Integrity, or lack thereof...

Integrity has been a loaded word in politics lately. The former federal government lost power partly because it had so little that a whole new flavour of politician (the teal independents) sprung up to campaign largely on that issue. We've also seen a number of reviews bring to light failings at a state level, with Victoria's IBAC (Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission) popping the lid on a can of worms writhing within the Andrews government. Except, these worms weren't fresh. They've actually been drying out in the sun for years. 

Let me explain. 

To understand what's happened with the IBAC report, you need to know about a man called Adem Somyurek. Somyurek is a senator in the Victorian Parliament and was once a member of the moderate faction within Victorian Labor. He and his staff engaged in 'branch stacking' - an unethical practice in which politicians or political staff try to recruit new members for their faction in order to influence pre-selections, the process via which political parties decide who their candidates will be for Senate and House of Representatives spots. It's all a bit obscure and boring unless you work in politics, in which case it can make or break careers. Branch stacking isn't illegal, but it is against political party rules, and doing it during work hours - when the public are paying you to do work for them, not yourself and your mates - is a big no-no. Still, it happens. The excuse is that 'everyone does it'. 

Two years ago, Somyurek got caught out and was kicked out of the Labor Party. The scandal coincided with the Black Lives Matter protests in America, and Somyurek (who is a man of colour) instructed his staff to play the race card to try and guilt journalists into backing off. It didn't work, and he is now an independent and an enemy of Daniel Andrews. 

Fast forward two years to the recent release of IBAC's long-awaited report. It found that Victorian Labor has serious issues with branch-stacking, dubious allocation of grant money, failure to follow proper processes and lack of accountability. While the report was being put together, Daniel Andrews was called in to testify before IBAC multiple times, but was bound by law not to discuss anything that was said. This created room for conservatives to concoct delusional narratives about Andrews being investigated for corruption and personal wrongdoing. More level heads fully expected IBAC's report to be little more than a summary of the allegations already levelled against Somyurek, with Andrews more or less in the clear. 

In the end, however, the truth was somewhere in between. While Andrews was not found to have done anything wrong as an individual, as the leader of Victorian Labor he was found to have overseen a rotten culture that had allowed Somyurek and others to bend or break rules with impunity. Andrews apologised and vowed to go above and beyond the reforms recommended by IBAC. Of course, this wasn't enough for his rabid haters, who won't be satisfied by anything less than his gruesome public execution. It is completely lost on these people that the majority of the transgressions outlined in IBAC's report were committed by Somyurek, the same man they cheered when he managed to temporarily delay the passage of the state of emergency reforms that were the subject of my last post. "Adem Somyu-wrecked you", they crowed, only to turn around two years later and castigate Andrews for their one-time hero's bad acts. Hypocrisy, thy name is conservatives.   

Which leads me to the next character in this sorry tale.  

Matthew Guy is the leader of the Victorian Liberal Party, and if you didn't know that then I don't blame you. He led his party to a landslide defeat in 2018, his campaign tainted by a swanky lobster lunch he'd once enjoyed with a member of Melbourne's criminal underworld. On top of that, his fiery commitment to forcing religion down the throats of public schoolchildren put a lot of people off-side. In the lead up to election day, he promised that if elected he'd give everyone discounts on flat-screen TVs. That probably got the nod of approval from Gerry Harvey, owner and co-founder of Harvey Norman and massive Liberal party donor, but to everyone else it looked exactly like what is was: desperate and undignified eleventh-hour flailing from a politician who knew he was about to lose. Lose he did, and shortly afterwards the Victorian Liberals replaced him as party leader in favour of Michael O'brien, a man whose greatest distinction is looking like a grown-up version of Harry Potter. 

Of course, as all Victorians are painfully aware, the Covid-19 pandemic came along and hit Victoria hard. The public mood soured, and Andrews' massive popularity began to diminish as he presided over hotel quarantine fiascos and six lockdowns. Yet despite this, O'brien proved singularly incapable of harnessing Victoria's winter(s) of discontent into a coherent anti-Dan narrative, and so the Victorian Liberals went back to their old boyfriend, leaving O'brien standing glumly in the driveway as they hopped onto Guy's motorcycle in the sincere belief that he'd changed and this time would be different. 

To Guy's credit, he has managed a noticeable personality makeover during his years in the wilderness. Gone is the permanently angry religious crusader, and in his place stands stands a faux-reasonable man of the people, a loving husband and father who just wants to free Victoria from Dan's tyranny. Not many people were listening, but as the election drew nearer he began to stick his neck out further. Then IBAC delivered its report, and Guy knew his moment had come. Leaping into the saddle, he rode in on his high horse, our knight in shining armour here to criticise Dan, bash Dan, complain about Dan and generally be anti-Dan. 

Less than a week later, Guy's nascent election campaign was completely derailed by a corruption scandal. 

This story is already redolent with unsavoury types, so I'll keep this next part short. When Guy came back to the Liberal leadership, he brought in a man called Mitch Catlin as his chief of staff. Catlin is a PR professional with no political experience, a master of the dark arts of sucking up to celebrities and rehabilitating their reputations when things get messy. No-one seems to know why he got the job, leading some to muse over what role Catlin might have played in Michael O'brien's downfall. Nevertheless, he didn't last long. Catlin suggested that a big company potentially donating to the Liberal Party could drop $100'000 dollars straight into the bank account of his own personal business. He was fired a few days later. Guy was left to pick up the pieces, struggling to change the topic for days until, all of a sudden, the Liberals decided that if elected they would give all health industry workers free public transport. The Herald Sun dutifully trotted this out as last Sunday's headline, obedient as always to their political masters, but it doesn't seem to have done much good. Perhaps nurses would prefer cheap flat-screens? 

(It should be pointed out here that Andrews is equally guilty of trying to put band-aids onto the gushing open wound that is Victoria's health system. His one-off payments to healthcare workers are akin to an abusive boss throwing a pizza party for their underpaid employees. It is also possible, though perhaps not probable, that Matthew Guy is guilty of nothing worse than poor judgement.)

So where does all this leave the people of Victoria? 

Screwed over and angry about it. 

Victorians have been through the wringer these last few years. Melbourne was the most locked-down city in the world, and our Covid case numbers are shamefully high despite rather good vaccination rates. It is no surprise then that our minor parties have scented blood. The federal election earlier this year showed that Australians have an appetite for change, and not just from Liberal to Labor or vice versa. The Liberal and Labor parties are both diminishing in popularity, largely to the benefit of independent and Greens candidates. The big unknown is will this November's state election be a repeat of the national trend? State elections are usually fought on smaller battlegrounds where the lines between Liberal and Labor are drawn on different angles, and this makes it harder for Greens and teal-types to build mandates around their usual issues. But Australian politics seems to be changing. The old rulebook may no longer apply. It is likely that Daniel Andrews will secure a third term, having effectively already won it four years ago thanks to the scale of the 2018 Dan-slide, but the degree to which Greens and independents make gains will be instructional. 

The lack of integrity shown by both major parties is nothing new, but these days Australians seem to have a much lower tolerance for it. Perhaps it has something to do with switched-on millennials now being neck-and-neck with baby boomers in terms of population share. I have no idea what the future will hold, but after decades of 'politics as usual' I can scent change on the wind. Perhaps these are the last days of Rome.