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Thursday 25th September 1997
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Travel Minister John Sharp resigned over rorted travel claims of nearly Au$9,000 and Administration Services Minister David Jull resigned because of the manner in which he covered up the Sharp's secret repayment of the excessive claims.
There is another minister in the Labor Party's firing line as well - Science Minister Peter McGuaran - who has repaid nearly Au$10,000 after he was criticised for being the top claimant for travel expenses.
The resignations make a joke of the code of conduct that he has asked his ministers to follow.
Mr Jull has been known to pursue Ms Hanson with a vengeance when it came to allegations of rorts.
Here are three documented cases of that: And what about "squeaky clean" John Sharp's previous alleged abuses of power?
The man at the top of the hit list has got to be none other than Opposition Leader Kim Beazley who did just what Jull did in the 1980s when he covered up Mal Colston's travel rorts.But of course when Kim Beazley was interviewed about his role in the cover up on Channel 9 television's A Current Affair last night he squeezed himself out of a very soft line of questioning by Ray Martin saying that "times had changed and that check's and balances were now far more controlled".... what a lot of you know what.
What is of most interest is the story behind the breaking of the news about these ministers indiscretions.
It happened on Channel 9... with Laurie Oates being the political hatchetman for one Kerry Packer... It was only on the 2nd September 1997 that the business section of News Limited's The Australian newspaper carried this subtle threat to Prime Minister John Howard after the Coalition Cabinet deferred any decision on media ownership changes the day before:
Heading: "Black Day for Kerry Packer":
"John Howard will be the other big loser.
"Having frozen out the country's largest newspaper group, News Limited, (from owning Fairfax) he has now alienated Packer's interests, which include the country's biggest magazine publishing empire and its most powerful television network, Nine."
The real question here should be... if Packer had got Fairfax would Packer have allowed Channel 9 to run the story about these minister's rorting travel expenses?
It was only yesterday that Packer's presence overshadowed the appearance of Pauline Hanson on The Footy Show....
Making the
news" -Have a good one.
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