Time and punishment
By Emma Elsworthy,
Worm editor
Australia could become an unrecognisable “public autocracy” if a national ICAC with teeth was established — according to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, that is. The PM told the SMH that the watchdog shouldn’t look at pork-barrelling in marginal seats, but rather focus on criminal activity, declaring rather theatrically that we can’t “hand government” to “faceless officials”, which would be “dangerous”. He told the paper he intends to dig his heels in over his watered-down model if he’s in the opposition after May, saying he wouldn’t compromise. Morrison has well and truly broken his 2019 election promise to establish a national integrity commission, after tabling the exposure draft bill in Parliament but not putting it up for a vote.
But his NSW counterpart Dominic Perrottet says comments like Morrison’s damage trust in NSW’s ICAC, continuing that he feels it plays an important role in upholding integrity and confidence in politics — even though the state ICAC claimed the scalps of his Liberal premier predecessors Gladys Berejiklian and Barry O’Farrell. It comes after ICAC commissioner Stephen Rushton called Morrison a “buffoon” — in a roundabout way, Guardian Australia reports. He told a parliamentary review anyone who called ICAC a kangaroo court was thus, continuing he found it offensive to the hard-working staff — and besides, ICAC isn’t even a court.
From kangaroo to chicken — an update on the raw chicken curry saga, folks.
Morrison replied to the story in an interview, claiming “people went back for seconds” and that the chicken’s pink appearance “was just the way the light bounced off the skin”.
