It’s been revealed that the doctor Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough quoted in Parliament on Monday to back up public servant Gregory Andrews prescribed Viagra to the alleged paedophile at the centre of the Lateline Mutitjulu broadcast.

Brough referred to Lateline in Question Time and congratulated senior public servant Gregory Andrews, who appeared anonymously on the program
labelled a ‘youth worker’, for “having the guts to stand up and lift the scab off this appalling situation and to try to rectify the situation on behalf of the people of Mutitjulu.”

He referred to the controversial Lateline broadcast:

I remind the House of some of the comments of those who reported, over and above Mr Andrews. There was Dr Geoff Stewart…who, discussing those people with chlamydia and gonorrhoea, said: ‘The prevalent age group that we would see would be in the age of 12 to 14 years old.’

….There was a sort of cluster about that sort of age, but there were certainly isolated incidences in children much younger.’ STI levels inCentral Australia particularly are certainly some of the highest rates nationally.

The National Indigenous Times has obtained documents that reveal that Dr Stewart “a central figure in the June 21 Lateline story…prescribed Viagra to the man over a period of around 18 months following a consultation in October 2000 in which the man complained he could not maintain an erection.”

At the time Dr Stewart first began prescribing the drug, he had noreason to suspect the man would misuse it. However, Dr Stewart became increasingly worried as concern mounted among Mutitjulu residents over the man’s alleged activities. The documents also reveal, however, that Dr Stewart continued to prescribe Viagra seven months after first expressing written concerns the man was “using Viagra to have s-x with young females” and that at the time Dr Stewart had also diagnosed the man with several s-xually transmitted infections (STIs).

“Brough’s habit of shooting from the lip is really starting to bite him on the ars-,” Chris Graham, editor of The National Indigenous Times, told Crikey.

“The Lateline story is disintegrating and Mal Brough is still defending it in parliament,” says Graham. “Someone has to step in and end this farce whether it’s the ABC or the Prime Minister but there’s much more to come.”