Swamped by sleaze Down Under

BRISBANE -- Sexual harassment claims, credit card misuse to pay prostitutes and revelations of $300 limo rides at taxpayer expense have all been given an airing in Australia in recent weeks.

And these intriguing allegations don't spring from some bawdy dockside warehouse or even an uptown financial company still behaving as if the great financial crisis was just a bad dream.

It's the nation's venerated, century-old parliament that has hosted these strange goings-on and left the voting public pondering if their elected representatives really are that sober, buttoned-down, conservative crew they so often purport to be.

Canadians might have been scandalized by the robocall controversy, but that sorry saga at least had an air of old-fashioned political skulduggery.

Australians are not confronted by their democratically elected representatives making unethical attempts to influence elections -- we're just being swamped by sleaze.

A fortnight of revelations about the lifestyle of the Speaker in the House of Representatives, Peter Slipper, culminated in Slipper being stood aside last week.

Slipper faces a federal police investigation into misuse of allowances for taxicabs, but it's an associated civil suit against him by one of his staffers that has raised eyebrows highest across the country.

Former staffer James Ashby says he has been sexually harassed by the Speaker, alleging Slipper made several sexually suggestive comments to him, flirted by phone text and hired him primarily to pursue a sexual relationship.

Court documents printed by News Limited newspapers reveal Ashby alleged Slipper asked him to "leave the door open" while showering, an invitation Ashby apparently declined, and the Speaker also allegedly requested a neck massage.

Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan has hit back with suggestions it was all a setup by the conservative Opposition.

Swan has revealed opposition frontbencher Christopher Pyne spent two hours drinking with Ashby before the allegations against Slipper were made public and even asked for Ashby's phone number.

To add to public bewilderment (or perhaps more resigned bemusement), another MP inside the ruling Labor Party continues to undergo a long-running investigation into whether he misused a credit card while employed by a large and influential union.

It's been alleged that Craig Thomson, who was a high-ranking official with the Health Services Union before becoming an MP, made calls from his hotel room to escort agencies such as Young Blondes and Bad Girls while a union credit card was used to settle the bills.

It's also been alleged Thomson spent about $800 on a lunch at a Melbourne restaurant but only $102 on food, with much of the balance going on booze.

As police launched a raid on the Health Services Union on Wednesday, investigating a range of matters that appear to go well beyond Thomson, Opposition leader Tony Abbott was insisting the prime minister do something to assuage public anxiety.

"The prime minister cannot wash her hands of this stinking, putrid mess.''

In each matter, it's still very much a case of innocent until proven guilty, but throw in Slipper's $300 limo rides between his Sunshine Coast home and the Brisbane airport and you have the ingredients for taxpayer outrage.

The storm of public anger has already been felt in the northern state of Queensland, which recently turned savagely on the ruling Labor Party and reduced its presence in the state's 89-seat parliament to an historic low of just eight seats.

The flogging of Queensland Labor was at least partly fallout from electoral disenchantment with the ruling federal party, which has navigated the political landscape with all the finesse of a vision-impaired drunk ever since ousting its former leader, Kevin Rudd, in June 2010.

In little more than a year, the federal arm is also expected to receive a similar shellacking to its Queensland branch, with many Australians openly questioning whether the nation's oldest political party can survive as a going political concern in the 21st century.

Just as it appeared the political landscape could not possibly get more weird, one of the nation's richest men appeared at a press conference at the start of this week to make two announcements.

Clive Palmer wants to run for the federal parliament in a seat held by Treasurer Wayne Swan and also build another version of the Titanic in a joint venture with Chinese interests.

Palmer may well succeed in the first part of his mission, because the Labor Party appears almost certainly headed for a fate similar to the Titanic's.

Michael Madigan is the Winnipeg Free Press correspondent in Australia. He writes mostly about politics for the Brisbane-based Courier Mail.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 4, 2012 A12