Kevin Rudd might think that momentum has swung back his way in the Utegate scandal with the email implicating him and his office looking almost certainly like a fake.
For the PM to have referred himself and his office to the Auditor-General, and to have gone one further and called in the AFP, are the actions of a man who is confident that the continuing sweeps of his email system will not throw up any nasty surprises.
But the more the ALP goes on about the fake email, the more obvious it becomes that it’s the only email the Government wants to talk about - because the others are so damning of Treasurer Wayne Swan, whose conduct has conveniently not been included in the terms of reference for the Auditor-General’s investigation.
As the debate swirls about the veracity or otherwise of the email implicating the PM, or the string of communication involving Wayne Swan, it’s worth returning to the original source of this scandal - namely the bizarre relationship between Kevin Rudd, Wayne Swan, and some bloke with a Kia dealership in Pauline Hanson’s old political heartland in Ipswich to Brisbane’s south.
I like utes as much as the next man but have never owned one. If I were Prime Minister or Treasurer, or intended to hold either post, I don’t think I’d imperil my designs on either position by turning a relationship with a friend and neighbour into a formal political relationship, by accepting an old, clapped-out, pre-loved ute for use as an electoral vehicle, or in Mr Swan’s case by travelling some 45km from my own seat to get my hands on one.
Even though the gift was disclosed in Mr Rudd’s case, and despite the fact that Mr Swan has also been candid about the purchase of his vehicle, the conduct of both men in accessing this kind of low-level special benefit is exactly the kind of stuff which makes people hate politicians so much.
At last count, when she was selling out of the domestic arm of the business, Kevin Rudd’s wife Therese Rein was worth an estimated $127 million. If the PM wanted a ute so badly - and felt that his salary as Opposition Leader wasn’t enough to cover the cost, which it was - maybe he could have bought a ute himself. In fact he could have bought 10 utes, probably with the change out of the ashtray in his family car, and still not noticed the cost on his family bank balance.
Both Rudd and Swan turned their relationship with Mr Grant into the political relationship which it now is, and which is threatening the government’s stability and, specifically, Mr Swan’s grip on treasury.
The coverage of this affair on Friday was aimed much more squarely and aggressively at Mr Rudd because at that stage it had not emerged that the email implicating him was probably a fake.
That extracts him from the argument about misleading Parliament. If there are no legitimate emails to Mr Rudd, he has not misled.
That leaves us with Mr Swan, who is is more trouble than Detroit on the car question.
Mr Swan was massively unconvincing on television this morning as to his receipt of emails concerning Mr Grant’s eligibility for federal assistance through the OzCar financing scheme.
It doesn’t matter whether Mr Swan received emails at home via his fax machine as to whether Mr Grant would get assistance or not. What matters is that he received the emails at all. It wouldn’t matter if he was at is office, at home, at the pub, or on Mars - what matters is that Mr Grant is a mate of his and as a minister of the Crown you don’t help your mates get access or try to get access to public money. You don’t even risk creating the perception that that is what you are doing. And Wayne Swan has gone well beyond merely creating the perception.
To this end the fake email is almost now a red herring in this debate. It still matters for a few reasons - unless the Auditor-General inquiry proves otherwise, and Rudd’s confidence suggests that it won’t, it does remove the suggestion that Kevin Rudd has misled. But it doesn’t matter for Malcolm Turnbull, because Turnbull wasn’t shopping the fake email about, meaning that the calls for his resignation are absurd.
All that really matters is the string of genuine emails involving Wayne Swan and his office and John Grant, which don’t so much suggest as scream that Treasury boffin Godwin Grech was bang-on in his estimates testimony on Friday that this Ipswich car dealer is not just another constituent.
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