On January 31 this year, Billy Gordon joined a very select group — indigenous members of parliament in Australia. He won the seat of Cook in far north Queensland from the LNP and joined the Queensland parliament as part of the minority ALP government. Late in March, the State parliament sat for three days and effectively confirmed that the minority Palaszczuk government had the confidence of parliament.
Queensland parliament sits again this week. During the month of April information relating to Gordon’s past criminal convictions, structuring financial affairs to avoid the payment of child support and claims regarding domestic violence in a previous relationship were given publicity. Palaszczuk, in what could be considered to be a gutsy political move, as she needs the seat to govern in her own right, moved to expel Gordon from the ALP and pressured him to resign
his seat. Opposition Leader
Springborg wasn’t far behind when talking to 4BC’s Patrick Coldren. Gordon resigned from the ALP prior to the expulsion and has chosen to remain in parliament as an independent, supporting the Palaszczuk government.
Along with a number of other jurisdictions around the world, Queensland has legislation that wipes the slate of certain criminal offences if they were committed a number of years ago. In Queensland the legislation is known as the
Criminal Law (Rehabilitation of Offenders) Act 1986 and the cleansing of people’s records occurs after 10 years. Gordon’s convictions are considered wiped under this legislation. Gordon is understandably investigating legal action against those who
publicised the information.
For some reason, we expect a higher standard of ethics and morality from our politicians than we do of others. Gordon, who also ran for the ALP in the seat of Leichhardt in the 2013 federal election should have disclosed his record, despite obviously not being proud of it. As Gordon was working for an ALP senator, the ALP should have been aware of the convictions in any case. Palaszczuk certainly ‘jumped the shark’ by calling for his resignation from parliament — and we’ll get to the LNP’s response in a minute. Unfortunately it is fair to suggest that Gordon’s life story is not uncommon amongst indigenous people in north Queensland as this government report to a 2014
Crime Enquiry documents. Gordon and the ALP could have declared his history and run his campaign on the basis of how well he understood his community and was a wonderful role model because he had turned his life around.
Up until January 31, the seat of Cook was a LNP seat held by David Kempton.
The Guardian, while reporting a potential second government MP being involved in a domestic violence issue,
observed:
Meanwhile, the Australian newspaper is reporting that the Liberal National party frontbencher defeated by Gordon at the state election was behind the initial complaint made by his ex-partner.
David Kempton, who lost Cook to Gordon in January, helped the woman make a complaint about unpaid child support in the days after the election, the paper says.
The independent Speaker, Peter Wellington, on Tuesday said it appeared Gordon’s former partner was being “used” by political forces in an orchestrated attempt to bring down the Labor government.
The Australian says Kempton was the first of three current or former LNP MPs to have had close contact with Gordon’s former partner in the weeks leading up to the child support allegations being sent to the premier and ultimately leaked to the media.
The LNP MP Warren Entsch, whose federal electorate of Leichhardt overlaps Cook, has rejected Wellington’s claims but confirmed he helped the woman with the child support issue after he was approached by Kempton.
Asked about rumours that Kempton, a lawyer, is now representing the woman, Entsch said: “He could well be.”
Entsch defended releasing to the media details of his correspondence with the woman, including the abuse allegations and Gordon’s criminal record, saying he had been forced to act because of the premier’s inaction.
The paper says the former LNP MP Gavin King, who until January held the neighbouring seat of Cairns, was also in contact with the woman for three weeks before the initial allegations were made public last Friday.
We should be applauding how the LNP is demonstrating the care and concern it has for the welfare of Gordon’s ex-partner as well attempting to restore faith in the political system — Yeah right!
At the January 31 State Election, the last seat to be declared was Ferny Grove, located in Brisbane’s north west. The seat was held by the LNP and the ALP had a small lead after the distribution of preferences. The fly in the ointment was that the Palmer United candidate was an undischarged bankrupt and therefore ineligible to stand for parliament. The brouhaha was all to do with the preferences of the ineligible candidate and if they had enabled the ALP to get over the line. With the Electoral Commission discussing whether the result should be taken to the court of disputed returns, and Premier Newman losing his seat at the election, the de-facto leader of the LNP at that stage, Lawrence Springborg, ‘kindly’ offered to run a ‘caretaker’ government until the situation
became clear which, based upon the last time a similar occurrence happened in Queensland, could take seven months. William Bowe at Crikey explains the
issues here and why Springborg was ‘dreaming’ (to pinch a line from
The Castle).
