The Australian Electoral Commission withdrew its 1998 demand that Tony Abbott reveal the donors to his ‘honest politics’ slush fund without seeing Mr Abbott’s legal advice or taking its own.

The AEC man then responsible for disclosure of political donations, Mr Brad Edgman, told the Herald that he backed down after Mr Abbott wrote claiming he had legal advice that he need not disclose the donors. Mr Edgman said he had never seen that advice, and did not get his own legal advice before bowing to Mr Abbott’s demand to maintain secrecy.

The AEC has refused for more than a week to disclose the basis of its backdown in 1998, but Mr Edgman said yesterday he made the decision, along with his superior,based on Mr Abbott’s letter, the ‘honest politics’ trust deed, and a look at the law concerning “associated entities’ of political parties.

Asked why he decided the honest politics trust was not an associated entity of the Liberal Party, Mr Edgman said: “I’d have to go back and have a look at it.” Mr Edgman is now director of the AEC’s parliamentary and ministerial section.

Asked why he took eight months to reply to Mr Abbott’s letter claiming secrecy for his donors, he said: “I couldn’t tell you, I really don’t know what the delay was about.”

Several electoral experts have challenged the AEC on its decision, saying the trust was clearly or at least possibly an “associated entity” of the Liberal Party The AEC took legal advice only after Labor warned that setting up legal slush funds to destroy other parties created a huge loophole in political donations disclosure laws. But it will not release that advice, and admitted yesterday it was not even investigating the matter in light of new developments since the jailing of Pauline Hanson. The AEC said it was merely “monitoring” media reports.

Recent revelations surrounding the Abbott-controlled ‘Australians for Honest Politics’ Trust (AHP Trust) and the involvement of Harold Clough, a wealthy Liberal supporter, in funding litigation against the Western Australian Division of the Democrats indicate that litigation is increasingly becoming another means of politics.

The use of litigation for party-political purposes throws up two significant issues.

Firstly, there is the secrecy surrounding the financiers of political litigation. A crucial issue is whether entities set up to engage in political litigation like AHP Trust are required to disclose the identities of their financiers under the Commonwealth Electoral Act. It is most likely that they do as ‘associated entities’; a concept that embraces entities operating to a significant extent for the benefit of one or more registered political parties.

In the case of AHP Trust, newspaper accounts suggest that Abbott controlled the activities of the fund. Moreover, while the key purpose of the trust was to fund anti-One Nation litigation, such litigation was simultaneously directed at advancing the Liberal Party’s interests. Moreover, the adverse impact of the litigation clearly conferred an electoral advantage on the Liberal Party. In other words, the combination of control, motivation and effect meant that the AHP Trust was operated by Abbott for the benefit of the Liberal Party. It was, therefore, an ‘associated entity’ under the Electoral Act and should have been required to disclose the identities of its financiers. The solution then for the secrecy surrounding the financiers of political litigation is reasonably clear: a robust interpretation and enforcement of the Electoral Act.

Secondly, political litigation sharpens the inequalities between the parties. As it stands, the monies available to the parties vary greatly largely because of the corporate contributions received by the major parties. For instance, the 2001/2002 party returns lodged with the Australian Electoral Commission reveal that the amount of private monies received by the federal ALP was more than 30 times greater than that received by the Greens. In the case of the federal Liberal Party, this ratio doubled to 60. Such disparity is astounding and bears no relationship to the electoral support these parties enjoy.

Such inequality is clearly felt during elections especially given the prohibitive cost of radio and television advertisements. At the ballot box, however, such inequality is tempered by the democratic discipline of the vote.

A different logic prevails in the legal arena. This is an arena where lawyers battle with appeals to the law. In this forum, the costs of proceedings can be very substantial. The unequal resources available to the parties, however, mean that they are not able to bear the burden of such costs to the same extent. It is this that makes political litigation a particularly potent tactic against minor parties. If political litigation becomes the norm, it will then become another way of insulating the major political parties against less well-off competitors.

The solution to this issue does not lie with prohibiting political litigation. There is no good reason for immunising any political party from the rule of law. Proper disclosure and ensuing publicity, however, will go some way to moderate any aggressive use of political litigation. At the same time, a key source of the minor parties’ vulnerability to political litigation must be tackled, that is, the unequal resources available to the parties. This must mean tougher measures relating to corporate contributions to political parties.

Joo-Cheong Tham, Associate Lecturer, School of Law and Legal Studies, La Trobe University, wrote a chapter on campaign finance reform in ‘Realising Democracy: Electoral Law in Australia’ Federation Press, forthcoming.

J.Tham@latrobe.edu.au

 

Harvest time. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

Tonight guest editor Antony Loewenstein discusses Waltzing Matilda and how John Howard used the media to try to sing away his Pauline Hanson problem (Waltzing the media, Howard style).

I’m More Australian Than You

by Antony Loewenstein

Perhaps it’s a sign of desperation (post the Hanson, Tuckey, Abbott and no WMDs in Iraq hick-ups) or maybe it’s merely the latest attempt to prove he really is the great national defender. John Howard is a master politician, if nothing else, and last week’s outcry over the attempted scrapping by the International Rugby Board (IRB) of Waltzing Matilda gave the PM a perfect opportunity to display his credentials. Like lapdogs, most of the country’s tabloid press fell into line.

The Herald Sun on August 29 cut straight to the chase in Free to Sing:

What gives the International Rugby Board the right to conclude Banjo Paterson’s Waltzing Matilda is not culturally important to Australia?

The Courier Mail published Swag of protest as Aussies get jolly angry, a longer response to the IRB’s decision. It was a disgrace, said sporting and politically appropriate representatives. Howard was quoted: “But in any event I pose the question, how are they going to stop it being sung? You try and stop 82,000 Australians singing Waltzing Matilda. You’ll only make their night.”

The Daily Telegraph called on commentator David Penberthy to rally the troops in Girt by Sea: be still my beating heart, arguing that our current national anthem is awful and irrelevant and therefore it was about time our musical heritage was re-examined:

Rather than drifting into argument over definitions of culture – and ignoring the fact that England is home to morris dancing, Chas and Dave and The Dick Emery Show – the request to sing Matilda reflects a more pressing problem at the musical core of our national identity.

Penberthy had a chance to suggest alternative anthems, but instead suggested that Australians aren’t very patriotic anyway. Compared to the Americans he may be right, but I would argue that there are numerous signs of a resurgence of national pride, such as the increasing interest and turn-out at Anzac Day and outpouring of grief for dying diggers or Gallipoli survivors.

Australians appear to be taking their history pretty seriously these days, especially if through the prism of fighting imperial wars (WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Afghanistan and now Iraq). The rightness or otherwise of the wars may be open for discussion (thought you won’t find too much of that in today’s media), and the returned servicemen and women certainly deserve State support, but why aren’t we having a look at the reasons behind the recent nationalist onslaught?

Howard is more than happy to cast himself as arbiter of Australian morality, ethics and culture. In a mere seven years, his obsessions and interests have become Australia’s as well. Unfortunately, few alternatives have received national prominence. What exactly is Crean’s vision, for example? Australians are waiting. We probably know more about Hanson’s vision than we do from the Labor Opposition.

The response to the Waltzing Matilda decision last week has been informative on the nation’s mood, and an indicator of how ordinary Australians see themselves and the future direction of their country. Mostly there were some damn funny comments.

A small selection from the SMH letters pages in the last week:

G. Borthwick, Stockton: Re the ban on Waltzing Matilda at the World Cup. I understand the IRB will put on a display at halftime of their board members threading a camel through the eye of a needle. Best of luck.

Norm Christenson, Thornleigh: May I congratulate the rugby official who saved us music lovers from having to endure yet another John Williamson version of Waltzing Matilda.

Matt Tilbury, Bondi: To avoid a possible ban why don’t the Wallabies themselves sing Waltzing Matilda? Though it may mean them having to pick John Williamson.

On the Webdiary front, there was no shortage of (appropriately) boiling blood regarding Howard’s “defending” of our egalitarianism. Phill Clarke wrote:

Frankly I’m heartily sick of the tuneless John Williamson drone at the start of Australian Rugby internationals. Why is Little Johnny trying to cling to bravely to the folk tune? Oh that’s right, I almost forgot, it’s because he’s a little battler and loves to identify himself with the “average” Australian.

There’s simply no way that the crowd singing Waltzing Matilda can compare with the power of the New Zealand Haka. If we’re still a nation searching for an identity then something a little more provocative than Waltzing Bloody Matilda is required.

If Little Johnny gets his way and changes the National Anthem from Advance Australia Fair to Waltzing Matilda I think I’ll just shoot myself now. Such a dirge! If an anthem change is required let’s at least pick a rousing, nationalistic masterpiece. Look no further than La Marseillaise or Deutschland uber alles for inspiration.

In a debate that could well tear the very fabric of our delicate country apart, a row has erupted over the exact words of Waltzing Matilda. After the posting of the words on Webdiary last week, Webdiarist Clem Colmanleapt to the old tune’s defence:

When I saw your “version” of Waltzing Matilda I was dismayed to see that you were a ‘you’ll’er.

You seem to have made the oh so common mistake of singing “you’ll” when it should be “who’ll”. It’s “who’ll come a waltzing matilda with me” for all the choruses and most of the verses. Why does it matter? It probably doesn’t. Most Australians these days probably think that resisting heavy-handed authority is all the song is about. Surely it struck people as strange that a man would commit suicide just because he had been caught stealing a sheep. The truth is that with “who’ll” his activities get a lot

more context.

Anyway, print a correction or something please…, this “you’ll” stuff is cultural revisionism or cultural ignorance, or something bad. It’s the typical Ozzie “near enough is good enough” even if it does change a significant point of the original. It makes the song just about resistance to heavy handed authority when the swagman in fact rejected most of the trappings of society, either out of necessity or choice (largely necessity, lack of work is my understanding). Either way, the idea that to live on a different path to the mainstream can be lonely, to be a real rebel, or radical for a good part of your life is to be alone, not the petty acts of defiance.

Certainly the having to walk the country for work, rejected by society puts in context our hero’s closing words “You’ll never catch me alive”. Who’ll never catch him alive?”

