
‘She said, he said’
Let’s consider what has been saidWednesday, February 17, 2021
Did Scotty know?
What did the prime minister know and when did he know it?
Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaking during Question Time at Parliament House today. Image © Lukas Coch / AAP Image
Questions are continuing to swirl around the timeline of the Parliament House rape allegations, with many people asking exactly how much the prime minister knew of the incident and when he knew it. Many are doubting that Scott Morrison has only just heard of these allegations, given that a number of government figures (some even on Morrison’s own staff) have been aware of them since 2019 – prompting fury over how slowly he has reacted, if so. The woman behind the allegations, former adviser Brittany Higgins, has just released a statement, saying she has only now been made aware of key elements of her own assault, while accusing Morrison of “victim-blaming rhetoric”. “The government has questions to answer for their own conduct,” she writes.
Labor, the Greens and independents hounded Morrison and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds over the issue in both the House of Reps and the Senate today, barely leaving time to ask about other matters. Morrison had already thrown Reynolds under the bus yesterday, publicly rebuking her for not reporting the allegation to him. But surely someone else did. As Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek noted in Question Time, Reynolds’s chief of staff at the time of the incident was directly involved in managing the alleged rape, and worked in the PM’s office before and after the incident (including right now). Morrison stood by his claims, saying, “it is not common practice” for staff to disclose matters of other offices when moving teams. Morrison has also disputed a claim from Higgins that his principal private secretary, Yaron Finkelstein, called her to “check in” on her around the time of a Four Corners report into the treatment of women inside parliament, saying that searches of phone records had found no trace of the call.
Senator Michaelia Cash – Higgins’s boss from June 2019 until recently – has told the Senate she only found out about the allegations on February 5, when Higgins was preparing to resign. But news.com.au has released audio of a voicemail left by Cash for Higgins in October 2019, around the time a media inquiry was made into the incident, telling her to “sleep tight”, and reassuring her that she was with her “every step of the way”. The Australian, meanwhile, reports that a parliamentary inquiry has been looking into rape allegations after security guards raised concerns about how the matter was handled, with several Coalition and Labor senators having known about the allegations for months.
Speaking of timing, Australia’s long-awaited, much-debated coronavirus vaccine rollout is finally set to begin on Monday, February 22, but depending on where you live (or which media outlet you follow), the process will be fast or slow. The largest share of the first 142,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine will go to “gold standard” New South Wales, which has the largest number of quarantine workers – and is said to be getting things under way quickly. All NSW quarantine and essential border workers will be vaccinated within two to three weeks, with the state reported to be receiving more than 14,000 doses per week – more than double the initial 6000 weekly doses that state government sources expected. Victoria, which will end its “circuit breaker” lockdown tonight, will initially receive 11,000 weekly doses, with official confirmation of that number leaving healthcare workers fearing that they might have to wait months to be vaccinated, while Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has warned the rollout in Queensland will “start off very slowly”, with just 100 shots to be given on the Gold Coast on Monday, followed by location-specific vaccinations on Wednesday and Friday. The vaccine will come fast if you’re the prime minister, however, with Scott Morrison to receive the Pfizer vaccine soon in a bid to boost public confidence. The latest government research shows that less than two thirds of Australians say they will “definitely” get a COVID-19 vaccine, with more than a quarter unsure.
Slow and steady won’t necessarily win the race when it comes to vaccine rollout, and it won’t be enough for our transition away from coal either, according to experts. And yet the Morrison government has decided to delay the launch of a $1 billion fund for new energy projects, to be administered by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, after former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce launched a surprise bid to use it to back a new coal-fired power station. Joyce tabled a formal amendment to his own government’s bill on Tuesday, demanding the fund be allowed to invest in fossil-fuel projects too – a move that furious Liberal MPs said was the “the end of the line” on the dispute with Nationals. He’s got one Liberal in his corner, however: controversial backbencher Craig Kelly, whom the Nationals are reportedly keen to adopt, told Guardian Australia he was “absolutely interested” in Joyce’s amendment. Ticking time bombs, the both of them.
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