Mr Brough yesterday issued a brief statement, saying he had "acted appropriately" at all times in relation to the case and indicated he would continue to stand as a candidate.

Shadow attorney-general George Brandis has described Mr Brough as a friend and says the court made no findings that would prevent him from running for office.

"I don't think Mr Brough should be disendorsed. In fact, I think there is no possibility whatever that Mr Brough would be disendorsed," Senator Brandis told ABC News 24.

"Indeed, I think Mr Brough... will be re-elected to Parliament next year, he will be the Member for Fisher, he'll be a much better representative for the people of Fisher than the disgraced Peter Slipper has been, and Mr Brough I think will go on to have an illustrious future parliamentary career."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-12-13/labor-ramps-up-attack-on-slipper-conspiracy/4425520?WT.svl=news0

 

 

Justice Steven Rares's judgment on Wednesday in the Federal Court made for gripping reading.
The interplay of newspaper reptiles, the unlovely Speaker of the House of Representatives, his duplicitous staffers, desperate Liberals grasping for power, a no-win, no-fee flack merchant and over-the-top lawyering - was all too much enjoyment for one day.
As has now been widely known, the core finding of the judge was the manner in which the sexual harassment proceedings were brought by James Ashby against Peter Slipper were an abuse of the court's process.
The judge explained the inclusion of allegations about misuse of Cabcharge dockets and a previous sexual relationship between Slipper and a young member of his staff, were designed to injure the parliamentarian for no legitimate forensic purpose.
They were irrelevant and scandalous, and were designed to maximise and inflame the media coverage.
....
Then we have the latest ignominy for the shadow attorney-general, Queenslander George Brandis.
Throughout the Ashby versus Slipper case he has been volunteering his foot-in-mouth observations, which bring little hope that in an Abbott government we'll have an attorney with dignity, let alone acumen.
Brandis has been the author of much posturing and silliness on legal issues.
In this instance, he objected to the Commonwealth settling its case with Ashby, which was done in the expectation proceedings could be long and expensive.
''This is further evidence of how dishonest and slippery this government is,'' he intoned, without a hint of shame.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/ashby-case-a-shocking-spectacle-20121213-2bcgg.html#ixzz2ExyBLUxV


The commonwealth played it smart... for the measly sum of $50,000 plus court cost (not negligible). Had Ashby not taken the money — which was above possible compensation for such "case", it would have proven that Ashby was after something else but "justice"... The commonwealth admitted no wrong in the affair ether... But the payment, thus settlement, robbed the opposition (and George Brandis) of watching a long protracted theatre piece that would have dragged the government further into the cleverly placed muck of the affair. Thus, as soon as this was settled, the other court case could proceed, which of course the opposition would have liked to be delayed by the first case dragging on...
I like the bit describing the media advisor as a no-win no-fee flack merchant... He would be spewing chips... Because by the end of this his name whoever he was would be tainted for no financial reward...
As well, if you're an observer of stuff, yesterday, the merde-och online network had nil, zilch, nada, I mean NOTHING about the slipper case that could be see with the naked eye, though the case had made headlines on all other media... Is it because their own reporter got a hand in throwing the muck? Today, though, we have a an article in the merde-och outfit that tells us from londontown that Tony Abbott and the coalition had nothing to do with the slipper affair... Obviously, Tony has not read the transcript of the emails, but he looks serious enough in the picture to make us believe he is serious about being serious...

 

To prove the point of seriousness beyond being serious, Tony advises us that :

 

"The Labor party should accept that there are no conspiracies here; there are no conspiracies whatsoever," Mr Abbott told reporters after arriving in London.

"I think the Labor Party should stop hyperventilating. If the Labor Party thinks there's been some terrible injustice done to Mr Slipper, they should put him back into the Speaker's chair."

http://www.news.com.au/national/abbott-denies-slipper-conspiracy/story-fncynjr2-1226536524353

The gall of the man...

