As Ben Eltham has pointed out in New Matilda the Ozcar saga is about nothing more than political tactics. Turnbull’s tactics blew up in his face when it was found that the email he relied on was a fake. At that point, he should have done what many politicians do in similiar circumstances and plead a limited mea culpa, draw a line and move on. Rudd did this very well in 2007 when revelations about his lunches with disgraced WA ALP figure Brian Burke blew up and threatened to derail his new bid for the prime ministership. In echos of this week’s scandal, the Howard Government sought to argue that the Burke affair showed that Rudd lacked the experience and judgement to be prime minister.
Faced with this destructive onslaught, Rudd admitted that the meetings had been an error of political judgement but rejected claims of dishonesty. A huge, smelly sh#t sandwich but it went away and the electorate did not mark down Rudd when the election rolled around a year later. Sometimes you have to accept a little humiliation to avoid something much worse.
One Comment
I don’t think that Turnbull is the type to back away from a fight but it seemed to me they were ill advised in their tactics. With some luck all this may just disappear after the six week break (wish I had that). Even when his opposite number was adamant there was no email he failed to get it. An interesting conspiracy theory though is who wrote the email for whom.