However, further investigations revealed that the song may contain no “correct” words. Clem reported back:

Looks like I’ve opened a can of worms on this. Spend a minute at waltzingmatilda, which has scanned copies of the original manuscripts and many different versions of Waltzing Matilda (3 main versions and 7 sub-versions). Now I see where the great misunderstanding has developed; there are different variants with different words. Even the Macpherson/Paterson version does not make it clear whether it is who’ll or you’ll, with the first written out chorus saying “who’ll” but the lead in to it from all other versus reading “you’ll” through to the last verse, starting with “who’ll” again.

At least this explains why different people sing who’ll and you’ll. So, given that you have obviously had an “accepted” version I guess I’ll need to start some sort of factional feud if I am to maintain the rage.”

What this kind of debate does is distract from the big issues. Defending the rights of Australians to sing Waltzing Matilda is something social conservatives like Howard (and Peter Beattie for that matter) love to engage in, because it purports to suggest that there is such a thing as Australian, and therefore, unAustralian. But what is Australian?

Is it Australian to set up a trust fund to destroy an alternative political party that threatened the Coalition’s electoral dominance?

Is it Australian to send back refugees to their country of origin, when their chances of persecution upon return is so high? One of Australia’s greatest writers and humanists, Arnold Zable, wrote a piece in Sunday’s Ageasking this very question to the Howard government:

We appeal to our politicians’ consciences. We say that if our Government, in our name, has been willing to participate in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and to condemn repressive regimes such as Iran, surely it should be willing to grant permanent residency to those who have had the courage to flee these despotic regimes. (Please Mr Howard, let these admirable people stay)

And is it truly Australian for a PM to allow his Minister to grossly abuse his own code of conduct, and attempt to pervert the course of justice? The case of Wilson Tuckey would suggest it may well be.

And is it Australian for a PM to lead a nation into war, at the risk of losing Australian lives, on the basis of approximate or even faulty intelligence? With human rights abuses low down the list of reasons to invade Iraq, the persecution and imprisonment in Australia of the very people who are escaping this horrid regime appears to be a contradiction of mammoth proportions, yet the mind boggles at the lack of media scrutiny of this inherent hypocrisy.

And is it Australian for a leading Opposition party to sit meekly by while a new, less accepting, more fearful nation, is essentially being formed before their very eyes? During the lead-up to Gulf War II, let it be understood that it was not only our PM who engaged in cheap, populist grandstanding. On March 14, Simon Crean was asked to respond to a Howard comment regarding the so-called Australianness of committing troops to the Gulf:

JOURNALIST: Mr Howard said today it’s unAustralian to sit on the sidelines with what is happening. What would you say to that?

CREAN: What is unAustralian is committing our young men and women to a war that can be avoided. It’s not only unAustralian, it’s poor leadership. Every effort has to be taken to keep them from the front line if that can happen. Clearly, that can happen. It can happen with more persistence, more determination, and more time. And that’s what the Prime Minister must back, because that is the Australian way. (Crean says Howard failed to make case for war)

There it is again, “the Australian way”. Maybe Crean knows something the rest of us do not. Every country needs to continually engage the issues around national identity. But where is the debate here? Instead, we have feigned outrage by Howard last week when he said:

“Waltzing Matilda is deeply evocative of Australian culture.”

Of which Australians does he speak? The boat people who came here in the 1970s? The indigenous population still suffering Third World diseases in a First World nation? The tens of thousands of English backpackers who overstay their visa here every year? The Hanson supporters feeling threatened by Asian immigration? Or perhaps the ABC “luvvies” who defend the right of Stephen Crittenden to speak his mind on religious matters?

Australia is a broad church, and for this we should be thankful. However, we should be under no illusions that Australianness has even come close to being defined.

In an article just before the last federal election, The Guardian’s Patrick Barkham wrote about the mood enveloping this country in Refugee issues dominate debate. It’s an outsider’s opinion, but a powerful reminder of the urgent need to continue our search for a greater understanding of what it means to be Australian:

Anti-Islamic sentiments are thriving. Many see multiculturalism as a dirty word, the breeding ground for terrorist sleepers who, some appear to fear, are poised to bomb the Opera House such was the depravity of their “unAustralian” Islamic upbringing in the deprived western suburbs of Sydney.

 

Smell the flowers. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

A couple of weeks ago, I visited the detention centre in Port Hedland and met some of the people there. Like many Webdiary readers, I’ve been kept informed of the plight of those held there through numerous e-mails, faxes, letters and the occasional media report. I have learned from those detained, and their friends and supporters, of the grinding monotony and hopelessness which is their daily bread. I thought I had at least an elementary understanding of how distressing such prolonged incarceration might be, especially to those who had already experienced persecution and torture.

 

But I was not prepared for what I saw when I finally set foot behind the barbed wire that contains the asylum seekers’ lives. While they have valiantly tried to make the incarceration more tolerable by painting murals and flags on the outside walls, by planting gardens and decorating their airless rooms, nothing can disguise the palpable air of despair.

Their lives are controlled by the dictates of others; every move in the compound is monitored and their transition from one section to another controlled by the ACM guards, to whom there are polite and deferential.

I spoke with mothers fretful and tearful about their bleak prospects but struggling to maintain a facade of optimism and cheerfulness in the presence of their children. The Iranian men I had arranged to meet all faced imminent deportation under the MOU signed by the Australian government with the regime still described as part of the “Axis of Evil”. They were subdued but firm that they would not accept the government’s “package” and return to Iran. I will never forget the hurt in their eyes, their despondency; strung between never ending internment here and certain punishment if there are returned to Iran.

I have never felt so totally useless. I could offer them no real hope that the government could be persuaded to change the decision to forcibly expel them from Australia. They begged me to urge the Minister at least to assist them to gain asylum in some third country more willing than Australia to help them rebuild their lives. They were as one in insisting that they cannot go back to Iran – one said that it wouldn’t matter if he was offered $200,000 instead of $2000; he would not go back because his life is forfeit if he does.

The government, of course, has made it quite clear that they will take no responsibility for the fate of those sent back once they step off the plane in Teheran. In reply to a Question on Notice, Ruddock said:

The Australian Government… respects the principles of state sovereignty and does not monitor non-Australian citizens in foreign countries.

In The Age last week, Russell Skelton revealed that inquiries in Tehran confirmed that “returning Iranians who fled the country illegally are automatically charged with immigration offences and interrogated at length”. He also confirmed what many of those in Port Hedland already know – that returnees are often held for several days at airport detention cells where they are interrogated and that political and religious dissidents face further investigation and possible charges in religious courts. They also know that many are beaten, tortured and executed.

Some of the Afghani Hazaras living in Albany in Western Australia who fled the mother-robbed, fanatical Taliban have just learned that they face a similarly uncertain future – they are to be sent back to Afghanistan, the first of the Afghan refugees to learn their fate. They were previously recognised as genuine refugees and granted Temporary Protection Visas when they arrived in Australia over three years ago. Many were the victims of persecution simply because they belong to a racial minority.

The minister’s decision to revoke their refugee status and send them back flies in the face of international law and the worsening situation in Afghanistan; the government is ignoring repeated warnings – and evidence – that the Taliban are again in control of a number of areas of the country. The UNHCR and Amnesty International have both been urging countries not to send refugees back. It is would be particularly dangerous for this group of Hazara Afghans to be sent back, since they have been persecuted by successive regimes, including the Taliban Regime, and are still targeted by groups associated with the Taliban. One man told DIMIA his family reported being visited by known associates of the Taliban warning they know he is coming back. DIMIA have refused to accept this information as valid unless he provides their names, something he clearly cannot do.

Last weekend the Minister also ordered a number of Iranian refugees to be forcibly deported to Iran, against the advice of Human Rights groups. One of these men was intercepted at the UAE by Iranian Intelligence agents and is yet to be heard from. There are other confirmed cases of people being held in the notorious Evin prison on their return to Iran. It is unspeakable that Minister Ruddock can knowingly send these people back to fate of poverty and certain persecution, and is contrary to the spirit of the Refugee Convention.

I saw the chilling realisation of their fears in Port Hedland in the form of the refurbished Juliet block, the notorious isolation block used in the past to subdue the dissenters, the angry and distressed. No expense has been spared in transforming Juliet block into a maximum-security prison within a prison. The majority of the thirty plus cells are identical with cells normally reserved in the prison system for the most serious offenders. They are complete with massive, soundproof doors, peepholes, toilets and video surveillance and have been designed to eliminate hanging points. Family units on the upper floor invalidate the claim that the centre is simply for managing people threatening self-harm.

I think it is likely that these cells have been built to house those who are to be forcibly returned to Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. I believe those to be deported will be separated from the larger compound (transported from other centres) and held in the prison cells until they are forced to board flights to their countries of origin, places they fled in terror. The Minister has already confirmed that those Iranians who refuse to leave peacefully will be handcuffed, removed by force and escorted back to Iran, where they will be handed to police and immigration authorities.

This is unspeakable cruelty. And many of our fellow citizens find it just.

 

Red star gazing. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

Hanson’s experience shows the forces that will rise up against true grassroots participation in our political process, writes Tim Dunlop. Whether it is snobby put downs of her wide-ranging ignorance or more concerted efforts of legal attack, there is a powerful network of vested interests who have no interest at all in advancing the cause of democratic participation.

No-one who takes the idea of democracy seriously, who believes that ordinary citizens should be involved in political decision making at all levels, who believes in participatory democracy and who believes that societal ends are a work in permanent progress to be contributed to endlessly by people from every stratum of society can have anything but admiration for Pauline Hanson’s intervention in Australian politics.

She did exactly what the theory said she should do – take herself out of her comfort zone and try and have an influence on matters social and political.

In so doing, she put paid to the pernicious idea that “ordinary punters” are not interested in politics, the self-serving mantra pedalled by the media and the political elite that “ordinary Australians” are disengaged and apathetic. She formed a party, she held rallies, gave speeches – in short, she built it and they came. Her demise should be a concern to all of us.

I disagreed with nearly everything she said and with the broad thrust of her politics. I abhorred her xenophobia, her authoritarianism, and her glib contempt for expertise. But in a sense, so what? My views on her actual politics should be easily separable from my views on her worth as an engaged citizen, just as my feelings about the righteousness of her current gaol term should be separable from my views about her political fate.

