What started out as a conniption over the gift of a second hand car has quickly descended into scandal over gifts of second-hand information.
If Grech turns out to be the long suspected Treasury Mole – the one that brought us such hits as Cabinet dissent over Fuelwatch and leaked correspondence between RBA Governor Glen Stevens and Treasury head Ken Henry over the bank guarantee – while his fate is sealed with future meals of porridge, the Coalition was perfectly entitled to use whatever information came their way. Unless there was some really deep conspiracy going on where the Coalition was actively engaged in the procurement of sensitive information, they have nothing to fear but public opprobrium. And let’s face it, this is Australia – we don’t do deep conspiracy or scandal very well.
Berlusconi – with his 30 women, a transsexual TV star and a pile of coke – now that’s how you do scandal! We get stuck with bloody utes and leaked correspondence between policy wonks in blue suits.
The problem for the Coalition becomes one of how people will come to view this behaviour and how their actions will affect the framing of, to use that dreaded word, a “narrative”.
There’s only been three polls taken that have measured the public perception of Turnbull’s personality traits – an Essential Report and Newspoll taken in September 2008 when Truffles first assumed the leadership – which make them little more than initial public first impressions. Then we had a Galaxy last month that measured a few of the same things.
Running through the results with Essential first, then Newspoll followed by the recent Galaxy:
Which of the following describe your opinion of the new Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull?
There’s slightly different wording across the questions here which we need to keep in mind. The problem for Turnbull is the issue of trustworthiness – Newspoll had initial positive public perceptions on “trustworthy” running at 55%, however Galaxy last month had that coming in at a paltry 23%. Even though the questions are slightly different – Newspoll asking about each leader separately and Galaxy asking for a comparative measure – it still demonstrates that the public doesn’t particularly trust Malcolm Turnbull generically.
That’s bad news considering what is currently happening.
As this fiasco unfolds and if it’s demonstrated that Turnbull’s office had close links to Grech – that will simply reinforce the negative perception the public already has on the issue of trust. This begs the question – how important is “trust” as an issue for Oppositions? Unfortunately we don’t have enough data to say definitively, except that Opposition leaders can be more trusted than Prime Ministers and still lose elections, but an Opposition leader less trustworthy than the Prime Minister has never won an election as far as Newspoll questions on trust are concerned – and they go back to 1992.
What would be interesting is if we got an update to this set of polling questions, or at least some new questions asked on the issue of “honesty” (hint,hint pollsters).
As to whether this whole fiasco will have an impact on the polling, I’m in two minds – on the one hand a lot of this political insider stuff just blows over the heads of those people most likely to change their voting intention. We only have to look at how AWB or Children Overboard or Manildra or the early resignations of Ministers in the first term of the Howard government played out in the polls to see that scandal rarely lives up to its hype when it comes to changing public opinion.
Yet, on the other hand, Turnbull and the Coalition have some generic weaknesses where this stuff might not play well – female voters for instance. If we look at the Coalition primary vote among females using the Newspoll quarterly breakdowns:
That covers the period from the last election up until March. Since then, the Coalition have improved their polling position and unless the Coalition have equalled or overtaken the ALP with male voters over the last few months (in march, the ALP lead 44/39 among males), a large part of the recent would have had to come from female voters. Issues of honesty, trust and other personality traits play stronger among female voters – so the Coalition could stand to lose any recent gains from this cohort over what is currently happening.
12 Comments
I think competence is more the issue. What is Malcolm doing? It’s getting embarrassing to watch each mis-step. It now turns out the government organisation that handled the whole ute-gate affair is run by a secret liberal party operative. And the liberal party is still saying that what this organisation did reflects badly on the treasurer who officially is its head? Malcolm, your operative did all the work! Your case has collapsed. Malcolm, you must run away from this issue as fast as you can!
You have stuffed it up bigtime, and all you can do now is try to shift on to something else, and shut up about Swan and Rudd and poor Mr Gretch. Talk about how awful it is to now have to support government tax increases with the alco-pops tax, and how you feel for your colleagues who could not stomach this turnabout. Talk about anything, but not about this. Why didn’t alarm bells go off when you thought this through (or did you?); moles are supposed to stay hidden, not appearing on tv news and talking about fake emails. What a disaster. Who else was involved, or did you create this whole mess by yourself? This is the time for a full confession, and heart-felt apology, and moving on. You might escape this time if you do, and if so, please start learning how to do politics. It’s too embarrassing for the rest of us otherwise.
I thought that after Alexander Downer and Mark Latham, our political parties would have learnt about the dangers of having as leaders people who lack basic political skills. Apparently not…
The worry for the liberals as a party is if Gretch created the false email at the request/suggestion/encouragement of Turnbull/Hockey et al, rather than as a frolic of his own.
The poor man must be under tremendous pressure by now and may not be able to keep any secrets too much longer………..
Mark the wretched Mr Gretch ,going on his appearance in front of the Senate committee, will collapse in a heap under severe questioning by hardened Federal interrogaters. What I find amazing is the attitude of Turnbull this morning. He is sloping around the media giving interviews and has completely thrown Gretch to the sharks. How was I to know his testimony was based on a forged email, I took him at his word. This is Turnbull this morning referring to last Friday. Can you believe this clown, The Government he claimed, is using the Feds to throw a smoke screen over Swan and Rudd and this absurd inconsequential fax to Swans home. Plus and this is really rich, Rudd is still involved because the car dealer is his friend and neighbour so he knew Swan was giving him preferential treatment. Sweet Molly Malone!!!!! Here is a barrister and multi millionaire businessman, acting as if everything that happened and was said before this morning didn’t happen. He is completely without fault, he is the victim of a smear campaign by the Government. To add to the total package the mad monk Abbott proclaimed, of course we get information from Public Servants all politicians do. Arghhhhh what are these fruitcakes on? Question time today should see Turnbull and Hockey torn up for loo paper, Rudd and Albanese must be champing at the bit.
