Coalition of corruption sinks into filth

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Every day it’s a steady drumbeat of dodgy. Via The Australian:

The Morrison government is making a direct election pitch to mortgage brokers, telling them Labor will hit their industry and “accelerate the slowdown” in the housing market.

The letter sent to mortgage brokers, and obtained by The Australian, was signed by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

“Labor will end trail commissions and hit the mortgage broker industry,” the letter sent earlier this month says.

“Mortgage brokers are critically important for competition and delivering better consumer outcomes in the mortgage market.

The Hayne Royal Commission wanted trailing commissions outlawed and here the Government is turning their defense into an election pitch. The reason they should be banned is obvious. Trailing commissions align broker incentives with banks not customers so how can they possibly be beneficial for competition?

This is LNP corruption hidden in plain sight.

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And there’s more. Via the ABC:

Mounting questions over a controversial $80 million dollar water buyback are threatening to derail the Coalition’s election campaign, prompting fresh calls for a Royal Commission into the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

In 2017, a company co-founded by Energy Minister Angus Taylor and linked to the Cayman Islands sold two Queensland water licenses to the Federal Government.

Water experts say the licenses were over-valued and unlikely to have significant environmental benefits, but the Department of Agriculture insists they represented value for money.

Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce was the Minister for Agriculture and Water who signed off on the purchases.

And Domain:

Network Ten last week reported that at the time of the deal, Eastern Australia Agriculture was owned by a parent company, Eastern Australia Irrigation, which is based in the Cayman Islands – a known tax haven.

Mr Joyce said he relied on advice from his department when signing off on the deal, and did not question the price paid or who would benefit.

“If you do not rely on the competent advice from the department, who on Earth are you going to rely on” he said, describing Labor’s criticism as “a load of horse crap”.

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Angry invective is no substitute for due process but it appears to be the LNP’s number one response to every allegation of corruption.

Right now the horse crap includes:

  • Peter Dutton and Tony Abbott under a cloud of Chinese influence;
  • Barnaby Joyce and Angus Taylor under a cloud of water deals in the Cayman Islands;
  • Scummo and Frydenberg under a cloud of dodgy dealings with mortgage brokers;
  • Matt Canavan under a cloud with the gas cartel;
  • Mathias Cormann and Joe Hockey under a cloud with travel contracts;
  • Tim Wilson under a cloud of running franking credit bucket shops;
  • Michaela Cash under a cloud of misusing police vis AWU raids;
  • the entire government lying about cutting immigration while opening the flood gates;
  • government round tables with property interests to trash opposition policy;
  • corrupting Treasury with partial analysis of opposition policies.

And on it goes. Where there is smoke there is fire. Or, more to the point, where there is Coalition, there is corruption.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.