I certainly do not buy into the Pauline-as-martyr nonsense that has circulated since her imprisonment, but it is still true that she presented a risk to an entrenched power-base within Australian politics and that she quite simply had to be taken down, one way or another. So while eschewing the conspiracy-theory option, we would just be plain bloody naive not to recognise that the sort of impact she was able to have as a complete outsider was a threat to a system that prefers to work through anti-democratic and semi-secretive intra-governmental organisations and mechanisms like COAG, the Council of Australian Governments (seeNational policy issues are being debated in atmosphere of secrecy).

Both left and right pilloried her accent, made fun of her ignorance and, from the national media through to the national parliament, did everything in their not insubstantial power to make her a laughing stock. Some of this was based on a genuine and justified contempt for her policy prescriptions, but too much was generated by revulsion of her person and the strata of Australian society to which she appealed.

As we all know, such attacks, for a while anyway, merely added to her allure amongst what we might call her constituency. People easily recognised the mob picking on the outsider and rallied, literally, to her support. And Hanson’s allure – for a while she was the most potent force in Australian politics since Bob Hawke’s star was ascendant – was not based, as many sneeringly suggested, on an appeal to the so-called latent racism in the Australian population at large. That was always just a convenient scapegoat for a political elite, left and right, who had simply lost touch with, and didn’t particularly like, the vast majority of those they purported to represent.

Her appeal was simply that she represented something authentic in a culture of artifact. She was transparent in an era during which the political class have become expert at concealment. She was a stillpoint in a culture of spin.

This was brought home to me at university where I had given a lecture on political rhetoric and had taken the opportunity to make fun, in passing, of Hanson and her unacademic grasp of key political issues. Thought I was pretty funny too. After the class, a student came to my office and complained that I’d been unfair to Hanson and that I should smarten up. It was the fact that student was Aboriginal that pulled me up short.

“Why the hell are you defending Hanson after what she’s said about Aborigines?” I asked, or words to that affect.

“You don’t get it, do you?”, the woman said, and she was right.

Of course, Hanson’s greatest strength, her lack of guile, was also her greatest weakness. She fell prey to seasoned opportunists like John Pasquarelli and the two Davids and ultimately to politics-as-she-is-really-fought in the form of John Howard and the Liberal Party for whom she was once an endorsed candidate.

We can see now that even while he was riding her populist coat-tails, the Prime Minister’s ideological bovver boys, the likes of Tony Abbott, were seriously plotting her demise. While the PM was making mileage out the “end of political correctness” and was implicitly taking credit for giving voice to “the battlers” who had been oppressed for so long under the yolk of Labor-led “elites” (one of the great misnomers of our recent political history), constructing a rhetoric of populism and involvement built on his own faux-credentials as a man of the people, members of his own party and circle were hell-bent on crushing the real McCoy. He gave her enough rope to hang herself which also happened to be enough rope for an inept Opposition to tie itself in knots it is still trying to undo.

The nature of Hanson’s appeal was that it bled votes from the conservative end of the traditional parties and she therefore had to be stopped, no matter where she fitted in the anti-pantheon of Howard’s carefully manufactured battlerdom.

Of course Hanson made mistakes and was in many ways her own worst enemy. I still abhor the broad thrust of her opinions, (though I suspect she herself learnt a lot during her time in politics and might no longer be capable of easy platitudes of her infamous first speech to parliament).

I have no problem with her incarceration. I think there is a lot of truth in Mark Latham’s comment that many of those demanding leniency for Hanson (including Hanson herself) have been less than willing to consider mitigating factors in other sentencing decisions, and perhaps it will make such law-and-order zealots a little more mindful about the quality of mercy. Besides, as Graham Young has pointed out, there isn’t even anything particularly harsh or unprecedented about her sentence.

And yet, her experience shows the forces that will rise up against true grassroots participation in our political process. Whether it is snobby put downs of her wide-ranging ignorance or more concerted efforts of legal attack, there is a powerful network of vested interests who have no interest at all in advancing the cause of democratic participation. There are many who are positively scared of it and many who are repulsed by it.

So, for all her failings, at some level she advanced our politics even if it was only to the extent of showing us what we might be up against if we choose to get involved as she did. Maybe others will learn from her mistakes.

In short, if you take the idea of genuine participatory democracy seriously then you simply have to take Hanson seriously. And her fate (by which I don’t mean her current gaol term) at the hands of the political class should give everyone who harbours any commitment to genuine grass-roots politics serious pause. At that level at least we should be appalled at how she was treated.

And geez, wouldn’t it be nice if the “next Pauline Hanson” was of the left?

This piece was first published at roadtosurfdom, the weblog of former Webdiarist Dr Tim Dunlop, who did his doctorate on the role of the public intellectual in democratic debate. Tim’s most influential Webdiary piece was Pull the udder one, which disproved the economic rationalist public case for dairy deregulation.

John Howard is rewriting history in a desperate bid to regain control of the political agenda. He’s lying – yet again – to do it.

John Howard pandered to Hanson and her supporters in public while simultaneously endorsing a high-powered, big-money, clandestine Liberal Party campaign to destroy her party through the legal system. The exposure of his duplicity to the masses since her jailing threatens to swamp the perception with the reality. And that could mean the disintegration of the unusual constituency he has so painstakingly weaved together to blitz Australian politics.

From the moment of his historic third term win, he’s appeared younger, smoother, softer, stiller. A statesman, comfortable in his skin, basking in his popularity and the collapse of his opposition. He brushes inconvenient questions away like flies, and journalists feel it’s inappropriate to push hard. He deserves respect. He commands it.

Last night’s footage of Howard’s AM interview post The 7.30 Report Abbott debacle showed a frowning, hectoring, aggressive John Howard facing a reporter willing to persist in asking the questions he evades. The delicacy of his position means that every tactic he employs has a downside. All of a sudden the public want journalists to get the truth out of him, and the public backs them when they push Howard hard.

Here’s extracts from the AM interview yesterday, where Catherine McGrath tries to pin Howard down on just how close he was to Abbott’s plot to destroy One Nation and exactly when he knew about it. Before that, an extract of a doorstop interview he gave last Friday where he denied ANY knowledge of the covert legal sting. This transcript, alone of all Howard’s transcripts since the Hanson sentence, does not appear on the Prime Minister’s website:

Q: What about the allegation that the Liberal Party may have … bankrolled the campaign against Pauline Hanson?

PM: I’m not aware of the basis of that allegation. I’m sorry.

Q:Does the Liberal Party have anything…

PM: The Liberal Party to my knowledge, and bear in mind there’s a lot of people that represent the Liberal Party, but I’m not aware of anything of that kind…

 

EXTRACT OF ‘AM’ INTERVIEW, THURSDAY, AUGUST 28:

McGrath: After Howard has persistently avoided the question … Can I ask you though, going back to that initial question – Tony Abbott (in 1998) said the juggernaut should be stopped. Did you think that too?

PM: Well I thought One Nation should be exposed politically. I believe that it was perfectly legitimate to pursue a belief, as Tony did, that there was something improper or invalid about the partys registration. But that was in no way the prosecution for a criminal offence of Pauline Hanson.

(after more avoidance)

McGrath: So can I ask you though – if you thought back then that One Nation should be exposed politically, when you read it in the media in late 1998 that Tony Abbott had set this up and when he disclosed it formally to you, what did you think? Did you think, oh good on you Tony, that’s the way to go?

PM: Well I knew that he was pursuing it but –

McGrath: What did you think about it?

PM: Well Catherine I had a lot of things to think about then. I was trying to remake Australia’s taxation system. I was trying to make sure that we weathered the onslaught of the Asian economic crisis. I was worried about jobs for people and I was worried about a burgeoning difficulty in East Timor with Indonesia. I think it was the end of 1998 that I may have written a now famous letter to the then President Habibie. So I had a lot of other things on my mind. I mean, let’s keep a sense of perspective. This wasn’t the most important thing on my radar.

McGrath: No, I’m not suggesting it was. I guess I’m just giving you an opportunity to explain to our audience who’d probably like to know, did you think ‘Good on you Tony?’

PM: Well look Catherine, Tony was pursuing this. I was broadly aware of what he was doing. It was in the papers. And for the Labor Party or anybody in the media now to turn around and say that this is a dramatic new revelation that demands explanation, I mean that isse the vernacular, give us a break.

McGrath: Well I’m trying to focus in on you really rather than Mr Abbott.

PM: Yes I gathered that. I’m quite aware of that.

McGrath: I guess people would like to know what you thought that this was really going to … you know, for example Peter Coleman (Honesty in Politics trustee, Peter Costello’s father-in-law, Liberal party elder) says this morning that one of the problems was that the more you argued against One Nation, the stronger they became and the backlash was very strong. So fighting them this way could really do them some damage.

PM: Well Catherine, in fact one of the criticisms that was made of me at the time was that I didn’t attack them enough. One of the reasons I didnt attack them a lot was precisely that, and I think the judgement and the vindication of time and history is that that approach was correct. But I recognise that there are a lot of people in the community and amongst the [inaudible] who didn’t agree with me and criticised me for it and held it against me, and so I think there was a range of views even in my own party as to how to deal with this. It was an important issue historically and both now. A range of people in my own party may have disagreed. But that only underlines the fact of how hypocritical it is for people to now turn around and in effect say you attacked them too much. I mean you can’t have it both ways, can you? (Margo: No you can’t, John.)

McGrath: And further to that, you explaining that you stood back a little bit for that reason, did you also –

PM: No, stood back is your words. I just stand by what I described as my reaction.

McGrath: Yes. But did you also to some extent feel this action, this involvement of Tony Abbott will have some effect as well?

PM: Look Catherine, its five years ago. I had a lot of –

McGrath: But you must have had a thought about that.

PM: A lot of thoughts, and I’ve given you a lot of them. Let’s move on to something else.

***

Indeed. He had a lot of other things on his mind at the time, did he? The record shows that the One Nation threat was at the top of his political agenda – the very top. He considered it crucial to his government retaining power at the 1998 federal election. It is blindingly obvious reviewing the record that Howard chose a two pronged strategy – love her in public, destroy her through frontpeople in the Courts. As the biggest threat to his reelection, he must have known and approved Abbott’s strategy from the very beginning. And that’s why he’s desperate to fudge the timing and refuses to discuss his involvement.

