AWU raid is absurd, but calls for Cash’s resignation a step too far

Employment Minister Michaelia Cash shouldn’t be a minister currently. She appointed Nigel Hadgkiss, whom she knew was the subject of well-founded claims that he’d broken the law, to head the Australian Building and Construction Commission last December. She’s tried to argue that somehow she didn’t, that he was appointed by some legislative magic and not her, and that it was OK anyway because they were only allegations made by the CFMEU.

As it turned out, even a cursory check of what Hadgkiss had done would have revealed how utterly inappropriate it was for him to be appointed to lead the new body. Cash should have resigned along with Hadgkiss.

Moreover, we’ve seen a steady diminution in the concept of ministerial responsibility going back decades under both parties — it started when Labor’s Bob Collins refused to resign over the Keating government’s pay-TV debacle, and things have steadily worsened since then. In recent months, the Attorney-General George Brandis, apart from being responsible for a long string of stuff-ups, clearly misled the Senate and yet was able to keep his job.

All that said, if, as she says, Cash was genuinely misled by her staffer David De Garis about whether he had alerted media outlets about the impending raid by the Australian Federal Police on the Australian Workers’ Union, then it’s not a sacking offence. There’s much to be critical of in how Cash handled this debacle, but a minister can’t be responsible for staffers who deliberately choose to mislead them.

If evidence emerges that Cash is not quite as innocent in the scandal as she indicates, or that she or the government encourage a culture in which staff will lie when politically convenient, that will be a very different matter. But for the moment, Cash can hardly be held responsible for a staff member who misleads his minister and, even worse, lets the Prime Minister be misled as well.