Wherever you look, the bullshit in politics is so ripe that comment is unnecessary.  It speaks for itself.

**

‘I have no truck with bullying or intimidation in whatever form it is,’ Mr Morrison said. ‘‘I am the father of two young daughters and I have no truck with that sort of behaviour.

‘One of the things we are moving quickly to do is restore the strong culture in the Liberal Party and bring the party together and show the stability and unity that is necessary.’

Australian Financial Review 30 August, 2018

A  senior Liberal source familiar with the situation said when the police came investigating, Senator Cash ‘was asked to co-operate and she didn’t’.

She instead referred the police to her public statements on the issue, telling them, ‘I said everything I know at Senate estimates, I have nothing to add,’ the source claimed.

She was subsequently subpoenaed by the AWU as a witness. She instructed her lawyers to fight the subpoena.

Sources close to the senator rejected the assertion she was unco-operative. They say her reference to her public statements was the equivalent of giving a voluntary statement and the police were satisfied because ‘there was no follow-up by the AFP’.

Senator Cash declined to comment on the matter, saying her focus was about moving past the events of last week.

Australian Financial Review 31 August, 2018

Former Liberal Senator Helen Kroger, who chairs the party’s women committee, says, however, that the party does not have a bullying problem, although she acknowledged that it should have more female representation.  ‘I feel deeply sorry for Julia Banks’, Kroger told the ABC.  ‘But politics is a career not for everyone.  That’s the bottom line.

Australian Financial Review, 1-2 September, 2018

Cue West Australian Liberal MP Andrew Hastie, who on Friday turned up at a rally of striking members of the Australian Workers’ Union rally, 31 days into an industrial dispute with aluminium maker Alcoa. Mr Hastie – a so-called ‘‘conservative’’ Liberal MP – told the striking workers from a labour collective once led by Labor leader Bill Shorten that he supported their demands for better redundancy payouts and for minimum staffing levels. The former SAS officer blamed irresponsible climate policy for driving up power prices so much that it was forcing companies to screw down workers’ conditions.

Australian Financial Review 10 September 2018

An outspoken critic of subsidies for renewable forms of energy like wind farms and solar panels, Taylor said: ‘There will be no ideology in what I do.  My goal, the goal of my department and the goal of the electricity sector, must be simple and unambiguous – get prices down while keeping the lights on.’

The Guardian, 10 September, 2018

The premier and several senior colleagues acknowledged that Turnbull’s knifing had deterred some voters in Wagga but the federal senator Jim Molan dismissed those concerns, saying it ‘wasn’t a factor.

‘People were very disappointed that we were spending time taking about ourselves and to ourselves but it’s something that every now and again that you’ve got to go through,’ Molan said. ‘We don’t go through leadership spill for fun, I can tell you that.’

The Guardian, 10 September, 2018

**

I did say that comment was unnecessary, but the AFR did publish the following letter.

Dear Editor,

The evil of banality

Phillip Coorey had a destabilising effect on my breakfast this morning.  He said (‘Keystone coup’) that Tony Abbott may be the last one left standing in the fallout of the latest disaster in the Liberal Party.  But I was soon returned to that trance-like torpor that Australians fall into when confronted with the sheer banality of their politicians (‘Cash declined to give statement to the police’).  When asked about her role in another self-incurred fiasco, Senator Cash declined to comment.  She said ‘her focus was about moving past the events of last week.’

This is a world record for inanity.

The tragedy is that that is just what most Australians want Tony Abbott and Michaelia Cash to do – move on.  For citations you could have your pick of Dickens ‘It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done,’ or Shakespeare, ‘Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it’.

But, then, did some dolorous soul raise the question of employability?

Yours truly

Geoffrey Gibson