THE RECORD

During the 1996 federal election Howard expelled Liberal candidate Hanson for not withdrawing racist remarks. Six months later, 12 days after her famous maiden speech, he told a Liberal gathering:

One of the great changes that have come over Australia in the last six months is that people do feel able to speak a little more freely and openly about how they feel. In a sense, a pall of censorship on certain issues has been lifted … I welcome the fact that people can now talk about certain things without living in fear of being branded as a bigot or a racist.

I in November that year, amid strong criticism that Howard was not arguing the policy case against Hanson, Abbott wrote in The Australian:

If Howard were to answer Hanson point-to-point – rather than just repudiate her views – he would be further elevating a maiden speech that was a mixture of error, exaggeration and truism… Howard’s approach of “I disagree with what she says, but I’m happy to defend her right to say it” and “hate the sin but not the sinner” sits ill with journalism’s tendency to reduce everything to the simplicities of a 1950s western where goodies and baddies can be identified by the colour of their hats.

One Nation was established in 1997. Neither Howard or Abbott were interested in its structure that year or the first half of the next, let alone queried its legality. Howard’s strategy was to contain the One Nation threat – and turn it to his political advantage – by sympathising with Hanson supporters and preferencing One Nation above Labor. He told his partyroom he’d prefer working with One Nation in the Senate to working with the Democrats.

The first half of 1998 was dominated by the Wik debate. Howard threatened to call a double dissolution race election on Wik if the Senate again rejected his ten point plan – which it did in April. Hanson exploited the turmoil by promising to abolish native title. The Queensland National and Liberals decided to preference One Nation at the pending state election.The result – on June 13, 1998 – changed everything. My book Off the rails, records:

One Nation’s Queensland election result greatly exceeded poll predictions and rocked the nation. One Nation attracted a whopping 23 percent of the vote and won eleven seats with the help of National Party preferences. Labor picked up Liberal seats in Brisbane partly due to voter’s disgust with their party preferencing One Nation.

One Nation’s federal support ballooned instantly, and the political establishment was on fire with panic. If Howard called a double dissolution election, the prospect loomed of One Nation snatching a swag of Senate seats at the National Party’s expense and gaining the Senate balance of power. In the rural NSW seat of Gwydir, held by deputy National Party leader and Primary Industry Minister John Anderson, private party polling showed an incredible 49 percent of voters intended to vote One Nation.

Within days John Howard rushed into action. He backflipped on preferences, now pushing for the Liberals to put One Nation last in the impending federal election, and began talks with independent Senator Brian Harradine to reach a compromise on Wik, after having pledged never to amend his ten-point plan. He flew to the Queensland federal National Party seat of Wide Bay, where all three state seats including Maryborough had fallen to One Nation, to be met with antagonism at public meetings and a line-up on new One Nation MPs.

I travelled with Howard on that trip, and he was consistently sympathetic to the One Nation voters who packed his public meetings. He sought to soothe, to explain, to convince. He then flew back to Canberra and backed down on Brian Harradine’s four sticking points on Wik, thus eliminating native title as an election issue for Hanson.

Tony Abbott described the Liberal Party’s post-Queensland strategy switch in the book Two Nations: The causes and effects of the rise of the One Nation Party in Australia (Bookman, 1998), in which commentators including myself wrote essays analysing the Queensland result:

The Queensland pattern suggests that a strong One Nation vote presents the Coalition with two alternatives: conceding government to Labor (by directing preferences against One Nation); or creating a credible rival for the conservative vote (by putting Labor last)…

Obviously, rather than take a high One Nation vote for granted, the only viable Coalition strategy is to find ways of undermining support for the Hansonites. This is no easy matter, given the general fascination with what many still find hard to take more seriously than a political freak show, plus One Nation’s ability to excuse even the most bizarre revelations as beat-ups by the limp-wristed leftie press.

The Coalition could have argued the case, of course – as Jeff Kennett did. It could have softened its treatment of the Hanson underclass, or made more generous transition arrangements for people in dying towns. But Howard wanted to publicly woo the disaffected – and turn them away from Labor – through pandering to prejudices, while destroying One Nation on the quiet.

Within three weeks of the Queensland election, on July 1, Abbott began a parliamentary attack on the structure of one Nation, and really got stuck into it on July 2 (see australianpolitics). His immediate concern was crystal clear – that One Nation would get money in the bank for the first time through public funding. He wanted to stop the money flow so it would be less able to fight the federal election:

One of the key questions is the fate of the $500,000 worth of taxpayers’ money to which it has always been assumed One Nation is entitled in the wake of the Queensland election result. To receive public funding, a party must be registered under the relevant act. …

On July 7, less than a month after the Queensland result, Abbott was in the Brisbane offices of solicitors Minter Ellison with Terry Sharples nutting out a legal subsidy – lawyers supplied for free, out-of-pocket legal expenses guaranteed – for Sharples’ civil case to deregister One Nation. According to Sharples, Abbott said the Liberal connection needed to be kept secret. Important enough, as it turned out, to tell a bare faced lie to Four Corners when it interviewed him on July 31, and to lie again to the Sydney Morning Herald in 2000. He told the truth only when the Herald produced a signed guarantee:

That agreement, a copy of which has been obtained by the Herald, was handwritten by Abbott and promised “my personal guarantee that you will not be further out-of-pocket as a result of this action”. It was witnessed and dated July 11, 1998. (See Tony Abbott’s dirty Hanson trick – and he lied about it, of course)

Note that Abbott omitted to disclose his plot in his book chapter.

Why the need for secrecy? Pretty obvious really. How could Howard woo One Nation voters to preference the Liberals and Nationals above Labor if they knew his Party was soliciting disaffected One Nation members to launch legal action against the Party with the promise of legal funding? The two positions don’t mesh. They are irreconcilable.

According to Abbott on The 7.30 Report, the Sharples arrangement fell apart soon after the Four Corners interview in which he lied about it, and in less than a month he’d set up his Australians for Honest Politics Trust to talk former Hanson staffer Barbara Hazelton into launching legal action against One Nation.

So where does that leave Howard and Abbott? With widespread public outrage across political lines at Hanson’s treatment by the system in comparison to its treatment of sophisticated, moneyed dirty operators like Howard, Abbott and co, they’re in a tight spot. We’re seeing delicately spun spin unravelling under the pressure of its own contradictions. Everytime Howard comes up with a line to back Abbott and distance himself, he proves the case against them both. Mark Twain once said that you never had to remember what you said if you always told the truth.

For example, Howard and Abbott claim Hanson’s jail sentence was too severe. In other words, the party was evil enough to destroy by fair means or foul, yet Hanson didn’t do anything really wrong. Last Friday on Neil Mitchell’s 3AW radio program, Howard even said he disagreed with the party registration requirements which brought Hanson down:

And you’re dealing here with the breach of a law which is not based on something which is naturally a crime. I mean, we have created the offences of because we’ve created a law which requires the registration of political parties – years ago we didn’t require that in this country but I cant really comment on whether the conviction was justified. You’d have to have sat through the hearing. And Im not really making an observation on that. But if you ask me, like many other people, I find the sentence certainly very long and very severe…

Can I talk generally about the issue of registering political parties? Can I just put aside her individual circumstances? I’ve always had some reservations about whether the requirement that you register political parties as justified as necessary, but we’re stuck with it now and I’m not suggesting for a moment that it be changed. And because we have public funding of political parties, there has to be proper accountability in relation to that. But some people would see the law as being somewhat technical because after all people who donated to her political movement were donating to support a particular cause, and they probably felt that they were supporting that cause rather than a particular formal expression of that cause. (transcript)

Tony Abbott’s self-righteous steam and fury at One Nation’s structure was a sham. And so is John Howard.

John Howard hasn’t just appropriated Pauline Hanson’s policies to stay in power. Remember the signature photo of Hanson wrapped in the Australian flag? Howard’s done the same on the frontpage of his website.

So, what does a man who’s suddenly lost control of the Australia he so dominates do to get on the front foot? After a bad day defending the indefensible Abbott, and some bad trade figures, what better way of reminding the Australian people why they love him, deep down, than to defend Waltzing Matilda?

But you don’t want feral reporters asking about your trials and tribulations, so your spin doctor, Tony O’Leary, calls Channel Seven at about 3.45pm and announces it’s been chosen – as the official rugby network – to come on down to the PM’s office to hear him proselytise for a minute on the song. No-one else is to be told, no other subject is to be raised, and Seven has to give the footage to other media. Hey presto – you’re on all the newses defending our culture and YOU’RE in control. Phew.

Still, it’s all a bit fraught. Howard actually urged Australians to defy the rules of the Rugby people, sort of like One Nation supporters did to the big-party cartel. “I pose the question, how are they going to stop it being sung? You try and stop 82,000 Australians singing Waltzing Matilda, you’ll only make their night.” (full transcript)

Hmmm. Funny thing to say, really, when you’ve spent days defending your parties’ big-money machine abuse of the legal system to stop One Nation and its supporters singing their tune..

Waltzing Matilda is about a battler who’d rather die than be incarcerated by the rich and powerful pastoralists and their enforcers. How would that go today? The squatter (Abbott, rich backers’ gold in pocket) sends another swagman to the billabong to trick our hero into taking a walk, the rat hands our hero to the cops, he’s paid off and our hero goes to jail?

Waltzing Matilda

Banjo Paterson, c. 1890

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong

Under the shade of a coolibah tree

And he sang as he watched and waited ’til his billy boiled

You’ll come a-waltzing matilda with me

Waltzing matilda, waltzing matilda You’ll come a waltzing matilda with me

And he sang as he watched and waited ’til his billy boiled

You’ll come a-waltzing matilda with me

Down came a jumbuck to dri-ink at that billabong

Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee

And he sang as he stuffed that jumbuck in his tucker-bag

You’ll come a-waltzing matilda with me

Waltzing matilda, waltzing matilda You’ll come a waltzing matilda with me

And he sang as he stuffed that jumbuck in his tucker-bag

You’ll come a-waltzing matilda with me

Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred

Up rode the troopers, one, two, three

“Where’s that jolly jumbuck you’ve got in your tucker-bag?”

You’ll come a-waltzing matilda with me

Waltzing matilda, waltzing matilda You’ll come a waltzing matilda with me

 

Where’s that jolly jumbuck you’ve got in your tucker-bag?”