 

Acknowledging that Justice Rares's ruling has been appealed, Mr Abbott said: " ... The only issues at stake are: did Mr Slipper sexually harass his former staffer? And why did the Prime Minister think he was a fit and proper person to be the Speaker in the first place?"

http://www.news.com.au/national/abbott-denies-slipper-conspiracy/story-fncynjr2-1226536524353

----------------------------------

Er, Tony.... Tony.... Tony.... Peter Slipper WAS YOUR FRIEND.... for many many many years... He was even the casting vote for you becoming the leader of the muckopposition... ONE VOTE which you did accept... Did you know he was not fit to be YOUR friend — or your supporter?...

Oh I see "I knew Peter Slipper was "suspect" for many years..." Says the two-faced Tonimucker...  That is why he, Tonybullcrap, was at Peter Slipper's wedding as a mate...

From Bob Ellis...

IT IS TIME, I think, we joined some dots.

A week ago, two young people accidentally caused a suicide. They were fired, their show was cancelled, they said sorry, and they wept; one offered to hug the dead person’s relatives, and money was given to those relatives by the radio station they worked for.

Two days ago, a similar story was told. Four grown men, Ashby, Abbott, Brough and Pyne, tried to drive to suicide a vulnerable man and nearly succeeded — and they did it deliberately.

They falsely accused him of a criminal act, and published some private, light-hearted, letters that distressed his family and ruined his career. When it was discovered they had done this they did not weep, nor say sorry, nor offer money, nor show contrition; they said his ‘potty mouth’ showed him to be underserving of office and if he had suicided, well, big deal.

Two of the same men ‒ Abbott and Pyne ‒ tried as well to drive another man, Craig Thomson, to suicide, and a doctor, Mal Washer, warned them they were doing so. They did it by saying falsely he had with half a million thieved dollars paid for whores. They distressed his pregnant wife and endangered his tiny children and cost him, with these arrant falsehoods, his career. They did not say sorry for this either.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/the-sinister-deadly-conspiracies-against-slipper-and-thomson/

 

Michelle Grattan writes this in the SMH today...

Julia Gillard sees in the Ashby case a political strike fighter that can be deployed to try both to raise doubts about Tony Abbott’s credibility and to fend off questions about the AWU slush fund.

The cynic might say that Judge Steven Rares has  answered most of the questions about Brough, whom he found plotted with James Ashby against Peter Slipper. The big question regarding Brough is one for others: should he remain the candidate for Fisher?

Tony Abbott is of course saying yes but his rationale is weak.
Pressed in London on why Brough should not be disendorsed, he said the case was under appeal (actually, it is not yet). So is he suggesting he would take a different view if an appeal was lost? I don’t think so.
Second, he said Brough had been ''quite transparent and upfront about his involvement''. That is hardly the impression from the judgment.Gillard is contrasting the Coalition’s pursuit of her for ''something that happened 17 years ago and has absolutely no implications for public life today'', with Abbott’s ''fudging'' on a contemporary scandal.
She’s right about the fudging. Abbott continues to say he had no ''specific'' knowledge of what was coming from Ashby. It remains unclear whether the well-worn ''specific'' is there to cover general rumours or something else.
Gillard is also correct in saying that the opposition’s suggestion the government should restore Slipper to the Speakership if it thinks a great injustice was done to him is a straw man. Even if it wanted to – which it certainly doesn’t – it could not because that would need cross bench support, which would not be forthcoming.

But at the end of this quite decent writing, Grattan, who, I understand from her usual prose, hates Julia Gillard (like most scribes), writes a barb to rub Julia with crap in regard to the Peter Slipper's saga and some misogynous misunderstanding...

But her line that ''Mr  Slipper resigned appropriately having seen in the public domain texts of an unacceptable nature'' overlooks one inconvenient fact – her own past words.

Her famous misogyny speech was given when she was opposing a Coalition no-confidence motion against Slipper. She condemned his sexist text messages but argued:''I also believe that, in making a decision about the speakership, this parliament should recognise that there is court case in progress and that the judge has reserved his decision. .. this parliament should see that conclusion. I believe that is the appropriate path forward and that people will then have an opportunity to make up their minds with the fullest information available to them.''

