Parliament House

• The explanation being given is that the alcohol didn’t mix with medication he is on.
• Campion and some Coalition colleagues have criticised the fact the person shot a video rather than giving Joyce some help.
• It’s a fair point, but Littleproud would know it is not the real point.
• If Littleproud disciplined Joyce – for example by removing him from the frontbench – he potentially could make trouble for himself.

• 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.

• Protesters rallied at Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday, railing against Darwin’s controversial Middle Arm venture which critics say would benefit the gas industry.
• The project has been thrust into the headlines of late.
• Fyles describes Middle Arm as a “sustainable development precinct”.
• In effect, the Middle Arm project, and others like it, are grand experiments with our climate.

The ‘circular’ economy

• The strategy doesn’t seek to reach net-zero simply by pumping less carbon into the atmosphere – for example, by deploying renewable energy.
• It also involves activities that remove, capture, store or use carbon, therefore “offsetting” or cancelling out emissions from other sources.
• Proponents of the strategy characterise it as a simple matter of inputs (emissions) and outputs (offsets) cancelling each other out.
• largely powered by renewables, master-planned to achieve a circular economy approach of sustainable and responsible production and will use technology to achieve low-to-zero emissions.

‘Sustainable’ claims called into question

• For example, internal government documents make clear the precinct is “seen as a key enabler” of the gas industry.
• One confirmed future tenant will be Tamboran Resources, which plans to frack and drill for gas in the Beetaloo Basin.
• Announcing the project in 2021, the NT government called it a “a game-changer”.
• Claims that Middle Arm would substantially be powered by renewable energy are also in doubt.

Offsets won’t save us, either

• And in 2021, the then Coalition government released a climate plan in which more than half the carbon savings would be achieved via carbon offsets, as well as unspecified “technology breakthroughs”.
• Carbon offsets are used by polluters to compensate for their emissions.
• Carbon offsets are contentious because they allow companies to keep pumping out carbon.

Looking ahead

• Meanwhile, the world has just experienced its hottest month on record.
• At a time like this, we must focus on achieving genuine emissions reductions, rather than playing risky games with our climate.

• The ACT government on Monday officially released the report from the inquiry into the prosecution of former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann over the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins in Parliament House in 2019.
• The ACT government said it’s considering charging Sofonoff in relation to releasing the report to journalists ahead of the embargo.

What did the report find?

• The report makes “several serious findings of misconduct” against former Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold.
• Despite this, the report found the prosecution was properly brought – in other words, that the decision to prosecute was appropriate.
• However, Sofronoff does state:
  although I think that police investigators accomplished a thorough investigation, I have found that they made some mistakes.
• None of these mistakes actually affected the substance of the investigation and none of them prejudiced the case.
• Likewise, the report finds the victims of crime commissioner acted appropriately, and her support of Higgins didn’t undermine Lehrmann’s presumption of innocence.

Why was the inquiry established?

• The inquiry was established last year after a public airing of conflict between ACT police and Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold regarding the Lehrmann case.
• Lehrmann was tried on one count of sexual intercourse without consent in the ACT Supreme Court in October 2022.
• Read more:
  Lehrmann inquiry: what's a director of public prosecutions or DPP?

Rape myths and the criminal justice system

• For example, there has been a steady leak of Higgins’ private communications, which weren’t part of the public trial process.
• This is despite the likelihood that such leaks would undermine confidence in the criminal justice system and are deeply distressing to Higgins.
• Read more:
  Lehrmann retrial abandoned because of 'a significant and unacceptable risk' to Brittany Higgins' life

Public confidence in the criminal justice system

• In setting up the inquiry, the ACT government acknowledged “the need for public confidence in the criminal justice system”.
• Indeed the report, and particularly the early publication of its findings in the media, have wrought further damage to the criminal justice system, brought more harm to those involved, and will most likely undermine confidence in the system.