You’ll come a-waltzing matilda with me

Up jumped the swagman and sprang into that billabong

“You’ll never take me alive!”, said he

And his ghost may be heard as you pa-ass by that billabong

You’ll come a-waltzing matilda with me

A New Millennium Master Class in television political interviewing, by Kerry Green Pen’ O’Brien and our ABC. Excerpts from last night’s 7.30 Report contribution to the Australian Public’s new millennium defence of our secular liberal democracy. My comments in bold.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Tony Abbott, when you established the slush fund to get Pauline Hanson politically, you called it Australians for Honest Politics. Was that some kind of a joke, a bad joke?

A typically ‘biased’ anti-Howard ABC start? Absolutely not. Read the letters pages. Listen to talkback radio. Read Fairfax’s online ‘Your Say’ comments regarding the name: ‘Australians for Honest Politics’. O’Brien – paid by the PUBLIC – is simply given PUBLIC proxy-voice to the common response of millions of wryly-gobsmacked Australians of all stripes. To start with, this dig (to the man who set up the trust and coined the name) is not remotely biased. It’s pure observation. It’s also funny.

TONY ABBOTT, EMPLOYMENT & WORKPLACE RELATIONS MINISTER: Of course it wasn’t and it wasn’t a slush fund. Here’s the Macquarie definition of ‘slush fund’: ‘A fund for use in campaign propaganda or the like, esp. secretly or illicitly, as in bribery.’ ABC bias or apt description? You decide. It had three trustees – myself, two other distinguished Australians, one, Peter Coleman –

KERRY O’BRIEN: You count yourself as a distinguished Australian?

Masterly journalistic footwork; instinctive Australian larrikanism at its fertile best, too. In seven timely and laser-guided words, O’Brien has got right to the heart of the Hanson-to-Liberal voter switcheroo of the last few years. Politicians like Abbott, being mainstream, get away with so much more than fringe-dwellers like One Nation simply by dint of the presumed respectability that comes with main party status. O’Brien isn’t copping it. But not out of ideological spite (that is, not as a matter of bias); instead, he allows Abbott the fair chance to hang himself, to make fully explicit at last, entirely of his own volition, the way in which that fundamental Australian assumption about Liberal (and ALP) politics has been so powerfully exploited by this in fact very radical government. Seven cheeky words getting right at the meat of Howardism’s success. Thank God for instinctive Australian tall-poppy lopping and scepticism, I say.

TONY ABBOTT: Well, it had two distinguished Australians – Peter Coleman, former federal member for the Liberal Party, and John Wheeldon, who was a minister in the Whitlam Government – as its trustees and we had a perfectly honourable intention to fund legal actions to challenge the validity of the registration of the One Nation Party in Queensland. Nothing wrong with that. And ultimately a Supreme Court decision in Queensland vindicated the position we had.

O’Brien has deftly got Abbott to place the lying triple core of his own Hanson hypocrisy AND the fundamentally dishonest inner-workings of John Howard’s version of the ‘political mainstream’ on full display. One – my trust fund included the mainstream respectable anti-Hansonite Righty Peter Coleman! cries Tony. Read Coleman’s transparent attempt in today’s Australian Op-Ed pages to flesh out the thrust of his involvement: that the ‘distinguished’ Liberal Party was simply trying to be perfectly honourable and counter the socially divisive rise of Hansonism all along. Rather than the dirty truth, which is of course that they wanted to knee-cap her in private while simultaneously dog-whistling her voters into their camp, by publicly indulging their nastier whinges and adopting some of her more superficial policies. Though certainly not her flailing anti-globe economic ones, which of course Libs like Abbott (and Lib-benefactors like Dick Honan) are never going to ditch, even though these are what truly drives Hansonism.

Two – my trust fund included the mainstream respectable anti-Hansonite Lefty John Wheeldon! cries Tony. With monstrous gall he even squeezes in dear old Gough’s name, in the usual pre-emptive attempt to neutralise any objections from mainstream Lefties; the Federal ALP, say. (Margo: Wheeldon is now a right-winger linked to radical-conservative magazine Quadrant.)

Three – Abbott laughably invokes the third in his triumvirate of sanctifying political respectability: that bastion of the Oz civic mainstream, which his Liberal Party of course positively despises and which Bishop and Howard and even he himself (in the very same breath!) undermine with their public comments querying the sentence, anyway – those pesky old ‘separation of powers’ Courts.

These three dishonest appeals to the ‘mainstream’ in Abbott’s answer (the Liberal, Labor and Legal establishments), so beautifully teased out by one tart comment from O’Brien, are all critical components of what is the broader Liberal Party defensive move now: trying to cover their grubby tracks by resort to what Abbott (Liberal MP and Minister of the Crown) thinks is still his automatic right to presumptions of political distinguished-ness. This is the core factor in understanding the enduring mainstream electoral tolerance of John Howard’s government of opportunist grubs, even after its embrace of many hitherto fringe-dweller policies. If Hanson The Ratbag says: Turn the boats around by force! she’s a socially divisive fringe-dweller. When Howard The Distinguished Lib deploys the ADF and does just that, why, he’s simply responding sensibly to legitimate mainstream concerns. When Hanson The Ratbag cries: Stuff land rights and bugger the Wog Boat People! she’s a racist. When Howard The Respectable Lib tears Wik to bits and shouts kids overboard, he’s sensibly preferring to focus on practical reconciliation, or voicing mainstream concerns about uncontrolled immigration. It’s all a matter of language and tone and context, isn’t it. Hanson The Ratbag spruiking from the back of a ute in Longreach is a divisive fringe threat to mainstream social cohesion. Howard The Distinguished Lib orating at the Sydney Institute is relaxed and comfortable, reaching out to the respectable Australian mainstream.

The things you can get away with when you wear a nice shiny suit and talk posh, eh?

Except that Kerry O’Brien, with that one superb interjection, coldly reminds Abbott that he and his Party are suddenly, on matters Hanson, as suitlessly, stark-bollocky naked as the wriggling little grubs they have long been. That in the end all the retrospective ‘noice’ talk is just so much self-deluding bullshit. That ultimately, it’s what you’ve DONE (to the country) in your time at the helm, the policies you’ve embraced, that will determine your historical place on the political spectrum. The Libs know it, and a whole lot of the younger, slightly-wetter and more idealistic types who still have long careers ahead of them, are starting to wonder just what Hard-Right Social Policy life might turn out to be like, once Howard himself has triumphantly retired, taking his sanitising sheen with him. Phil Ruddock going to court to KEEP five-year-olds in detention? Our black-clad SAS lads terrifying refugees FROM Saddam? Remove the wholly-manufactured political fiction that is dear, reassuring Mainstream Honest John himself, and it all looks rather excessive, nasty and un-Australian, doesn’t it. Could it be that Howardism without Howard will turn out to be just a little bit rat-bag fringe-ish, a tad mainstream voter-lonely? Yikes! Man the retrospective ‘respectable’ battle-stations, Tony Abbott and the Oik Exploiters Team!

KERRY O’BRIEN: There are a lot of people out there right now who would believe that you’re anything but honest in the way you’ve explained all this.

Watch now as Tony tries to stitch his shredded suit back together.

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I think that I can live with my conscience. (Read: Trust me, mainstream Australia – I’m still The Honourable Member! Honest!) I think it was very important to challenge the Hanson juggernaut back then in 1998. (Read: Trust me, small-l Boomer Liberals and mainstream Boomer Whitlamites: I was on your bleeding heart side all along! Kennett said we should challenge the Hanson juggernaut, too – in public. Like honest gutsy leaders would.) The difference is, Kerry, that a lot of people who were angry with her then feel sorry for her now, and I suppose I do myself, because I think that there’s a sense in which the punishment meted out to her doesn’t really fit the crime, but certainly, at the time, the reality of her so-called party needed to be exposed and I was happy to try to do it. (Read: But if we Libs had done it Jeff’s way and approached Hansonism honestly and healthily in cooling, defusing public debate – that is, if we’d GENUINELY ‘exposed the reality of her party’ IE to open debate – well, her supporters just wouldn’t have voted for us, would they!? And unless we can continue to maintain our hypocritical duality on poor/nasty, hard-done-by/socially-divisive Pauline Hanson now, as I’ve just tried to do here, then they won’t vote for us tomorrow! Certainly not now they’ve found out that the Oik Exploiters Team was nutting her all along!)

KERRY O’BRIEN: We know you established that fund to use Terry Sharples as a stalking horse in 1998.

TONY ABBOTT: No, that’s not right. Stalking Horse: Macquarie definition 2: “Anything put forward to mask plans or efforts; a pretext.” Alstonian biased language, or acute linguistic precision? You decide.

KERRY O’BRIEN: No?

TONY ABBOTT: No. I had dealt with Terry Sharples – I had dealt with Terry Sharples because he was the person who initially was going to bring this legal case to stop Des O’Shea from providing that money to One Nation. Terry Sharples and I came to a parting of the ways and it was after that parting of the ways that I set up the Australians for Honest Politics trust.

KERRY O’BRIEN: But it’s not the first time you talked about money with Terry Sharples?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I promised that Terry Sharples would not be out of pocket.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Hmm. Well, just on this issue, let’s briefly flash back to the interview you did with Tony Jones on Four Corners which went to air on August 10. You did that interview, I’m told, on July 31, ’98, where you denied any knowledge of any sort of fund for Terry Sharples. We’ll just have a quick look.

In a small stroke of production genius – 7.30 Report supervising producers are Clay Hichens and Phil Kwok – we’re treated to an inset box monitoring Abbott’s death-roll expression, as he is hoist slowly on the petard of his own rank historical lies. A grand use of real-time technology to help give us, the Public, a better chance of grasping the Public Truth. Pictures tell a lot of stories, and for us to be able to watch Abbott’s facial contortions in the next few seconds, which represent a veritable War and Peace of duplicity and deceit, is fabulously civically-inclusive. Abbott’s discomfort? Well, it’s as if we’re rubbernecking on a younger Tony being caught red-handed behind the bike-shed with a dirty magazine by some bruiser Jesuit Brother.

*

TONY JONES: So there was never any question of any party funds –

TONY ABBOTT: Absolutely not.

Oh dear me. I bet John Howard – Master Obfuscator – has nightmares about that answer for years. Chortle.

TONY JONES: Or other funds from any other source –

TONY ABBOTT: Absolutely not.

I believe the appropriate Spin Doctor post-mortem is: ‘Bugger’.

TONY JONES: Being offered to Terry Sharples?

TONY ABBOTT: Absolutely not.