Behind the scenes, key crossbenchers were twisting Slipper’s arm and he quit within hours. But if the path Gillard advocated publicly had been followed, Slipper would have still been Speaker when this week’s court judgment came.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/gillard--takes-a--big-slipper-to-abbott-over-ashby-judgment-20121214-2be28.html#ixzz2EzMQVSLo
------------------------------------
Excuse me Michelle! But on that infamous day, in October, did not you write something like:

Michelle Grattan, The Age:

“The government is well rid of Mr Slipper, but the sequence of yesterday’s events was a bad look for it. Julia Gillard and other government speakers were forced to defend on dubious grounds Mr Slipper continuing in his job, when his situation had become indefensible. The Prime Minister threw everything into her argument, which revolved around trying to pin the ‘misogynist’ label on the Opposition Leader. It was perhaps the only weapon available to her, but it sounded more desperate than convincing.”

 

Yes Michelle,  you really hate Julia when she scores a few points against some rat droppings from the North Shore... Had you not noticed that Tony Abbott had tempted the Prime minister by accusing her of being sexist and misogynist, for letting Slipper make his own decision, on the solo reference that Peter Slipper (or it could have been Ashby) made some low class analogies about female anatomy?

 

 

So Abbott has been caught with his hand in the conspiracy jar and the first place he decided to go was with the IT problem angle.

Let’s rehash some of what Paul Osborne from AAP wrote yesterday on this issue [IA emphasis]:

Federal Labor is trying to link Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to its claim there was a Liberal National Party (LNP) “conspiracy” to bring down former party member Peter Slipper and, by doing so, the government.

The attack came as Mr Abbott’s office denied it began drafting a media release responding to the April 20 filing of court documents by political adviser James Hunter Ashby, accusing the then parliamentary speaker of sexual harassment, the night before the story broke.

….

The metadata of the media release on the Ashby matter sent by Mr Abbott’s office to media outlets indicates it was “created” at 11.08pm on Friday, April 20, 2012 – before News Limited published its exclusive story on the Saturday.

Asked to explain the discrepancy between the time the document was apparently created and transmitted to the media at 9.17am on the Saturday, Mr Abbott’s office said that during April the computer server timestamps were sometimes out by up to 10 hours.

Having worked in the IT industry for a long time (almost 20 years), I felt it was my duty to explain how Abbott’s line that “during April the computer server timestamps were sometimes out by up to 10 hours” was wrong ― and why it was – at best – improbable and – at worst – impossible.

Let’s take this on face value: the Australian Parliament House (APH) network – like most corporate and government networks – is a complex beast. Spanning politicians on all sides of parliament and public servants alike, security is paramount. To maintain the level of security in APH time is essential.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/abbott-implicated-in-ashby-conspiracy-by-10-hours-of-bullshit/

go and visit: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/24007

And the deputy of the opposition, Julie Bishop, has the gall to say the government settled with Ashby because the government had a feeling he "might" win the case against slipper... What a lot of rot... The case against the commonwealth smelt like it had been organised to lengthen the time the government would be saddled with the stench coming from the Slipper case...

 

As I have mentioned, the government was very smart in speeding up the process and give Ashby money he could not refuse, straight from the onset...The opposition is crossed because they thought that this whole problem would have been troubling the government till mid-next year... Now it's coming back on Tony Abbott shoes...

 

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA are gloating about the fact the LNP and Ashby have “succeeded” in their evil little plot to discredit the Government.

They are gloating about the fact that, not only have they ruined a man’s career, they have also destroyed a man’s “character”.

What a wonderful result that must seem — to have so successfully slandered and defamed another person? To have driven him and his family to the brink?

This person, Peter Slipper, was a man the LNP themselves had endorsed in the Fisher electorate for decades. And he was a man to be ruined by someone who couldn’t have been a more trusted ally; who had pride of place at Slipper’s wedding — though he turned up 20 minutes late, delaying the service and leaving the bride in tears.

