Senator Andrew Bartlett
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
 
The 3rd full day of the campaign - or the 1st if you take it from the proroguing - unless you don't count a Senate Committee hearing as an election campaign (which it isn't) - in which case it hasn't really started at all.

I certainly didn't expect to find myself sitting in Committee hearings 3 days after an election announcement. However, that's where I find myself as we type, in the public hearing of the Select Committee on the Scrafton Evidence, also known as the follow-on from the inquiry into A Certain Maritime Incident, also known as Children Overboard (reprise).

Despite the bluster about the new inquiry being an election stunt, it has been very useful. People are focusing on it as just an effort to determine whether or not the Prime Minister lied, but it is so much bigger than that and it has undoubtedly been a big win for more honest Government in the future.

I found Mr Scrafton to be a credible witness and no other evidence from the other people who appeared caused me to feel doubt about his statements - however that's a matter that people can judge for themselves. What is certain is that future Governments will find it harder to use their staff as way to maintain 'plausible deniability' of what they did and didn't know.

Mr Scrafton, who was on the staff of former Defence Minister Peter Reith during the election campaign, was able to easily say when he personally told Mr Reith that photos that had been published to prove that children were thrown overboard, actually did not show any such thing.
Such a simple thing, being able to ask the Minister's staff what they told the Minister and when - but it's taken us years to be able to do it. It's a pity it couldn't be done long ago. I think after this, should a future Senate Committee feel it is sufficiently serious, it is much more likely to be willing to seek Ministerial staff to appear.

A lot of people turned up to observe the hearing, including many senior journalists. Margot Kingston, fresh from a promotional tour for her new (and apparently quite successful) book (and a book I recommend as worth reading), came along.

Most seemed to be paying a fair degree of attention to the proceedings - which moved slowly as hearings tend to do - but purposefully. The Committee finished up around 5pm and no more hearings will be held until after the election.

Time to really hit the campaign trail - off to the airport and over to Perth, where the Democrats have Senator Brian Greig up for re-election.


posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Wednesday, September 01, 2004
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