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Prime Minister Scotty From Marketing says the NSW anti-corruption watchdog that has forced the resignation of several NSW premiers and the incarceration of more than two dozen state MPs, is a ‘real problem’.
It comes after NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced on Friday she would resign as NSW Premier and from parliament after the state’s Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) announced an investigation into her conduct.
“It is certainly not a model we ever consider at a federal level, anything that has been on display for some time” Scotty told David Koch this morning.
The Prime Minister behind the pre-election pork barelling that saw $100m worth of tax payer funded grants spent on building new sports club facilities in marginal Liberal-held seats, and a further $660m spent on building car parks in every electorate but the ones that don’t vote for him, say that ICAC already wields too much power in New South Wales.
“You have got to have processes that assume people are innocent before they are thought to be guilty.” he said perhaps referencing his current system of holding Federal MPs accountable, which has seen zero of his colleagues investigated for any of the horrific crimes levelled against them this year alone.
While the sports rorts hit home with the jilted voters who missed out on funding for new change rooms and grandstands, all that Morrison had to do was force a female Nationals MP to resign, while Murdoch’s newspaper’s rushed to convince the public that it was completely normal for our government to treat tax payer dollars like a pre-election budget.
However, the misappropriation of sports grants barely holds a torch to the car park rorts that followed, but were unfortunately buried in a news cycle that was exhausted by a bungled jab roll-out and accusations of rape taking place in Cabinet Minister’s offices.
Earlier this month, the Audit Office released a scathing report, finding 77% of the commuter car park sites selected were in Coalition electorates, rather than in areas of real need with congestion issues. None of the 47 project sites selected for funding commitment were proposed by the infrastructure department.
With a Federal government that also loves awarding hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars worth of no-bid contracts to dodgy friends of the government with businesses listed to sea shacks on Kangaroo Island, it is actually no surprise that Scotty is opposed the type of anti-corruption body that actually can hold politicians responsible for criminal behaviour.
“I’m sure there are millions of people who can see what has happened to Gladys Berejiklian and understand that a pretty good call not to follow that model” Scotty told Sunrise.