The man referred to is Tony Abbott — a man without a shred of honour.

Tony Abbott thought enough of the character of Peter Slipper to celebrate his wedding — yet later scathingly denounced him to the nation in Parliament as a misogynist.

A few of Peter Slipper’s private text messages suggest, at times, he may have had less than admirable thoughts — but who are we to judge? If someone was to trawl through all your own most private words — would you feel exposed? Would you have said things you now regret? These thoughts of Mr Slipper’s ‒ these very human thoughts ‒ do not make him any less competent, or sane, or good, or worthy.

Regrettably, Peter Slipper may very well have been the best Speaker to sit in the Speaker’s chair since Federation — yet he was denied much time to shine by the arrogant, power-hungry narcissism of a bosom friend he’d held for decades.

This kind of personal betrayal is almost unimaginable in a prospective prime minister.

Tony Abbott had the audacity – the temerity – to stand up in Federal Parliament to denounce, discredit and debase his very own former bosom buddy — but if Tony Abbott’s great friend is a terrible misogynist ‒ a hater of women ‒ then what does this say about Tony Abbott?

It says that Tony Abbott is a hypocrite.

It reminds us that this is the same person who was arrested and convicted for vandalism at university; who punched a wall on either side of a woman’s head in a fit of rage after being beaten by her in a student election; who found himself in court for sexual assault after allegedly groping a woman; and who has been, right throughout his life, a bully and a bigot. A man who has been reported to have a tendency to respond first with punches, not words; who flattened a man’s nose and ended up in Glebe Court on assault charges; a man whose greatest love is fighting.

Put simply, Abbott has no right to slander others on charges of character — because he is of base character himself.

Abbott’s more recent “character”, since assuming the top job in the Liberal Party, is clearly apparent. He will destroy anything and anybody that stands in his way in a bloodthirsty romp to take the ultimate prize – the prime ministership – something he has coveted his entire life.

Abbott brazenly calls for an inquiry into the 20 year old AWU issue – an issue no one in the Coalition or the mainstream media has been able to produce a shred of evidence about that tarnishes the Prime Minister – but when an inquiry is suggested about getting to the bottom of the Ashby/Slipper affair – an issue in which a Federal Court Judge has brought down damning findings against Ashby and senior members of the LNP, including a former Federal Liberal cabinet minister – he runs back home to mother England and calls it all a witch hunt!

The gall of this man.

When asked about when he personally knew about the Ashby allegations, Tony Abbott, as barefaced as ever, looked Australia in the eye and said:

“When everyone else knew. When I read it about it in the Sydney Morning Herald.”

Bullshit!

Now, thanks to the brilliant analysis of IT expert Kieran Cummings, we can be quite sure that Abbott has lied about this — as he has shamelessly lied about so many other things.

Kieran has proven, by analyzing the meta-data from Abbott’s APH email stream, that Abbott’s Ashby media release was, in fact, written the night before Ashby submitted his court action.

So, Abbott knew all about the Ashby conspiracy — to lay low his old mate.

That is the definition of scum.

His denial of specific knowledge sank further into implausibility when Opposition Chief Whip Warren Entsch confirmed today that he rang Abbott the night before Ashby submitted his claim against Slipper. And how did Entsch know Ashby’s case was about to break in the press? Well, IA can reveal that we have discovered through our investigations that Entsch and Mal Brough are very old friends — much like Slipper and Abbott. But, more specifically, Entsch’s staffer Suzanne Newbury’s husband, James Newbury, is none other than Christopher Pyne’s chief of staff.

Christopher Pyne is the one who, apparently, can’t recall sending emails requesting Ashby’s phone number and personal email — but after being shown by a journalist the email he actually did send James Ashby, he changed his story, agreed it happened and then said “so what?”. Then, when it was shown that Pyne has met Ashby on numerous occasions in the lead up to Ashby launching his spurious claim against Slipper — Pyne denied any knowledge of the pending action.

