Economy
Snollygostering in Port Macquarie: The Numpty Abbott Entitlement. Randall’s ‘$5,259 trip’
“Look”, said Tony Abbott, “Port Macquarie was a marginal electorate”. The message was unambiguous. As the prospective Prime Minister he was entitled to be reimbursed for “appearing at charity events” in marginal electorates, but this is a bizarre interpretation of what Abbott was actually doing –which was a combination of political campaigning and indulging in his own personal fitness program. Abbott clearly believed that he was campaigning. He said so. He wasn’t appearing at a charity event to promote its efforts, he was using the event for personal and partisan political advantage, trying to win votes in a marginal electorate.
It would be interesting to know how much money Abbott has ripped from the public purse over the years in pursuing his own fitness program, let alone attending weddings of prospective beneficiaries to the Liberal Party coffers. We know he’s claimed $23,000 for attending various sporting events, from the Melbourne Cup to donning lycra for a pedal here and there.
Given the laughable expense claims by Barnaby Joyce and Julie Bishop – $12,000 – to fawn at the wedding in India of a member of the Reddy family at the behest of Gina Rinehart – and to accept travel on Rinehart’s private jet to get there – it is beyond doubt that snollygostering is entrenched in the senior ranks of the new federal administration.
Snollygoster is a word that you won’t find in most dictionaries nowadays because it’s a word which has fallen out of fashion. Back in the good ole USA southern states in the 19th century, a snollygoster was “a dishonest or corrupt politician… who wants office, regardless of party, platform or principles”. Snollygoster is a word now well worth reviving, and placing front and centre in the “Look” we give to Abbott, Bishop, Joyce, Brandis and the rest of the bastards who very few in federal parliament have any interest in “keeping honest”.
After all, we’re not going to get it from the likes of Shorten or Albanese. Albanese has already given the green light to Abbott’s claims for Port Macquarie, signifying that this is the tip of a cross-party taxpayer ripoff where penalties are only applied to scapegoats and sacrificial lambs of poor repute, such as Slipper and the hapless Craig Thomson.
But let’s face it, snollygostering is the name of the game. Take Brandis for example, the current Attorney General. He’s not into taxpayer-funded ironman jollies like Abbott, but more into getting the public to pay for his eclectic library. Particularly interesting is his sudden burst of book buying on the last day of the financial year, 30 June 2011. The mind boggles – now there’s a good old word of Scottish derivation which Brandis should look up – but from the record, what he bought on June 30 2011 was not only eclectic, but as far removed from any association with his responsibilities as a shadow minister and MHR as you could imagine.
But my special favourite is long-term Labor member for Lyons, Dick Adams. He claimed over $17,000 for a visit to Cyprus and Malta “in light of the construction of a private museum and art gallery in Tasmania”, presumably David Walsh’s MONA. How cute. Adams said he wanted “to see what private developments are successful in much older civilisations”. Yeah, right.
Don’t get me wrong. I have no particular beef against isolated rabbits caught in the spotlight, such as Adams, Brandis and Bishop. Adams should certainly be accountable for his behaviour. Both Brandis and Bishop should resign from their positions as cabinet ministers immediately, for they have no credibility and cannot be trusted to work in the public interest in the portfolios they have been given. Bishop in particular is now completely compromised as foreign minister. She has to go.
This is clearly a bipartisan rort of significant dimensions. But, as far as we can see, it pales to insignificant levels beside the public funds distributed to parties and individuals who polled at least 4% of primary votes in the September election. Under regulations endorsed as most satisfactory by all political parties, each primary vote is worth just under $2.50. As a result of this largesse, last week over $23 million landed in the Liberal Party slush fund, over $20 million in the Labor bank account, over $5 million with the Greens, $3 million with Nationals and a very welcome $2.2 million with Clive Palmer’s party. A very tidy sum of $56 million. This would have been over $60 million if the 2.4 million people who didn’t vote or voted informally had abided by stern advice “to make their vote count”.
Most people who didn’t vote probably didn’t know they’d saved millions of dollars of public funds from being distributed to politicians. When PJ O’Rourke wrote his 2010 book, Don’t Vote It Just Encourages the Bastards, he was writing from a right-wing libertarian perspective which predominates in the US Republican Party, but the book title has an interestingly bizarre depth of meaning when applied to the Australian context. If you don’t vote in Australia it is actually an offense under law, but when you do vote you are unwittingly funding the party system with taxpayers money, unrelated to the implementation of any policies.
