Minister is bound to survive this scandal
Idea
If you want to understand why Anika Wells will likely survive the thrill of spending despite falling on her sword and inviting a travel audit, don’t waste your energy questioning the details of the drama swirling around her.
In Anthony Albanese’s Canberra, facts are often background noise. The survival of ministries depends on a single, immutable principle: the Prime Minister refuses to bow to his enemies. He’d better sand down his own shins as soon as possible.
Albanese has been in federal parliament long enough to know what it’s like to see ministers shed blood. He arrived in 1996 and watched John Howard’s rookie ministry collapse under the weight of travel problems, shareholding abuses and spending “misunderstandings”. Seven leaders who aimed to set high standards of integrity resigned following breaches of Howard’s ministerial code of conduct.
Then-deputy treasurer Jim Short and parliamentary secretary to the treasurer Brian Gibson were forced to resign in October 1996 over undeclared conflicts of interest, and Bob Woods, parliamentary secretary to the minister for health and family services, followed in February 1997 after questions arose about expenses claims.
In July 1997 small business minister Geoff Prosser resigned when it was revealed he was a shopping center owner while overseeing commercial tenancy rules under the Trade Practices Act. Shortly afterwards, John Sharp, David Jull and Peter McGauran also resigned amid similar scrutiny over the use of public funds.
It was a humiliating parade of self-inflicted wounds. So much so that when he survived for a second term, Howard ensured that some of the high standards in the ministry were diluted. He then decided to fight.
Albanians can remember those days with almost religious devotion. Everyone who has spent intimate time with him since his ascension to the Lodge relates the observation that he does not back down. Neither to the opposition, nor to the media, nor to the political heavyweights. He openly and proudly boasts that he “did not lose a single minister” in his first term. Not one. Even when logic, optics and centuries of Westminster precedent suggest that he should.
Michelle Rowland is included in Appendix A of the Albanian Doctrine of Indestructibility of Ministries.