Liar.

It is now becoming crystal clear that the Ashby conspiracy ran right through the senior ranks of the Liberal Party.

We also have Julie Bishop, someone who says she doesn’t know or care who she is talking to on the other end of a phone — remember Ralph Blewitt? She also can’t recall James Ashby calling her office for “advice” — even though it was allegedly given by her own chief of staff, Murray Hansen. That’s the same Murray Hansen who was caught out plagiarising for Bishop back in 2008.

Then there’s Jolly Joe Hockey — an inexplicable favourite amongst the morning television gaggle. Jolly Joe quietly travelled to the Sunshine Coast in April – that is, just before Ashby filed his court documents – to meet Mal Brough and Clive Palmer at a Coolum steakhouse. Joe says they discussed Peter Slipper — but not James Ashby. Of course not! Now, don’t expect big Joe to remember meeting James Ashby ‒ if it turns out he did ‒ as he has up to eleventy things on his mind at any one time. And if you persist in asking him questions about this affair — well, you can just “go to hell”!

Yes, you can rely on the Liberal Party to tell the truth — but only if their backs are pressed right up against the wall.

And then there’s Mal Brough.

Mal Brough is the man who has been pre-selected by the LNP for James Ashby’s former employer, Peter Slipper’s, seat of Fisher.

In the early stages, apparently before he was aware of how much even the media don’t like him, he also said he didn’t meet James Ashby.

Then, as the truth emerged, it became twice…then three times…

How many times did he really meet Ashby? How many times do you need to meet to plan a conspiracy? I have no idea; I have never planned one? Have you?

The texts messages and information uncovered by Independent Australia’s tenacious investigative reporters show, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that these illiberal Liberals are drowning in a quagmire of conspiracy.

And, of course, the mainstream media know it full well, but they refuse to dig too hard — perhaps for fear of what they might find.

It is clear that from Judge Rares’ findings that this scandalous case was deliberately conceived in an atmosphere of revenge, spite and ambition — to discredit Peter Slipper, to have him removed as Speaker, and to bring down the properly elected Australian Government.

In many places, these sorts of actions are called sedition.

In Australia, it’s called “The LNP’s right to rule”.

It is extremely frightening for our nation that the mainstream media continue to refuse to investigate this issue — and to tell the Australian people the full truth.

It is time we asked — why won’t they?

 

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/ashbygate-and-the-born-to-rule-brigade/

 

The mainstream media loves Tony Abbott, so they won't touch him — while some opinionated websites such as Crikey and The Monthly are too afraid to tell it fully like it is... or are too timid.

I guess they are secretly afraid of Tony Abbott and his goons... or of losing readership should they take side when there is an obvious side to take... They also appear to have fallen into the comfortable trap, set by the mainstream media, especially the merde-och press, that throws Julia Gillard in the same dirt bag as Tony Abbott.

Abbott and Gillard lie, they tell us...

It's politics, you know...

The AWU, you know... Julia must be hidding something because Tony insinuates she's hidding something — like the carbon tax...

In fact, Julia does not lie. She may be doing the wrong things at times or change her mind when circumstances change but SHE DOES NOT LIE. On the sum total of importance to this country, Tony is a minus 100. Julia is a plus 999.

So, like Michelle Grattan and some "balanced" spruiking idiots (even at the ABC — especially at the ABC), they blame Julia and Tony for being stupid TOGETHER... While most of the mainstream media promote the idea Tony is god.

For me Tony is the god of turds. 

Yes.  The aim of the mainstream media is to reduce Julia to Tony's level in order to promote the LNP...

But Tony is the ONLY instigator of mega-crap, to which Julia always responds with dignity and measure...

Tony Abbott is the pit of dunny darkness, the king of shit-matter in space, the cesspool swimming champion, the hero of dung beetles who love writing from the sewers — the gutter-press having long vanished from the drainpipes....

