the Republican party look bad also showed their true colours.
• Either way, a long-term funding channel for Ukraine is anything but certain.

Thomas Gift does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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