As an aside the portly one Akerman made a return to his blog last night after a 24 hr absence to proclaim his innocence, he had no connection to any political party and he felt deeply sad for Mr Gretch who was being used by the Govt for political purposes. This written last night after the ABC announced the surface of the “mole”
That the Telegraph continues to employ this washed up pro Liberal jurno is an insult to the 4th estate.
Conniption (line 1) … Can’t find that in my MacQuarie Dictionary… the rest seems plausible!
Not in the MD? For shame!
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conniption
Considering everything exploding in his face, I thought he did well on Sky News this morning. Doesn’t seem like an easy man to shake down, though he started the interview a bit testy.
What I find the most bizarre about all of this, is the direction taking place of this investigation of the utegate scandal.
From a birds eye view this is technically a 500 MILLION dollar phishing scam email.
This email successfully influenced the direction of the allocation of up to half a billion dollars! Even if it did ended in failure.
As a full time IT administrator I am absolutely lost for words that the day they announced the email fake that they didn’t at minimum know exactly what PC the email came from within treasury, it just constantly boggles my mind what kind of setup they must have to have such failure.
To any IT administrator this is as bad as the military loosing their nuclear weapons, such security vulnerabilities are not meant to exist period.
I also don’t get how any one can argue this should not all be fully investigated by Turnbull or others.
There is obviously serious lack of IT security in the Treasury department, there should be no room to create fake emails ever! The fact they are struggling to work out where the email came from is sending cold shivers down my spine.
Any IT admin will tell you mail servers log the IP address(PC desktop sender address) and other very useful information. This email log activity information stays on the email server and can not be forged, unless it was done directly by an administrator who has full control over the email server.
No matter what happens if they fail to have clear evidence where the email came from (which like I have said is just normally dead simple and should be impossible to fake inside the treasury department) they must design their network so that fake emails can not be created nor have any possible control where any money or resources go.
I find it disturbing/bizarre that not full investigation efforts are being focused on the person who created this email. The person has to be found and any time not pursing that is going to risk loosing the electronic trail of this serious unbelievable fraud attempt/attack. Emails servers remove old log activity over time.
Simply put this is a hackers dream, people in charge of billions of dollars doing what ever you say, then on top not even being traceable?
What a joke!
What the fu-king hell is wrong with this so-called Westminster system of Government? The minute it was discovered that there was a dodgy email in existence, one upon which one side only had access to and one which they were eager to exploit. A full inquiry should have been announced and Parliament should have been put on hold until it was sorted out. Such action would have a two-fold benefit. 1) It would have prevented this present circus. 2) It would make for greater honesty. !f this band of scum thought there would be a halt to their tax-payer funded holidays they would put a stop to this rotten, rotten behaviour.
If we, as individuals, had been buggered around like this in a business/household/football scenario we would have been furious and dealt with the guilty party. But, because it’s politics we do nothing to halt the flow of effluent gushing out from these posturing freaks. They are paid to run the country not a three-ringed circus.
I’d say Grech (maybe at someone else’s suggestion?) concocted the supposed email when the issue stalled early this month. The ute deal, under Turnbull’s QT questioning, was dying because Turnbull had (probably illegal) information from Treasury but no way of proving anything. Remember he was very guarded with the QT questions. He couldn’t go too far or it would give the game away.
So it was back to the drawing-board – and what better way to supercharge the issue than to have a paper trail to prove it?
Voila.
Petard ownership does spring to mind.
@michaelv – Absolutely. Perhaps the IT system and administration should be looked at more closely.
Get a grip.
There wasn’t a cent at risk anywhere and it wasn’t pishing at all, it was the creation of a fake email on a Treasury computer by someone in Treasury and then deleted – according to the Federal Police. It wasn’t a bogus email sent form outside trying to trick anyone. This fake was then sent to the home computer.
So the events seem to be – create fake email on Govt computer at work then send to home for further ‘use’. ie the scam to slander Rudd.
But the news gets worse for Turnbull Liberals in this. Grech allegedly has a long association as a Liberal insider and leaker within Treasury, according to Liberal Party sources who also say Grech leaked a lot to Turnbull, allegedly. Grech is being investigated for a possible number of other activities.
AS for Trust. If Turnbull had an image problem regarding trust and arrogance before this episode his recent behavior could have only solidified that impression.
If the electorate look for a safe pair of hands Malcolm Turnbull has made pretty sure that he wont ever be seen in that way.
Rudd’s incumbency is already a thing to overcome, where ‘the narrowing’ if it exists will be to his benefit nearing election day.
Rudd has also had a tough battle and won, that will improve his image over the long term, a few victorious battle scars are good I guess.
Turnbull I believe is damaged goods, only salable at a discount store or ‘Dollars % Cents’ outlet. He will have his faithful supporters…these type of individuals always do, but he will never win enough trust to get near the line.
“Issues of honesty, trust and other personality traits play stronger among female voters – so the Coalition could stand to lose any recent gains from this cohort over what is currently happening.”
Well as one of those female voters I must admit one of those personality traits things is p^&ing me off about Truffles – stupidity! I have never been a fan of Truffles but have always acknowledged his intelligence. This whole adventure have made me question even that given. I am not sure whether he truly thinks the damage he inflicts on Swan will be worth the damage he does to himself in the process or he does not get that when you try to distract from your cock up you should distract with something entirely dissimilar to the dangerous topic not one intimately connected.