 

 

From Bob Ellis

NEWSPOLL SHOWS Labor’s base vote back where it was, 38, when it won a negotiated victory in 2010.

It is likely 4 per cent of the ‘Other’ vote is for the Katter Party in Queensland, whose Newman-hating preferences will probably drift to Labor, putting it on 50 or 51 two-party preferred. With an adequate campaign, this means Labor would win outright in August or November, after it is shown Abbott’s figures do not add up.

Its numbers will improve when the honest poll, Nielsen, comes out in two weeks and shows Labor on 51.

Why did it go so wrong for the Liberals so quickly? They cannot now win in Victoria or South Australia, and Labor has to be in with a chance in Queensland, where Newman sacked firefighters in time for this most dangerous summer of all. But why did it go so bad for them federally?

It’s because, I think, they no longer have secrecy on their side.

For most of their history, they could hide their incompetence under big lies: that China would soon invade us; that this could be avoided if we beat back the ‘Communist menace’ in Vietnam; that Afghanistan should be invaded because Bin Laden lived in a cave there; that Iraq should be bombed flat because big bombs were being built there; that boat people were the Taliban in disguise with kidnapped children they threw overboard; that Hicks, Haneef and Habib were terrorists; that the GST and WorkChoices were dead and buried; that Wayne Swan was ‘the most incompetent Treasurer in our history’; that Campbell Newman had no intention of sacking thirty thousand public servants; that global warming was ‘bullshit’; that Thomson was a whoremonger and Slipper a kind of rapist of men; and so on.

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/the-liberals-nosedive-explained/

 

See toon at top...

 

ON THE 12th of December 2012, the Federal Court handed down its judgement in James Ashby’s sexual harassment case against the Speaker Peter Slipper. It was sensational — a political conspiracy to abuse the court system with vexatious litigation to destroy a political opponent.

The mind boggled.

I’d just joined Twitter, and was surprised to get a tweet predicting there would be little coverage.

Nonsense, I replied. There’ll be intensive investigation by journos — ‘they will go for it after being conned by Libs twice’. The first time, of course, was the just completed torrent of publicity on the Prime Minister’s pre-politics role in setting up a fund later used for fraud, which ended with nothing of substance proved.

I was wrong.

No page one splashes. No page ones at all in the Murdoch tabloids, which had broken Ashby’s allegations to the Court with a splash and then kept splashing. In the Daily Telegraph, a small news story on, wait for it, page 17, with the misleading headline ‘Court rejects SLIPPER case’.

I was horrified, but Saturday’s coverage put me in shock.

PM Gillard had called on Abbott to disendorse Mal Brough, who the court found had been part of the conspiracy. Other Labor figures had called for an inquiry. Tony Abbott said they were ‘hyperventilating’, and repeated his never deconstructed ‘I had no specific knowledge’ line. Yet there was NO news story in the DT. They’d moved on. I’d bought all the papers at the airport to read all about Ashby on my flight home. There was virtually nothing to read. I tweeted: ‘Bought the papers today. Where are the news features, the reads, the analysis, the questions on Ashby’s funding? In my day Ashby would have filled pages in news and features. What has happened and why? Please explain!’

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/politics/the-ashbygate-conspiracy-of-silence/

---------------------------------------

Margo, you're a champion. This site (YD) would not have existed without you... but as you've noted so well, the journalism landscape has changed from reasonable investigation to muck Labor at all cost — all under "instructions" from proprietors... This is why I don't have any qualms at calling the merde-och press so...

Former staffer James Ashby says he will drop his case against former parliamentary Speaker Peter Slipper.

"More than two years ago, I launched legal action in the federal court against Peter Slipper ... for sexual harassment and breach of contract," Ashby said in a statement emailed from his lawyer.

"After deep reflection and consultation with those close to me, I now have decided to seek leave to discontinue my federal court action against Peter Slipper.

"This has been an intense and emotionally draining time for me and my family, taking its toll on us all."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/18/james-ashby-says-he-will-drop-case-against-former-speaker-peter-slipper