Don Coles 🇭🇲

Anthony Albanese has misled the parliament over his defence of a $6m grant to his local golf club, and there will not be any formal repercussions. #The Prime Minister will get off scot-free without the traditional penalties associated with misleading the parliament - including resignation, public apology and embarrassment - being applied. But, Albanese faces greater and graver political repercussions as the image of him misleading, deflecting and dissembling over *facts and *truth is etched ever deeper into the public consciousness. He has faced months of questions about the $6.05m ­taxpayer-funded, “invitation-only” grant he received for the Marrickville Golf Club, including whether he had a conflict of interest and whether the total $560m scheme was skewed to Labor electorates. Labor’s response was to deny any conflict-of-interest, claim that the money was to fund urgent sewerage works to stop raw sewage going into the Cooks River, and even issue a “dirt file” on Indi independent #HelenHaines who queried the grants .. Albanese personally and repeatedly told parliament there was no conflict of interest because he didn’t know about his undeclared honorary membership. He attacked other MPs for making similar election promises and justified the grant because it was for sewerage works. Last month Albanese told parliament the grant for the “inner-West council-owned Marrickville Golf Club” was “to fix the sewerage because it goes into the river and causes a problem when it floods”. He supported the grant as part of the campaign to clean up the Cooks River, “an absolutely vital and precious piece of the inner west of Sydney”. “I don’t use the (golf club) facilities, and I don’t do anything whatsoever for it,” he told parliament. “But the Inner West Council wants to fix the Cooks River. At the moment, raw sewage flows when there is flooding on the flood-plain, which is where the golf course is.” Labor MPs criticised opposition and independent MPs for seeking similar grants in their electorates and the Prime Minister’s office targeted Haines, before her horrific attack, and after the attack said it wasn’t a dirt file just a demonstration of her integrity and work as a local member. Then, in Senate estimates on Monday night, the sewage hit the fan. Infrastructure Department officials revealed the $6m federal grant was not for sewerage works, which the NSW government has paid $269,000 to fix. The simple official declaration was: “The sewerage works are not in the scope of this grant.” Once again Albanese was faced with going into parliament with a clear contradiction to what he had said previously in question time. Again, he had a choice of reasonably making a clarification about the work – which did include stormwater – and which hadn’t been finished. Of course, this meant admitting he had made a mistake and had inadvertently misled the parliament, and apologising. But, like so many times before, Albanese’s stubborn streak and political antagonism prevented him from acting in a way that ­limited damage. He dug an even bigger hole and gave the opposition another win. Opposition business manager, Dan Tehan couldn’t believe his luck. Albanese played straight into the Coalition’s trap of demonstrating a pattern of the Prime Minister denying facts, dissembling and avoiding the truth. Ultimately Albanese, while still having pot shots at individual MPs for making election promises, had to reluctantly admit it was “not correct” to say what he said about the grant and the sewerage works. “I have said it was not correct. It was not correct. The state government had moved in and are funding the project,” he said. #But no straight-talking declaration that “I was wrong”, “I’m sorry” and “let’s move on”.