Poor pious Tony, three times the denier. Perhaps he can find post-political career grace in a seminary? We segue back in on O’Brien, in very best icily-controlled killer mode now. And just how nail-gun precise is this next question – he knows he has to contemporaneously re-pin Abbott to this ‘ancient’ history for it to ‘matter’.

*

KERRY O’BRIEN: And you’re saying now that wasn’t a lie – not just Liberal Party funds but any other funds?

Check. Abbott’s got two choices: a) just admit that it was a lie back then and brazen it out, or b) try to waffle around it. You can imagine Howard’s spinners positively screaming at the TV at this point, urging him to cut his losses now. Abbott, like all arrogant cooked gooses, takes the fatal second option.

TONY ABBOTT: I had promised that he wouldn’t be out of pocket, but there’s a difference between telling someone he won’t be out of pocket and telling someone that you’re going to have to pay him money.

Check-mate, give or take a few days or weeks. It’s all over. Abbott’s just dug his political grave. O’Brien keeps handing him the tools: shovel, pick-axe, crow-bar…

KERRY O’BRIEN: What’s the difference? If you say to me, “Kerry, you won’t be out of pocket for this”, aren’t I entitled to assume that means you’re going to guarantee the funds for me?

TONY ABBOTT: But the thing was that it was an entirely contingent matter. Money would only have gone from a person who was willing to support this case to Sharples in what I thought was the then-unlikely event of a cost orders being made against him.

…dynamite, hammerdrill, bobcat…

KERRY O’BRIEN: Let’s just look at precisely the question that Tony Jones put to you in ’98. He said, “So there was never any question of any party funds –

TONY ABBOTT: Party funds.

KERRY O’BRIEN: “Or other funds?”.

TONY ABBOTT: Yes and as you’ll notice –

…excavator, steam-shovel, nuclear-powered diamond-driller…

KERRY O’BRIEN: And you didn’t lie in your response when you said, “Absolutely not, absolutely not.”?

Daffy old Tony Abbott seems to be on the way to bloody China!

TONY ABBOTT: And as you’ll notice, Kerry, he said “party funds”. I started to answer the question and I went on to answer the question, but strictly speaking no money at all was ever offered to Terry Sharples. Pro bono lawyers were arranged and someone had offered to stand a costs order, should a costs order be made, but, no, no money was ever offered to Terry Sharples.

It’s true that O’Brien is working with an apparently-willing feed man now, but his professional control and focus and precision is supreme. Watch this methodical filleting unfold now. It’s fantastic television journalism; a towering example of how this medium, in the hands of skilled and experienced professionals operating via a public broadcaster, can help pull down the contemporary firewalls separating the public from the powerful, giving us ALL a chance to see for ourselves the massive, self-serving self-delusions and polite fictions that people like Abbott sustain in their own (respectable, mainstream, pious!) consciences, such that their own dirty, amoral backroom machinations won’t cause them too many sleepness nights.

KERRY O’BRIEN: When you put out your statement last night explaining your position, you were at pains to say that your answer only applied to the first part of the question, that is to Liberal Party funds, but it didn’t apply to the second part of the question – “or other funds”.

TONY ABBOTT: And then I went on to say, strictly speaking no money at all was offered to Terry Sharples, and that’s correct.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Look, by your own admission now, you set up the fund –

TONY ABBOTT: Yes, after – well after –

KERRY O’BRIEN: ..for the Australians for Honest Politics Trust –

TONY ABBOTT: Well after that incident.

KERRY O’BRIEN: ..on August 24.

TONY ABBOTT: That’s correct.

KERRY O’BRIEN: On August 24, 25 days after the interview.

TONY ABBOTT: Yeah.

KERRY O’BRIEN: That’s not well after.

TONY ABBOTT: Well, it’s after.

KERRY O’BRIEN: It’s three weeks.

TONY ABBOTT: So I was supposed to say, Kerry –

KERRY O’BRIEN: But nothing was in train?

TONY ABBOTT: So I was supposed to say, “Oh, and by the way, Tony, in a few weeks time I’m going to set up a trust fund that is going to fund a different legal action”? Was I supposed to say that?

KERRY O’BRIEN: And you weren’t working on setting up that fund?

O’Brien’s hoping for a solid denial, because he knows that he and other journos can go on and check this out. He gets it. Another groan from the Spin Doctors, I’ll bet. Abbott’s toast – if there’s still such a thing as Public Truth, that is.

TONY ABBOTT: No, because at that point in time I believe I may still have had some kind of an involvement with Terry Sharples, but after the Sharples matter wasn’t going to progress anywhere, or certainly wasn’t going to progress anywhere with my assistance, I then thought, “Well, it is really important to regularise this whole thing”, and that’s why –

KERRY O’BRIEN: So in the space of three weeks you got around all these other people and organised and set up a trust fund in three weeks?

TONY ABBOTT: You’re amazed by that, are you?

KERRY O’BRIEN: I am.

TONY ABBOTT: Well, get real, Kerry.

KERRY O’BRIEN: But you did? You did all that in three weeks?

TONY ABBOTT: Yeah, yeah, sure. Sure.

KERRY O’BRIEN: It must have been really urgent.

TONY ABBOTT: Well, look, it was. Think back, Kerry, to that time. I mean, you were crying, as were so many other people, for someone to stop this terrible Hanson juggernaut.

KERRY O’BRIEN: I was asking questions. I wasn’t crying for anything.

The desperate Abbott having a go at him personally now, but O’Brien’s in masterly control. (‘I was asking questions.’ Priceless.)

TONY ABBOTT: If you go back, Kerry, to the parliamentary debate on 1 July, I think it was, of 1989 – 1998 – Labor speaker after Labor speaker were demanding, screaming, that the Government in general, but I in particular, do something to stop this terrible Hanson woman. Well, I did.

KERRY O’BRIEN: What we’re focusing on was whether you misled the people of Australia –

TONY ABBOTT: The ABC?

KERRY O’BRIEN: No, the public, the audience that watched the program.

Priceless. Absolutely priceless. We’re here, all right. We watched. Man, are we watching what you do now with Tony Abbott, Prime Minister.

TONY ABBOTT: And I believe that my answers were justified.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Well, Terry Sharples says you had a meeting with him and others on July 7, ’98, where you offered him $20,000 to cover his legal costs.

TONY ABBOTT: Well, see, I dispute that and I always have.

KERRY O’BRIEN: You did have the meeting though, didn’t you, on July 7?

TONY ABBOTT: Yes, so what? Big deal.

Take a shower, Tony? The last Liberal Party defence: public apathy. I s’pose it might work yet again.

KERRY O’BRIEN: And the question of costs didn’t come up?

TONY ABBOTT: Look, the question of how much it would cost, what would be the possible downside of a court case – sure, that came up.

KERRY O’BRIEN: So you did talk about costs with him and you talked about meeting the costs?

TONY ABBOTT: Yes, but there’s a difference between offering to pay someone money – offering to pay Terry Sharples money – and supporting a legal case.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Where were you going to get the money?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I’m not going to tell you that, Kerry.

KERRY O’BRIEN: When you offered him the money where were you going to get it from?

TONY ABBOTT: Kerry, I am not going to tell you that.

KERRY O’BRIEN: So you didn’t have a fund in mind?

TONY ABBOTT: No, I didn’t.

KERRY O’BRIEN: You didn’t have a fund in train?

TONY ABBOTT: No, I didn’t at that stage.

KERRY O’BRIEN: But you were confident that you would be able to find money for him, presumably not out of your own pocket?

TONY ABBOTT: Not for him not for him – but for an action, for a legal action.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Let’s not split hairs. Let’s not split hairs.

TONY ABBOTT: Well, let’s not.

KERRY O’BRIEN: It was to fund his action?

TONY ABBOTT: Yes, and there is a world of difference between funding an action or, at least, getting pro bono lawyers to act without charge and having someone who might stand a costs order in the contingency that a costs order might be made and offering him money. I did not offer him money.

KERRY O’BRIEN: And then you offered to underwrite effectively his costs in a legal action. That is money. Costs is money, isn’t it?

So where are we finally at? Well, O’Brien has coldly, relentlessly, irreversibly and brilliantly manoeuvred Abbott into that rock-and-a-hard-place where many of us, probably since about kids overboard, or maybe ‘never-ever GST’ times, or maybe even ironic ‘Honest John’ days, have wanted the Howard Government to be: publicly and unambiguously forced to argue that black is white and two plus two equals five. Read and enjoy (the endgame bold highlights are mine):

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I said that he would not be out of pocket.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Is costs money?

TONY ABBOTT: Well –

KERRY O’BRIEN: When it really gets down to it, costs is money, isn’t it?

TONY ABBOTT: What I said was that he would not be out of pocket.

KERRY O’BRIEN: He wouldn’t be out of pocket?

TONY ABBOTT: That’s correct.

KERRY O’BRIEN: With money? Money? Cash? Money?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I said he wouldn’t be out of pocket.

KERRY O’BRIEN: And on July 11 you met him again and you handwrote a guarantee, didn’t you?

TONY ABBOTT: I had sent him a note, but this is not new news, Kerry.

KERRY O’BRIEN: No, but then on July 31 –

TONY ABBOTT: All of this was on the record years ago.

KERRY O’BRIEN: But on July 31, you told Tony Jones – you gave him an “absolutely not” denial about any kind of funds going to Terry Sharples.

TONY ABBOTT: I said that I had not offered him money and I stand by that.

KERRY O’BRIEN: You offered him costs?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I said that he wouldn’t be out of pocket.

KERRY O’BRIEN: That’s money!

TONY ABBOTT: Oh, come on, Kerry.

KERRY O’BRIEN: Tony Abbott, that is money. Let me hear it from your lips — that is money!

TONY ABBOTT: Let’s move on. I did not offer to pay Terry Sharples any money.

KERRY O’BRIEN: You offered to cover his costs.

TONY ABBOTT: But I did not offer to pay Terry Sharples any money.

KERRY O’BRIEN: I think the audience understands that costs is money, so we’ll move on..

You bet your toasted political arse we do, Tony.

***

If John Howard won’t sack Abbott then John Howard presumably believes that court costs are not money, too. That, of course, is a matter for the Liberal Party and its supporters to address. Though a Minister of the Crown who truly believes such a thing, and says so right out there in public, should, I submit with some embarrassment, more properly be regarded as occupying a place on the Australian political spectrum some considerable way beyond the conspiratorial fringe of even we Lunar Lefty Greens and Redneck Righty Hansonites.

