Larvatus Prodeo

If you’d been watching George Brandis and Pru Goward on Q&A on Thursday night or Christopher Pyne on Lateline last night, you might have formed the impression that Belinda Neal’s alleged dust up with restaurant staff was Watergate or something. High crimes and misdemeanours, corruption, abuse of power, blah blah. It was interesting that Pyne apparently felt able to deflect any parallels with Troy Buswell by saying the Liberal party had endorsed his leadership and he’d apologised (that’s ok, then) and then by claiming that he didn’t have to answer questions about something that had happened a few months ago because it had happened a few months ago and therefore wasn’t “news”. Put this together with Virginia Trioli’s claim that Iguanagate was the political “talking point” of the week (everything the government actually did in policy terms was just “symbolic” or “spin” according to Pyne), and reference to how important the story must be because it was on the front page of the Daily Terror for days, and you’ve got – what?

Add in another datum – the plan by Morris Iemma and Michael Costa to refer New South Wales’ industrial relations powers to the Commonwealth, which is being discussed in terms of revenge on the unions for their stand on electricity privatisation. Astonishingly, John Della Bosca, who’s the responsible minister, hasn’t even been told of a proposal which would demolish the agency he administers, and Della Bosca, of course, was one minister who was working to make a deal with the unions and was blocked by Costa’s intransigence. Has anyone questioned why NSW ALP types have been furiously leaking against Neal and Della Bosca? Christopher Pyne was struggling to make any political attack on Federal Labor, resorting to risible claims that Kevin Rudd should have loudly condemnded Neal the day before the incident hit the papers, or something. The whole thing is being talked about in terms of morality not politics, but aren’t we missing the actual political story by the MSM’s failure to enquire whether this is actually connected to power plays in NSW directly related to power plays about power privatisation – a move the media with their corporate hats on actually support?

Note: Because debate on tigtog’s thread about this affair is still proceeding, please comment there rather than here.