How Low Can You Go, Bro(ugh)?
We all want to know this, now that the Federal Court has thrown out James Ashby's case. What's interesting about the case is not only did judge Steven Rares throw out the case, he awarded costs against Ashby. Which is to say, the judge thinks Ashby has not just been a public nuisance but a malicious muck-raker unto Peter Slipper and now must make amends to the man.
This has led to ALP front benchers accusing the Coalition of being part of a conspiracy, and Julia Gillard has called for Mal Brough to front up to a press conference in Canberra. It's all a little too late for Peter Slipper himself, as Anna Burke will stay Speaker of the House. Mal Brough will stay the candidate for the LNP trying to unseat Peter Slipper, and the Coalition has been pretending that they had nothing to do with Ashby's case. the problem of course is that the first person to fail the Cui Bono test is Tony Abbott and the second person to fail is everybody else in the Federal Coalition.
In my books, you don't call this sort of thing a 'conspiracy'. It's called gaming the system, and it's exactly why the judge threw out the case - he did not wish the court to be made into the Coalition's play thing. I'm sure there will be retaliation from the Coalition once they get into power; and it has to be said, they will deny that it is revenge when they exact it upon the judge.
We'll all have to hold our noses so long we'll go blue and die.
Weasel Words
Julia Gillard has said Abbott has to stop using weasel words:
As Mr Abbott today denied there was a Coalition conspiracy, Ms Gillard said Mr Abbott had to stop using ''weasel'' words over the matter and disendorse the Liberal National Party candidacy of Mal Brough - who the Federal Court found worked with James Ashby to harm Mr Slipper.
Which is funny because the Conservatives delight in weasel words. It's their credo that the language they speak is not English but Weasel Words. Pointing this out doesn't even constitute an insult. it's like telling a leopard won't change his spots - of course not, not only is it impossible, he's proud of them. I just thought I'd mention that.
Bob Carr's Lucky Break
This week, Julian Assange has been making noises he will run for the Senate in earnest. This is interesting because I've also noticed that the person who has been the least helpful to Asange's cause might be the foreign minster of Australia himself, Bob Carr. Yes, he who used to be the Premier of NSW and jumped before he got found out for running a corrupt ship of fools. There he was languishing in retirement, doing power walks around the footpaths of Iron Cove, and voila, his lifelong dream of being a foreign Minster opens up because Mark Arbib had to fall on his sword.
I seem to recall Mark Arbib got named as a CIA informant in leaked documents - documents leaked via good old Wikileaks - and so he had to fall on that sword; Mark Arbib's senate seat never would have opened up had it not been for the good work Julian Assange did in exposing that RattusRattus. Bob Carr is a net beneficiary there of the chain of events.
Well, it occurred to me today that Bob Carr should be thanking Julian Assange for allowing his lifelong dream to come true, and that he should do a much better job of protecting Mr. Assange and bringing him home.
I know he won't see it that way - he's the master of non sequitur responses and would claim some arcane reason why he's not - but it seems obvious as daylight if you bother to read the newspapers. Oh I forgot, nobody does that anymore.
4 comments:
Do you really think that Slipper is a man of enough virtue to be speaker?
Because you can;t ignore the way that he got the job in the first place and pretend that he is an innocent when he has such a well deserved reputation for sleaze and scamming his expenses.
Of course not. No, no, no.
Peter Slipper is the walking talking shagging pissing example of a dirty rotten scoundrel. I'm sure he's a horrible person to be around, and would be an embarrassment in most circles except in a certain kind of conservative circle where such attitudes as those he carries are acceptable.
He may even be, God forbid quite *funny* in person, but you don't get points for that in politics. So no, I'm not ignoring those things. I'm taking all those things as read.
Be that as it may (as they say in gangster movies), what's *interesting* about the court case is that the judge essentially said the court is not there to be used for politics and threw out the case. The judge said, regardless of how bad Peter Sipper is as a human being that doesn't make a case; and instead, that the manner in which the case was brought to bear with maximum attention to the media effect was purely political, and that the Court was not going to tolerate this abuse of process.
That's interesting and notable.
I really can't see how the case could have been brought without it drawing any media attention given the man's position. Personally I go to first principles and ask did Slipper act in a manner that was inappropriate in the workplace? The salacious texts suggest that he did. So has this judge served justice by dismissing the case or has he served the government?
To me it looks like the latter when we should have expected the former.
Well, that's opinion so with all due respect, you're welcome to yours and I'll have mine. I don't think we're going to agree on this at all.
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