Certainly not in the ‘respectable mainstream’, anyway. Then again, I’m not an economist, and don’t fully understand Tony Abbott’s new-fangled Market Theory ways.

But it does pay to remember, when reflecting on this fine piece of Public Broadcasting, that the 7.30 Report specifically, and the ABC more broadly, is under considerable attack from such Ministers right now. (If Abbott can’t grasp that court costs are money, then what on earth would he make of a more complex fiscal concept like ABC funding!?) And if Australian Citizens think that programs that enable interviews like this one are worth defending in the Australian Public Interest, then maybe you should drop the show an encouraging line at guestbook.

Where-ever you stand politically, I think that this sort of work is an incredibly important check-and-balance component of our threatened secular liberal democracy, and as such deserves our strongest possible support. The ABC has its shortcomings just like every other part of the Australian Public Polity, but when it works – and it mostly does – then it works for nobody but us Australian Citizens. Bravo, Kerry O’Brien. Bravo 7.30 Report. Bravo, Aunty.

 

Tony Abbott image found by Webdiarist Harry Heidelberg.

Tony Abbott pulled a cashbox together to solicit and fund court cases by disgruntled One Nation types to destroy One Nation. Is that legal? Can Hanson now sue HIM for damages?

Today’s Sydney Morning Herald editorial, The deceit of Tony Abbott, raised this intriguing question:

It is one thing, however, to wish to counter a political threat. It is another to actively promote and assist in legal proceedings to that end. Mr Abbott is not entitled to lie later about his involvement in this activity, whether to the media, a constituent, or the Parliament. Mr Abbot now concedes he twice arranged pro-bono lawyers to assist Mr Sharples. His actions have a whiff of the old offence of maintenance and champerty, meddling in another’s law suit for his own advantage.

Webdiarist Jozef Imrich alerted me to a piece by Ken Parish, a law lecturer at the Northern Territory University who thinks Abbott could be in hot legal water. Here’s an extract from the piece on his weblog troppoarmadillo:

What interests me more about the “slush” fund revelation is whether Abbott, and others involved in its establishment (including allegedly Peter Costello’s father-in-law Peter Coleman), may have committed the tort of maintenance, which would allow Pauline Hanson to sue them for damages. (Mike Seccombe’s revelations about the Costello connection are at Howard knew of slush fund to target Hanson.) Here’s what Butterworths Halsbury’s Laws of Australia has to say about the tort of maintenance:

Maintenance consists of unjustifiable support or promotion of civil litigation in which the person has no direct or legitimate interest and may be accomplished by assisting either the plaintiff or the defendant in the proceedings without lawful justification. Champerty is an aggravated form of maintenance which consists of unlawfully maintaining an action, or a suit, upon an agreement to receive a share of any proceeds from the litigation. The torts of maintenance and champerty are actionable by a person who is caused special damage by the intermeddling. Both torts are of decreasing importance and have been abolished in some jurisdictions. Both wrongs also constituted a criminal offence.

The essential element of impropriety in an action for either maintenance or champerty is the officious intermeddling in, and supporting of, litigation in which the defendant has no legitimate interest. The intermeddling of the defendant must be shown to be intentional but there is no requirement of proof of malice or to show that the intermeddling was without reasonable and probable cause. The torts are applicable only to intermeddling in civil litigation and do not apply to assistance provided in criminal prosecutions, nor for intermeddling in administrative proceedings which are not contested litigation.

The most common way of committing maintenance is by providing financial assistance to a litigant, either by lending money to permit the bringing of the suit, or by bearing the full or partial costs of the litigation. It is not champerty for a solicitor to act for a client without means and to bear counsels fees and other disbursements where the solicitor has considered the case and has a bona fide belief in the clients cause of action or defence, and there has been no bargain with the client for a share of any proceeds from the litigation. However, champerty will lie where a legal practitioner engages in speculative litigation on an agreement to receive a proportion of any damages recovered.

It is a defence to the tort of maintenance or champerty that the person interfering in the litigation has an interest recognised by law in the proceedings. Where there is a genuine and legitimate common business interest between the maintainer and the maintained in the result of litigation, some activities in support of litigation may be justifiable. A legitimate common interest may also be found in a direct and substantial pecuniary interest in the outcome of litigation such as contracts of indemnity, or contracts of insurance. It must be shown that the activity which constitutes some intermeddling in, or support of, the litigation is a proper method of seeking to protect the common interest. It is possible, but exceptional, to be able to justify a champertous agreement on the basis of common interest.

Acts which are prima facie maintenance or champerty may be justified on a range of grounds which include the relationship of master and servant, kinship, compassion and charity. Where reliance is placed upon charity as justifying an intermeddling it must be shown that there is a genuine belief in the litigants impecuniosity. However, it is not necessary to show that the litigant is in fact destitute and otherwise incapable of engaging in litigation without assistance. Charity to assist the poor includes the situation where the litigant has assets which cannot be reached or used. The privilege will not afford a defence where the intermeddler has sought to promote his or her private interests and it is very difficult to justify champerty on the basis of such relationships of privilege.

***

Ken Parish comments:

As far as I can see on a very quick search, although the tort of maintenance has been abolished in several States, it still exists in Queensland. Moreover, it’s difficult to see Abbott and his fellow Sharples benefactors successfully making out any of the defences discussed above. Hanson may yet have the last laugh.

I actually have some practical professional experience with the tort of maintenance. Some years ago I acted for then NT Labor Opposition Leader Bob Collins in obtaining a Supreme Court injunction against the entire NT Cabinet after a Minister had been forced to reveal in the media that the Government had agreed to fund defamation litigation by former Chief Minister Ian Tuxworth against Bob Collins. Apparently the agreement to fund Tuxworth’s litigation had been made as part of a secret deal to get him to agree to resign quietly as Chief Minister in favour of another CLP nominee thought to have better electoral prospects. My morning in court as junior counsel was a personally memorable one. Not only was I suing the entire Cabinet on behalf of the Labor Opposition, but spectators in the public gallery included then right wing heavy and federal minister Graham Richardson. The argument got off to a seemingly disastrous start as soon as my senior counsel got to his feet and announced our appearances. The presiding judge, Justice John Nader, demanded to know in an imperious tone: “This isn’t another one of your political stunts is it, Mr McDonald and Mr Parish? I won’t have my court turned into a three ring political circus!”

Senior counsel then proved why his daily charge rate was much higher than mine. “Of course not, Your Honour, nothing could be further from the truth. This is simply a legal argument about whether an interlocutory injunction should be awarded on ordinary legal principles to restrain the commission of an ongoing and prima facie serious actionable civil wrong committed against a citizen of the Northern Territory.” It was, as Richo observed afterwards in tones of awe-struck admiration, one of the most brazen lies he’d ever heard in a courtroom. Justice Nader must have been impressed too. He gave us the injunction, and the entire case settled soon afterwards on terms not to be disclosed.

 

Ken’s readers have already posted some interesting thoughts on Hanson’s case against Abbott. Have a look – it’s worth it.

OK, Webdiary lawyers, please tell us all about it. You’ll get the facts in Tony Abbott’s dirty Hanson trick – and he lied about it, of course, Abbott set up slush fund to ruin Hanson and Howard knew of slush fund to target Hanson. What are the chances of Hanson succeeding in a civil action against Abbott, Costello’s father-in-law and the other organisers of the Australians for honest politics trust? Provided you prove your bona fides, I’m happy to publish your thoughts under a nom de plume.

And are there any experts in political donation disclosure requirements? The Commonwealth Electoral Commission queried Abbott about letting the people know who donated to the ‘trust’ and he said he didn’t have to disclose donations because “the entire purpose of Australians for Honest Politics was to fund legal actions against One Nation”. The Commission dropped it – why? Later, the Commission acknowledged during a Senate committee hearing that this could amount to a giant loophole in disclosure of the donors to political parties. Set up a fund to destroy an opponent and it’s not a donation to the Liberal Party!!!

So what does the Commission’s legal opinion say, and did they ever get one? The Commission has shut its mouth. It will say nothing. The Commission must be independent, scrupulous and fearless because it is the steward of a fair electoral system, the foundation stone of a functioning democracy. So why won’t it talk to us?

If you go to electoralcommissioncontacts, at the bottom of the form is a feedback link. The Commission says: We welcome your feedback on our performance.

If you have any questions for Mr Abbott in his capacity as a Cabinet Minister, his email is tonyabbott. If the member for the Sydney North Shore seat of Warringah is your MP, his personal webpage is attonyabbottMP.

Tony Abbott is fighting for his political skin, but he still can’t lie straight in bed. Last night, he put out a statement suggesting he did not lie to the ABC. Why? You guessed it, he was only replying to the first part of the question! And, you mightn’t guess this, because offering to pay Terry Sharples’ legal expenses was not offering money!

He’s learnt from the master deceiver and has done a Manildra!

The Four Corners question from Tony Jones was: So there was never any question of any party or other funds from any other source being offered to Terry Sharples?

Abbott: Absolutely not.

In his statement last night, Abbott said:

“I replied, in response to the first part of the question: ‘Absolutely not.’ No Liberal funds were at any stage offered or involved.”

But Tony, the question asked was whether any Liberal Party OR OTHER FUNDS were at any stage involved. He must be taking lessons from the master, because that was how Howard tried to get out of lying to Parliament this month (See Howard meets Honan: You be the judge whether he lied about it).

Abbott’s second attempt to say black is white and lies are true was to suggest that the trust was set up after the interview. So it took him only three weeks to set up a trust and sign the trust deed? Yes, Abbott told Kerry O’Brien on the 7.30 Report last night. He set up the trust to find other disgruntled One Nation members to legally destroy One Nation when his prior arrangement with Sharples fell over.

But that proves the lie, doesn’t it, because he’d denied any funds from any source being offered to Sharples. No, said Abbott, because offering to pay legal costs is not “funding” the legal case or paying “money” for it. And when he made the promise to Sharples – before conceiving the trust idea – where was he going to get the money? “I’m not going to tell you,” Abbott told Kerry, and he’s not going to tell us who donated to the trust, either. Oh dear, we’re getting too close to the shadow world of big power and big money which manipulates our democracy for its own ends, aren’t we? Way too close.

