ONLY PEOPLE without shame and without memory could have concocted and participated in Canberra’s utegate debacle. In the fevered and frantic atmosphere of Parliament House they combined to cook up a crisis that proved to be a soufflé. The whole thing collapsed when police disclosed that an email allegedly revealing improper conduct by prime minister Kevin Rudd and treasurer Wayne Swan was a forgery.
Much about this political soufflé remains mysterious. Who produced the email on a Treasury computer and sent it to the Treasury official Godwin Gretch? How did the email find its way to News Ltd reporter Steve Lewis? What efforts did Lewis make to verify the document before reporting it in the Sydney Daily Telegraph? Who passed the contents of the email to opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull and opposition senator Eric Abetz before it appeared in the newspaper?
For the moment the matter is in the hands of the federal police and the auditor-general, who has been asked by Rudd to report by 31 July. Questions are already being asked about the relationship between the unhappy Mr Gretch and Liberal politicians following reports, not denied by Turnbull, that Gretch had leaked information to the opposition over recent years. The police will investigate whether any criminality was involved in the production and transmission of the fake email and in other leaks; the auditor-general will analyse and assess the administration of the government’s OzCar scheme, designed to help motor traders through the global financial crisis.
In the meantime it seems salutary to note that the affair has most seriously damaged those who were the most shameless and those whose memories were weakest – notably the opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, and his frontbench team, whose egos and sense of entitlement drove their efforts to destroy the prime minister and the treasurer. Some among Canberra’s press gallery have also been acting as zealots, more anxious to practice “gotcha” journalism than to report and comment on the unfolding saga.
For Turnbull the collapse of the utegate soufflé has been particularly damaging. He has lost authority and credibility as well as the respect and support of his own party and the broader electorate. Rudd has inevitably mounted what will widely be seen as a justifiable political attack on Turnbull’s judgement and character. It remains to be seen whether Turnbull will be able to re-establish himself during the winter parliamentary recess as a credible opposition leader and alternative prime minister.
Viewed more broadly the whole affair has shown Australian politics and political journalism at their most parochial and inward-looking. It has coincided with the global financial downturn, which continues to be a serious crisis for world capitalism. At the same time China is looming as a potential challenge to US economic and strategic primacy; Australia has 1500 troops in a perilous and finely balanced war in Afghanistan; new turmoil is wracking Iran; and the paranoid North Korean regime may be preparing more nuclear and/or missile tests.
Yet attention has been focused overwhelmingly on phony claims by the opposition that the prime minister and the treasurer lied to parliament about their dealings with the car dealer John Grant. Turnbull belatedly conceded there was no evidence against the prime minister, then doggedly turned his attention to Swan. But the evidence was not strong enough to force the treasurer’s resignation given Australia’s slack tradition of ministerial accountability. In any case, the failed attack on Rudd ensured Swan’s safety.
Unhappily it appears that no Liberal politician or journalist tried to check the authenticity of the email on which they initially relied. Instead they rushed headlong into parliament or into print, intoning dire warnings about integrity and honesty and demanding answers to questions based on that dubious document. Since it was exposed as a forgery, parts of the media seem to have swung onto the Rudd bandwagon, relishing the prime minister’s campaign to force Turnbull to resign. Scenting blood in the water they are circling for a part in a possible kill.
The creation of this dismal spectacle required disturbing levels of political and journalistic shamelessness and myopia, all driven by vaulting ambition. Lack of shame and of memory may be abiding characteristics of Australian politics but they have rarely been on display more brazenly or with more lamentable consequences than in this debacle.
To lack shame is to be without the emotional restraints – guilt and embarrassment, for example – that prompt others to act or speak with some consistency and consideration for others and for evidence. As the utegate soufflé filled with hot air Malcolm Turnbull and other coalition politicians insisted that it was about Labor MPs doing special favours for “a mate.” According to deputy leader Julie Bishop, this is “in the Labor DNA.” So Mr Turnbull was not pleased to be reminded in parliament that as environment minister in 2007 he gave $10 million to a neighbour and political supporter, Matt Handbury, a nephew of Rupert Murdoch, to enable his company to trial an unproved Russian rain-making technology. “It’s a completely different issue,” he sniffed on 5 June. “The issue for today is simply this: the Prime Minister is in receipt of a free car.”
Perhaps. But it was shameless of Turnbull, a helpful mate to Matt Handbury, to claim that his actions were somehow different in quality to those he alleged against the prime minister and treasurer. He was, arguably, far more generous to a mate than he alleged Rudd and Swan had been to Grant. The fact is that all ministers do favours for “mates” (whatever a “mate” may be in politics); they always have and always will.
If Turnbull’s memory had been longer he might have recalled that nine years ago John Howard found himself battling claims that he did a favour for his brother Stan, chairman of National Textiles, when the government guaranteed full entitlements – worth some $6 million – to retrenched National Textile workers. Howard denied the charge of special treatment. But the point is that charges of favouritism are easy to make and hard to disprove (especially when forged email evidence is offered in support). Without the checks of memory and experience politicians are easily tempted into rash behaviour – as Turnbull was tempted when, at the Canberra press gallery ball, he gratuitously told Rudd adviser Andrew Charlton that he should always tell the truth.
Parts of the media were no less shameless and lacking in memory. The Daily Telegraph rushed the fake email into the paper. It was hardly the Zinoviev letter, but the Tele might have made efforts to check its accuracy. Not so. Reporter Steve Lewis had “a scoop.” The newspaper apparently made no more attempt to check the email than it made to check the fake photographs of Pauline Hanson it published only weeks ago.
Much of the media was also shameless in what it left out of its accounts of the unfolding drama. Little prominence was given to a statement by the head of the Motor Traders’ Association, Michael Delaney, that Treasury treated John Grant no differently from many other dealers. If anything, Delaney said, Grant received poorer treatment because he went through the treasurer’s office. This disclaimer seems not to have fitted the media’s sense of the story that Swan was in danger because he had done a favour for Grant. It was downplayed presumably because it threatened to undermine the “gotcha” scenario being set up by parts of the media to nail Swan.
Opposition senator Eric Abetz said that a journalist gave him the fake email before his Senate committee questioning of Gretch. If so, the journalist acted shamefully. It is not the role of the media to provide bullets for politicians to fire, and journalists undermine the credibility and independence of the media when they seek to be players rather than voyeurs.
With stronger historical memories press gallery journalists with ambitions to be political players would perhaps be restrained by the words of the former British prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, who famously said that the press sought “power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.” Slightly overstated, perhaps, but an essentially true description of any journalist who would rush an unverified email to a senator to use as ammunition in a parliamentary hearing.
So where, after the tumult and the shouting, does the matter rest? Rudd is exonerated; Turnbull is damaged; Gretch is assisting police with their inquiries; the sea-green incorruptible auditor-general is preparing to probe. Swan has avoided scrutiny that might have caused him passing embarrassment but would not have destroyed him.
Overall, things have backfired badly on those pursuing political power and media notoriety without conscience or memory. Amid it all, the most effective news breaker has been ABC television reporter Chris Uhlmann – even if he and the rest of the pack were reporting little more substantial than the rise and the collapse of a Canberra soufflé. •
