There is an adage in news rooms that if you want a story to die, then all you have to do is wait ten days. Ten days is the distance between a Friday, the next Friday and the Monday beyond that. In that time, two weekends may have passed or else a weekend and the next Monday will have been and gone; so the general public almost no longer cares about whatever it was.
This rule of thumb is useful for colourful identities and questionable elements to bear in mind as they can begin to get away with anything. It is also useful for politicians and business people who want to bury a scandal because unless there is a election or court case imminent, the malaise will pass.
The following event happened more than ten days ago. I have set up this post in advance and it will get whatever the next number assigned is.
<><><><><><>
On the 12th of September, the now former Attorney General Christian Porter announced that a blind trust which he had set up in order to fund his personal legal bills, accepted a very large donation of between $600,000 and $1,000,000. Of course, he can make the statement that as it is a blind trust that he has no idea where the money came from but if that was genuinely true, then I wonder why he set up the blind trust in the first place.
Let me be absolutely clear about this, there isn't any suggestion let alone any evidence that Christian Porter has actually granted any favours or even changed policies in return for patronage, or his as yet unnamed financial windfall.
Having said that because of the nature of the blind trust, it might be actually impossible to audit or properly scrutinise the case for any conflict of interest, for the simple reason that officially the former Attorney General has no idea who threw a giant wad of cash his way.
As far as I can tell, Porter's own admission was that is personal legal fees in trying to prosecute his his defamation case against the ABC, was a "massive personal financial drain on me and my resources".
He also bragged on Sky News Australia that he had collected many folders of emails where "People emailed in spontaneously with offers of all different types, but I haven't taken people up on those emails." and that "if at any point in time anything arises that requires me to make disclosures… of course I'll do that."
That cast the net of the number of possible people who could have sent him the money far and wide.
The problem is that according to the Parliament's register of interest rules, MPs are legally bound to declare literally anything, which includes any financial arrangement which "may conflict or may be seen to conflict with their public duty."
Now obviously Porter felt the need to update the register or else he wouldn't have done it. The statement that he made was that his legal fees were being paid by the "Legal Services Trust" but there's precisely diddly squat details about who controls or who finds said trust.
There's a problem here.
A trust is formed when the Trustor enters into an agreement which transfers control of assets to the Trustee, which are then managed per the terms of the Deed of the Trust.
A Blind Trust is when the Beneficiary as nominated by the Trustor has no knowledge of the assets, or how they are managed. In fact, the only person who actually does know how the assets are being managed is the Trustee.
I do not think that this qualifies as a Blind Trust. I think that that needs Porter to have contributed the funds himself and also not know how the fund is being managed. If Porter knows that his legal bills are being paid, them he positively does know where the money is going. What Porter is telling us is that he doesn't know who his very generous patrons are.
I find the idea that Porter genuinely doesn't know how big his legal bills are, to be utterly ludicrous.
The obvious question that demands answering, is who paid it?
Political parties need to know where their money came from and are not allowed to accept anonymous donations. Unions need to know where their money came from and are not allowed to accept anonymous donations. Banks and other deposit taking institutions need to know where their money came from and are not allowed to accept anonymous donations.
I find the idea that a Cabinet Minister, an Officer of the Crown, and the Attorney General no less, genuinely has no idea where a six figure sum of money came from, both ludicrous and dare I say it, outrageous.
I think that the possible and most likely candidates for who donated the money are very small. My suspicion which is ungrounded is that the Liberal Party, the IPA, News Corp, or perhaps some wealthy businessperson paid the giant wad of cash into the Legal Services Trust. The problem is that they would have had to have known about the existence and that means that Porter would have had to have told them.
No comments:
Post a Comment