Abbott signed a note on July 11, 1998, long before the Four Corners interview, personally guaranteeing to fund the Sharples case. Here are the relevant extracts from Deborah Snow’s piece on Abbott in the Herald in 2000:

Abbott’s troubles began with a meeting he instigated with Sharples at the Brisbane offices of solicitors Minter Ellison on July 7, 1998. … The meeting discussed how to raise money for a court application by Sharples to stop public funds being paid to One Nation. Within days, the action had been mounted and would ultimately succeed – although not without a massive and convoluted falling-out of the anti-One Nation players along the way.

What has been at issue since is to what extent Abbott promised to bail Sharples out if he got into financial difficulty (Sharples is now being sued for bankruptcy by One Nation in Queensland).

At the original Minter Ellison meeting, Sharples maintains, Abbott asked him to “keep his name out of things” because, claims Sharples, Abbott didn’t want the action seen to be connected with anyone from the Liberal Party. A few days later, Sharples asked Abbott for a written undertaking to cover Sharples’s costs.

That agreement, a copy of which has been obtained by the Herald, was handwritten by Abbott and promised “my personal guarantee that you will not be further out-of-pocket as a result of this action”. It was witnessed and dated July 11, 1998. A few days later, when interviewed by the ABC’s Four Corners, Abbott denied any such deal existed.

When the Herald first put to him Sharples’s claim that he’d promised money at the outset to be paid into a solicitor’s trust account, Abbott said: “No, it’s not correct.” But later he concedes: “I had secured the agreement of a donor to provide up to $10,000, if necessary, to cover any costs award made against Sharples. This person had no connection whatsoever with the Liberal Party. That was the basis of my letter. I wouldn’t accept that it was an indemnity. (The full extract is at Tony Abbott’s dirty Hanson trick – and he lied about it, of course.)

This is where the ‘distinction’ between paying legal costs and funding the legal action comes in. Kerry blew him away on that bit of sophistry. Indeed, I have never seen a senior politician so humiliated on TV since Kerry put to John Hewson, then Liberal leader, the results of Liberal Party polling he hadn’t seen. Nothing like a bit of forensic interviewing to expose Abbott’s fangs. You’re not an advocate, you’re supposed to be an interviewer, he said, and his glare was a sight to behold at interview end. Watch out Kerry – The Government’s gunna get you for this.

Yesterday afternoon, the Herald’s Mike Seccombe put a series of questions to John Howard on his knowledge of and involvement in Abbott’s honest politics trust fund, and what action he would take about Abbott’s lie to the Australian people. Lo and behold, out popped Abbott’s statement last night. That’s means Howard is worried.

Unrepentant yesterday when he spoke to the Herald, Abbott now says sorry for responding to Deborah Snow’s request for the reason he lied to the ABC with: “Misleading the ABC is not quite the same as misleading the parliament as a political crime.”

Abbott last night: “It is not acceptable to mislead the public. I should not have responded flippantly to the SMH’s question and I am sorry that I did so.”

But last night, when Kerry O’Brien asked, “Did you mislead the ABC?” Abbott replied, “I don’t believe I did.”

Abbott tried to squirm out of his crisis with a tricky press releases designed to confuse people so much they’d drop the story. They won’t Tony. Have you ever considered the strategy of being honest? The idea is that if you come clean, admit your sin, apologise and say you’ve learnt your lesson and won’t do it again, you leave room for generosity by the victims, and perhaps even forgiveness.

Herald reader John Mitchell wrote today: “In defence of my local MP Tony Abbott, who lives not only in my suburb but even in my own street, I must refer readers to the flyer circulated by Mr Abbot before the last federal elections. It focuses in detail on his personal life, stating that he is of high moral tone, a devout catholic and attends church regularly to pray with his wife and family. I cannot see how such a person could be accused of all these dreadful political shenanigans.”

Abbott went on John Laws’ radio show this morning to save himself, and Howard gave a doorstop to hose down the drama. Abbott is determined to keep Howard out of it: He told Kerry that “I was doing this entirely on my own.” Did Howard do anything to stop his efforts to destroy One Nation in the Courts? “Should he have?” Abbott replied.

Here’s the Howard transcript – notice he he won’t commit himself to backing Abbott’s honesty – then the relevant extract from Abbott’s statement last night.

Abbott’s tactics replicate the Government’s con in the last week of the 2001 election campaign, when Admiral Shackleton blew the lid on the children overboard lie by saying it never happened, then, under pressure from Reith and co, signed his name to a government prepared statement saying defence had advised the government that it had happened. The statement omitted, of course, the fact that defence had corrected the mistake several times but the government ignored it. The statement did the trick – Howard was able to slide around the truth until election day, and even accused questioners of accusing Shackleton of lying!!! (SeeRed light questions and Circling the wagons, written two days before the election, and Rotten corpse of an election published on election eve.)

***

THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP DOORSTOP INTERVIEW, SYDNEY, AUGUST 27, 2003

Subject: Tony Abbott

Q: Mr Howard, you said on Friday that your party had nothing to do with the Pauline Hanson fighting fund (inaudible)?

PM: Well look can I just, I’ll come to the detailed questions in a minute but this whole thing has got quite out of proportion. No politician has been involved in any way with the criminal prosecution of Pauline Hanson. Peter Beattie wasn’t involved, Tony Abbott wasn’t, I wasn’t, Kim Beazley wasn’t, Simon Crean wasn’t. Pauline Hanson was prosecuted for a crime by the independent Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions and I think all of this suggestion coming from the Labor Party that in some way Mr Abbott was involved in the prosecution is an attempt to represent him as having something that he hasn’t been. So I just think everybody ought to take a shower and sort of calm down and get the thing back into perspective.

Q: Why were you surprised at the sentence Pauline Hanson received?

PM: Well I made a comment on the size of the sentence, and I don’t really have anything to add to that. People know my view on that and I don’t have anything to add to it. But I just want to emphasise that she was the subject of a criminal prosecution, Abbott had nothing to do with the criminal prosecution, neither did Beattie, I mean I want to make that clear, any suggestion that Mr Beattie had anything to do with the criminal prosecution is ludicrous as well. I just think we all should get a hold of the thing and keep the thing in perspective.

(Margo: Howard said this last Friday. On Sunday, Liberal MP Bronwyn Bishop said Hanson was “a political prisoner and pointed the finger at Queensland Premier Peter Beattie. Last night – THREE DAYS AFTER HOWARD CLEARED BEATTIE OF WRONGDOING – she went further on Lateline, accusing Beattie, without a shred of evidence, of directing the Queensland Director of Prosecutions to lay the charges against Hanson. This is the gravest charge that can be laid at any politicians door, let alone any DPP’s, and comes in the face of a categorical denial by Beattie this week. (Beattie maintains distance from Hanson jailing).

I ask: Is Howard running one line while allowing attack dog Bishop to run the other to take the heat off Abbott and smear Labor? Disgusting, isn’t it. An extract from the debate:

CRAIG EMERSON: I ask you to withdraw your outrageous statement about the Premier of Queensland being involved in some sort of corrupt way which were involved in the prosecution of Pauline Hanson or resign. You withdraw that or resign right here and now.

BRONYWN BISHOP: The statement I made, and I stand by it all the way, is that it was a political decision taken by the Beattie Government to prosecute Pauline Hanson under the fraud – under the Crimes Act for fraud. That is a political –

CRAIG EMERSON: The decision was made by the DPP and you know it.)

 

***

Q: Abbott did mislead the public, so should he be sacked?

PM: Look Abbott has answered for that and you go and talk to Abbott, he’s made a statement.

Q: Mr Howard, when did you learn about the establishment of the anti-Hanson fund?

PM: Well it was in the media five years ago. Look, it’s five years ago, I would of I guess become aware of it around about that time, but I can’t tell you exactly when, I mean I have hundreds of conversations with hundreds of people every week, to ask me to remember every conversation. But the important thing is that it was disclosed in the media in August of 1998 and he made no secret of it.

Q: Are you happy with Ministers of your Government being involved in destabilising other parties like that?

PM: Well it’s the job of the Liberal Party to politically attack other parties, theres nothing wrong with that –

Q: – setting up the fund

PM: Well look he was quite open about it, and one of the trustees of the fund is a former Labor Party Minister.

Q: Has he mislead the public, do you think he has?

PM: Well Mr Abbott says he didn’t, you have a look at his statement and I’ve always found Tony Abbott a very honest man.

Q: Do you support his conduct on this matter?

PM: Look Tony Abbott was open in his attacks on One Nation, One Nation was a political rival of ours and I don’t regard it as wrong of one of my colleagues to attack political rivals. But the core of the thing is that he wasn’t involved in her criminal prosecution, now that’s really end of story. She was convicted as a result of a prosecution bought by the Queensland Director of Public Prosecutions, not as a result of Tony Abbott establishing some kind of fund. I mean we’ve all lost sight of that and in the process people think he’s in some way responsible for things that hes not responsible for.

***

Tony Abbott media release, August 26

ONE NATION LITIGATION

A question has arisen about an answer I gave to Four Corners given that I subsequently established a Trust to fund legal challenges to the validity of the registration of One Nation in Queensland. I should make it clear that the answer I gave to Four Corners preceded the formation of the Trust.

On the Four Corners programme broadcast on August 10 1998, I was asked: “So there was never any question of any party or other funds from any other source being offered to Terry Sharples?” I replied, in response to the first part of the question: ‘Absolutely not.’ No Liberal Party funds were at any stage offered or involved.

Strictly speaking, no money at all had been offered. The lawyers I organised were acting without charge and the support for costs which I had promised would only become an issue in the event of a costs order being made against Sharples.

Much later, after Sharples had launched legal action against me claiming open-ended damages arising from my promise that he would not be out of pocket, my solicitor offered to settle Sharples’ claim for $10,000. Sharples rejected this and I have never paid him any money.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on March 11 2000: “Challenged about the conflict between this (that is the solicitor’s offer to Sharples) and his denial on Four Corners, Abbott initially replies, ‘Misleading the ABC is not quite the same as misleading the public as a political crime’.”

It is not acceptable to mislead the public. I should not have responded flippantly to the SMH’s question and I am sorry that I did so….

***

You’ll be unsurprised to learn that Abbott has not published this disgraceful statement on his ministerial website.