As the ghost of Richard Nixon could have warned Anthony Albanese, it’s not the crime that gets you, it’s the cover-up. As Nixon found out the hard way, some underlings getting caught in a second-rate burglary barely rated a few column inches on the fourth page, but the president lying about it led to one of the most notorious scandals in US history.
Similarly, when the Albanese government got caught pork-barreling their own marginal electorates to the tune of hundreds of millions, it was just politics grubbier-than-usual. Then the PM lied about it.
The pointy end was why a simple clubhouse upgrade to a golf club right across the road from one of his many investment properties warranted a multimillion-dollar, invitation-only, taxpayer-funded cash-splash. As he invariably does, Albanese lied about it: first, he denied being a member or even using the club. Except that he is on record as an honorary member and his own socials show him whooping it up at the 19th hole.
Then he claimed that the money was for a sewerage upgrade, trying to hide behind an ‘environmental’ figleaf. Then that figleaf blew away in the hurricane of truth.
Anthony Albanese’s initial announcement that his local golf club would receive a $6m grant contained no mention of sewerage works, despite the prime minister later defending the controversial funding by insisting repeatedly it would be used on such infrastructure.
The Marrickville Golf Club also made no mention of sewerage when it briefed its members on work to be done with the cash from the federal government earlier this year.
The PM has now admitted that he was “wrong” to make the claim. Yet, even his admission of wrongdoing stinks of lies. His porky du jour is that “the funding was going to be for sewerage”, but the NSW state government stepped in and funded that instead.
So, we know now, without a doubt that the prime minister, no less, has misled parliament. The question now is: what is parliament going to do about it?
Misleading parliament is one of the gravest sins in the Westminster system (it’s OK for politicians to lie to us ’til the cows come home: it’s different when they lie to each other). The more senior the politician, the harsher the punishment. A minister who knowingly misleads parliament is expected to resign their portfolio. A PM is expected to offer their resignation.
Even unknowingly misleading parliament usually results in similar punishments. At the very least, the perpetrator is expected to correct the record and offer a full apology in parliament as soon as possible.
Leaving aside the question of whether he knowingly lied, Albanese has so far refused to even apologise to parliament. And gutless, spineless parliament will do nothing about it.
The prime minister will get off scot-free without the traditional penalties associated with misleading the parliament – including resignation, public apology and embarrassment – being applied.
But, Albanese faces greater and graver political repercussions as the image of him misleading, deflecting and dissembling over facts and truth is etched ever deeper into the public consciousness.
Albanese took to the dispatch box with all the indignation of a puritan wrongfully accused of tippling. He had neither an undeclared membership nor an interest to declare, he barked, claiming utter innocence while scoffing at his critics. Yet, when the floodlights of Senate estimates were flicked on, the department bureaucrats delivered the inevitable reality check: the sewer works were not only outside the scope of the Commonwealth windfall, but had already been paid for by the state to the tune of a modest $269,000.
Presented with the glaring disparity between parliamentary reality and his own rhetoric, a wiser statesman might have offered a crisp, dignified correction.
Ultimately Albanese, while still having pot shots at individual MPs for making election promises, had to reluctantly admit it was “not correct” to say what he said about the grant and the sewerage works.
There was, naturally, no forthright concession of error, nor a humble apology to the House. Instead, our prime minister elected to entrench himself in the bunker of his own vanity. We all know what happens to leaders who hide in bunkers while their regime collapses around them.
With households groaning under crippling mortgage interest and ruinous inflation, the spectacle of the nation’s chief magistrate squirming in an unforced, self-inflicted bog of his own making is hardly an inspiring sight. The cover-up remains, as ever, thoroughly worse than the crime.