Australian political tragics may remember the
“Utegate” affair. One of the Rudd government’s responses to the GFC was to propose an alternate vehicle financing system to support car dealers, as some traditional financiers had suddenly removed themselves from the business. Rudd was in possession of a ute donated by an Ipswich car dealer (and fellow Norman Park resident). The car dealer subsequently approached the ALP MP representing the Ipswich area for access to the alternate vehicle financing system; the MP sent an email to Treasury; and suddenly then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull was producing evidence that the car dealer was receiving preferential treatment due to his donation of a car to the prime minister. The documentation produced by Turnbull was later proven to be fraudulent and assisted in the downfall of Turnbull’s leadership. The car dealership is no longer trading after being inundated by the 2011 south-east Queensland floods.
At the same time as Billy Gordon was elected in the seat of Cook, Rob Pyne from the ALP replaced Gavin King from the LNP (and mentioned above as helping Gordon’s accuser) in the neighbouring seat of Cairns. Rob Pyne self-disclosed an email he received asking for details of a past conviction, which was obviously sent to him
in error.
Springborg has claimed that his party will not accept the support of Gordon: an interesting concept considering the government he was a minister in changed parliamentary procedure to one where the major parties’ whips first advise the speaker of the number of votes for and against, before the independent MPs are asked for their vote. In short, the sight of Springborg or Langbroek running from the parliament to ‘void’ the vote of Gordon (in a similar way to Abbott and Pyne running from Craig Thomson) won’t occur — unfortunately!
There are two questions here.
The first is the morals and ethics of those who seem to be involved in promulgating false or damaging information. Churchill is quoted as
suggesting ‘A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.’ Are the various constituents of the conservative political parties in Australia so morally bankrupt that the ends justify the means or are they so simplistic that they believe that people will swallow the information provided without question? While there is no doubt the ALP would have damaging information on many LNP MPs across the country, they seem not to publicly release information that is irrelevant to the MP’s current role in life.
The second is how do we expect the disadvantaged to gain a voice in the management of our society unless past ‘sins’ are forgiven. Alecia Simmonds, writing on Fairfax’s ‘
Daily Life’ website states the case far more eloquently
than I can:
That Billy Gordon may also be a product of a racist society where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are poorer, sicker, more disadvantaged than any other group in Australian society seems to have escaped us. In our rush to pronounce upon his character we have strangely forgotten about his context; one where one in every 43 Aboriginal adults are in prison and Aboriginal people are eight times more likely to be taken into police custody.
It's hypocritical for us to ask Aboriginal politicians to redress their communities' problems and then be shocked when it turns out that they have experienced those problems. Or, in Gordon's case, that they are living examples of them. Many, like Gordon, may come from what he calls a 'troubled and fractured past.' And his past is our own past; Australia's 'troubled and fractured' history of colonisation.
While arguing that, if in fact Gordon is convicted of domestic violence, he should resign, Simmonds finishes her article with:
Finally, if we are to ask politicians to tell voters about their criminal pasts then I would suggest that we also ask politicians to tell voters about any civil matters that they've been involved in. Because it doesn't take a genius to work out that we have two systems of justice in this country: one for the rich and one for the poor. If you're a sandstone-educated white man, sipping mimosas harbour-side in Point Piper, then you're unlikely to have had any underhanded dealings channelled through our civil courts where you'll get a slap on the wrist and a fine. If you're Billy Gordon, cutting sugar cane or working in pubs in Far North Queensland, then you can exchange the fine for a prison sentence and the law's casual disinterest for hawkish vigilance.
If we genuinely want a democracy where our political representatives reflect the diversity of our population, and if we genuinely want these representatives to have had life experiences broader than undertaking an Arts/Law degree at Sydney University, then we need to treat people like Gordon with more empathy. After all, his context is our context; it's a product of our shared history and we need those who have suffered its worst effects to help change it.
What do you think?
2353 questions the ethics of those politicians who use another's past indiscretions for political advantage and the final quotes from Alecia Simmonds raise issues about the 'type of person' we want in parliament. They are important issues. Please let us know where you stand.
Next week, as a prelude to the Budget, Ken asks 'Are budgets worth the paper they're written on?'
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