Richardson: On dirty tricks and hypocrisy
Nasty business, elections.
It would be heartening, in a way, to suggest that behind the heady, inspiring speeches and grand pronouncements there is a cesspool of shameless self-promotion and vindictive one-upmanship. Heartening, since really there is little in the way of inspiring speeches; no grand pronouncements. Just the cesspool.
We see the real business of politics at its starkest in seats that in truth are hardly even genuine contests. In Boothby, a Labor staffer involved in Annabel Digance’s campaign anonymously circulated through the Twittersphere the erroneous proposition that Liberal incumbent Andrew Southcott was off sunning himself in Fiji. While easily disproved, the smear prompted an embarrassing apology from Jay Weatherill, an apology churlishly not accepted by the Libs, who feigned outrage that the Premier had not sacked the wayward employee.
Southcott obligingly fronted the media for his free kick, only stumbling when he was asked if he would thus sack a Liberal staffer who behaved in such a way. He spluttered and prevaricated a little, before lamely explaining that he didn’t know if the question was a hypothetical or a specific.
Quite. And there’s the rub, because parties never can be certain at any given time that every one of their own footsoldiers is following the rules of engagement.
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It’s easy to kick up a stink about the need for a code of conduct for staffers, as indeed state Liberal leader Steven Marshall did this week. But the problem with demanding standards of your political opponent is the risk you run of double standards when it comes to your own team.
Not two days later, as fate would have it, a Liberal volunteer in Christopher Pyne’s seat of Sturt was busted tampering with Labor candidate Rick Sarre’s election corflutes, those annoyingly ubiquitous propaganda posters we see throughout every campaign, and sometimes for weeks thereafter.
Even more fatefully for said volunteer, a passing motorist took exception to her activities, and photographed her several times, before sending the pictures to the Labor Party. Funnily enough, unlike Weatherill’s forthcoming and forthright admission that there had been a breach of ethics and acknowledgment of responsibility, the Liberal Party collectively dropped its moral compass somewhere in the sand, and then buried its head to look for it.
The photographs left little doubt who the culprit was, and yet staffers and MPs for whom she has previously worked feigned ignorance, blaming the grainy quality and lack of focus. Even then, surely a simple phone call could have cleared up whether it was indeed a Liberal Party member allegedly transgressing the boundaries of fair play? But no, the party hierarchy collectively chose to try and sweep the whole issue under the carpet. People such as Steven Marshall (he of the code of conduct for advisors) and his legal affairs spokesman Stephen Wade (for whom the offending volunteer had also worked) simply refused to return direct calls. Marshall’s advisor, Daniel Gannon, insisted it was nothing to do with the leader’s office, but refused a request to provide a mobile number for Liberal state director Geoff Greene, who had thus far ignored repeated calls to his office. Hey Dan, you’ll be pleased to know I did manage to track the number down (thanks anyway!), but guess what? Geoff didn’t call me back either! No flicker of recognition either from Pyne, or Liberal senator Simon Birmingham, when presented with a close-up shot of their former staffer.
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Maybe they figured it wasn’t their problem at all, since she’s currently (as of the time of writing, anyway) employed as … wait for it … a journalist. For a regional Fairfax paper. Fairfax informs me they’re looking into the matter, and will take appropriate action if necessary. Surely no-one needs it pointed out that actively campaigning for a political party during an election campaign is a conflict of interest for someone employed by a newspaper (unless you’re running the Daily Telegraph, of course).
And if you’re potentially breaking the law at the same time (as Labor alleges), even more so.
So I do hope the Libs enjoyed their day guffawing at Weatherill’s expense, and loftily refusing to accept his very principled apology for his wayward staffer’s Twitter antics. Indeed, many reporters (myself included) felt the Premier had gaffed by taking such a stand, since his apology gave the story more gravitas.
But compared to the sniveling, cowardly and deplorable response of the Liberal Party to its own subsequent brush with electoral dirty tricks, Weatherill has set a lofty benchmark in public accountability and the Libs have fallen well short of it. Instead of coming clean and seeking to make amends, they tried to shut the story down and protect their partisan colleague.
How dare Marshall try again to push his weary barrow about standards of conduct in political life; his party has failed its most basic test. And how dare Pyne sneer on Sky News about electoral dirty tricks in Boothby, when one of his own volunteers is stooping so low in his own unassailable seat.
We have not seen the last of political smear and trickery, of course. And it is naïve to presume they are the exclusive domain of one party or other. The sad truth, so evident this week, is that neither party is really deserving of our trust. But political parties are large organisations, and inevitably there will be ethical lapses and brain explosions at random points along the chain of command. It takes some responsibility and leadership to acknowledge those lapses and account for them. At least one side managed to do that this week.
Tom Richardson is InDaily’s political commentator and political reporter for Nine news in Adelaide.
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