The trouble with compulsory voting is that it’s compulsory – don’t you know – and by definition undemocratic. But compulsory voting is a cash cow for the parties, so they’ll all stifle or ignore any discussion suggesting that compulsion is undemocratic. Most Australians don’t realise that casting a valid vote is also donating public funds to party coffers, and no politicians are keen to spread the glad tidings, especially those guaranteed to get much more than 4% of the primary vote.
So there you have it. They really think they’re entitled to $56 million, and more if they can get it. They also actually believe that snollygostering “at the margins” is worthy of their efforts if they aren’t caught out, and unlike the rest of us, can claim “entitlement” if they are caught out, or just say it was a mistake and promise to pay it back – or not.
It’s no wonder, is it, that we have all kinds of faux reform proposals for the Senate coming from the woodwork. The most spectacular proposal comes from the Greens, arguing for an extension of the “above line” vote to second preferences, and a suggestion that the “bottom of the line” could be abolished completely, thereby eliminating the names of candidates completely. That sure is taking the 1984 reform of the senate voting paper to its logical absurdity, and is exactly the opposite to the suggestion of Australia’s best-known psephologist, Antony Green. Green suggests that “above the line” should be abolished and that people be given the option of voting for as many candidates as there are vacancies rather than for the whole list, which is now well over 50 for every Australian state. Green’s solution introduces the novel anomaly of democracy into the senate voting system, as well as ensuring that secret deals between parties will be very difficult to achieve, so don’t hold your breath that any reform will take that path.
The superb irony in this depressing – or hilarious, depending on your disposition – heap of snollygostering, is that all this wheeling and dealing and preference deals between parties has turned into a train wreck for those doing the fettling and shuttling – as we see in West Australia, Victoria and Tasmania – and as we saw six years ago with the Labor-Liberal deal fiasco which put Steve Fielding of Family First into the Senate with less than 2% of the primary vote. They didn’t learn from that precedent, which shows what numpties they are. A numpty, by the way, is a good old Scottish dialect word meaning one who is intellectually challenged – “no’ the fu’ shillin’” – a word used to describe Scottish parliamentarians as “Thae numpties couldnae organise a…”. Well, in transliteration couldn’t organise a Senate snollygoster in their own party’s interests without getting people elected they had no intention of getting elected.
What is encouraging in all of this snollygostering is that the Abbott government has wasted little time in wrecking its credibility with the electorate, as all good numpties are wont to do. There are already sections of the population who voted for the Coalition who are questioning what they have done, just one month after the election. The problem is that the ALP under Shorten or Albanese has no capacity to offer what Australia needs. As things stand at a time when visionary leadership is so important for Australia, we are locked in a scenario where snollygostering is rewarded, reinforced and emulated.
Double dissolution anyone?
Note: This article was prompted by Alison Bleaney, who last week introduced me to those lovely words snollygoster and numpty.
• Brian Toohey, AFR: The claim that “everybody does it” is no excuse. But it’s getting a heavy workout from those who make light of corporate bribery – or breaches of the politicians’ travel guidelines.
… A government fact sheet says: “Foreign bribery and other types of corruption skew competition, inhibit business growth and ultimately shrink the global market for Australian exports and investment.” … Prime Minister Tony Abbott made it plain on Thursday he will not address public concerns about politicians abusing their travel expenses.
The independent senator Nick Xenophon proposes saving millions by insisting MPs fly economy class on flights of two hours or less and requiring them to post the details of their travel claims online, excluding any private proportion of the trip. A further simplification would limit reimbursement to a narrow category, such as travel to and from Parliament and unambiguousministerial duties. MPs could pay personally for other items, such as taking part in Iron Man events or attending the Melbourne Cup …
This leaves the outstanding issue of political corruption. Most federal MPs claim “Nobody does it here”, unlike their counterparts elsewhere. Their opposition to a watchdog is specious, particularlyt after the finding by NSW Independent Commission Against Corruptionof an appalling degree of corruption by two ex-Labor ministers Eddie Obeid abd Ian Macdonald.