In a day of political catastrophes for a sordid government, the head of Prime Minister and Cabinet delivered hammer blows to the credibility of the prime minister and himself.
It’s unusual for a political cover-up to fall apart so swiftly. More unusual that it combines with a revelation a prime minister had misled Parliament. Rarer still that it was the prime minister’s hand-picked chief bureaucrat who drew attention to it. Probably unprecedented that it happened the day a government lost complete control on a long-running issue.
A policy disaster involving superannuation getting flung in the bin was just small change. A staffer getting sacked for a “solo sex act” on a female MP’s desk was barely mentioned in dispatches.
Yesterday rivals the worst days of the Gillard and Abbott governments for sheer, unadulterated political disaster. And at the centre of it all is Scott Morrison, a grubby non-leader who is now trapped in a political swamp of his own creation. And what a fetid swamp it is. The stench emanating from this outfit, and its so-called leader, is overpowering.
