The Australian Special Minister of State is the Honourable Mal Brough, since 21 September 2015.

In the Government of Australia, the Special Minister of State (SMOS), formerly the Special Minister of State for the Public Service and Integrity, is a ministerial portfolio responsible for various parliamentary, electoral, financial, public service and oversight affairs.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Minister_of_State

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Our Special Minister of State has a track record of being a perfidious wretch. It was Abbott who groomed him back into the Liberal fold and look what Mal did to him.

Brough had been hired by ICAC star Arthur Sinodinos to head an alleged kiddy fitness charity known as Blueearth based in Melbourne, before Tones lured him back to the big time. He probably wishes he hadn’t, because Mal subsequently planted his fangs fair in Abbott’s ankle.

Then there are the other ankle-biters.

Julie Bishop, Wyatt Roy and, of course, the prince of ankle-biters, Christopher Pyne. All up to their neck in the subversion that was "Ashbygate".

So cheer up Bill, there is enough dirt on Brough to fill a Shenhua coal mine.

And the good news is, at last, your side has decided to pick up the shovel. Finally.

Ross Jones is the author of the book ASHBYGATE, which will be officially launched by Independent Australia today (10 December 2015) at 10.30 am at the Shearwater Resort, 79 Edmund Street, Caloundra. All are welcome. Please come along. Light refreshments will be served.

If you can’t make it to Caloundra, you can purchase your copy of Ashbygate by clickingHERE.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/aashbygate-launches-big-bill-brough-and-the-book,8473

 

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http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/blog/11

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's Government has been rocked after two scandal-hit MPs stood down from their frontbench portfolios today.

Liberal MP Mal Brough will stand aside, pending a police investigation, while Jamie Briggs has tendered his resignation.

Mr Briggs has resigned as Minister for Cities and the Built Environment following a late-night incident involving a female public servant in a Hong Kong bar during an official overseas visit last month.

The South Australian MP called a press conference on Tuesday to say the public servant took offence at his actions in the bar.

"At the conclusion of the official programme for the day, my chief of staff and I went for dinner and we invited several other officials, of which one female public servant agreed to attend," he said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-29/mal-brough-and-jamie-briggs-stand-down-from-frontbench/7058266

 

Waiting until the quiet period between Christmas and new year to announce the loss of two ministers shows a “shocking” level of cynicism within government ranks, Labor says.

On Tuesday, Jamie Briggs announced his resignation as cities ministers after a complaint made by a female public servant of inappropriate behaviour during an official trip to Hong Kong in November.

Shortly after the announcement Malcolm Turnbull revealed that the embattled special minister of state, Mal Brough, would stand aside pending a police investigation into his role in the downfall of the former Speaker Peter Slipper.

The acting opposition leader, Tanya Plibersek, said the prime minister was “taking out the trash” during a time when most voters are not focused on politics.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/29/timing-of-turnbull-ministers-departure-shocking-cynicism-says-labor

... better late than never, Malcolm... See also: 

mr 69 per cent's sophie's choice...

 

What does it tell us about Australian politics in 2015 that Mal Brough might lose his job over Peter Slipper’s diary rather than from his role devising the Northern Territory intervention into Indigenous communities?

Ashbygate is, you might say, the quintessential 21st century scandal: a grubby affair of near Talmudic complexity, occasioned by tactical manoeuvring detached from any particular policy outcome and with almost no significance to anyone other than political insiders.

The intervention, on the other hand, was a policy watershed: a disastrous return to bipartisan paternalism in Indigenous policy. Yet, politically, Brough’s culpability for it seems less significant a factor in his political career than the comparatively trivial shenanigans involving Ashby and Slipper.

In an interview with Tony Jones in mid-2007, John Howard credited Brough as the real force behind the intervention.

“He’s a former military man,” Jones responded. “It’s almost as if you’re treating the Northern Territory in this regard as a failed state.”

The comparison was more apt than Jones probably realised. The intervention was so distinctive precisely because it utilised the methodology recently employed in Iraq – except against Indigenous people.

With Iraq, the neocons in the Bush administration had been advocating regime change since the late 1990s. Within hours of 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld realised that the public’s horror at the devastation suddenly made an attack on Saddam politically possible. Notes scribbled by one of his aides documented his thoughts: “Near term target needs – go massive – sweep it all up, things related and not.”

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/31/mal-brough-may-lose-his-job-over-ashbygate-he-should-have-lost-it-over-the-intervention

 

Mal Brough announces he will quit parliament in wake of AFP investigation

Former special minister of state, who stood aside during investigation into his role in leaking of Peter Slipper’s diary, says he won’t recontest seat of Fisher

 

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/26/mal-brough-announces-he-will-quit-parliament-in-wake-of-afp-investigation

 

See toon at top...

 

The rat’s nest that is the Queensland LNP has decided Mal Brough does not meet its high standards and has sacked him.

Brough is not a man to quit voluntarily.

The Queensland LNP State Executive, the people who bought you Campbell Newman, called Mal in to tell him the bad news. Mal probably gasped, pointing out he still had overwhelming support from the branches. But no dice. He had to go.

There are serious Ashbygate problems coming down the pipeline for the LNP and Mal is the weakest link. The diary thing is a mere sideline, an MSM obsession.

The fact is Mal and several other LNP/Liberal members were up to their necks in a plot to abuse the Federal Court to subvert to Australian democratic system.

And it succeeded. Abbott won on the back of the lurid tabloid headlines.

So now the LNP are in power. Sort of. Disarray is another word.

Brough was no more than a puppet in the Ashbygate plot — a plot activated the minute Slipper stepped onto the square known as queens’ pawn 3.

Brough was, as they say, aided and abetted.

Not by just Roy and Pyne, it went much higher than that.  It went into places of secrecy, into political backrooms, into the depths of the Liberal party, into its dark places.

Turnbull came late to this fiasco and is completely blindsided. He’d previously been well mushroomed because he is an idiot savant with a big mouth; now he’s flailing in a sea of ignorance. He has no idea what is happening or where he is vulnerable.

The AFP does not do things lightly. They certainly do not search the Special Minister of State’s residence just for a laugh.

Poetic justice that Brough career destroyed for destroying Slippers. Now for Court, too, cross fingers #Ashbygate https://t.co/R08JzkZc3H

— Margo Kingston (@margokingston1) February 26, 2016

My sources tell me the AFP is acting on a complaint made by the Federal Court that, at the least, Brough, in collusion with Ashby and Harmers Workplace Lawyers, set out to to subvert the court process.

How Harmers has gotten away with its patently false claims in the Originating Document beggars belief. They said they had a sworn, detailed affidavit of Slipper romping indecently with another male when they simply did not. It was total bullshit, but included the precise details of a lurid sick mind.

And now the voters of Fisher will soon have the chance to vote in another dropkick.

Every two-bit parvenu in the LNP will be climbing over the warm body of Brough, including Mark McArdle (Ashby’s confidante) and Jarrod Bleijie (Brough's confidante and failed Newman minister), plus several others with their eyes on the lucrative LNP tenure that is Fisher. Unless you fuck it up.

The AFP warrants were carefully worded so they could grab every document they could. Mal, in his role as a dipstick go-between, will be named in many of these. He had to be sidelined so the party could attempt to pretend it had nothing to do with it

The problem is: the AFP don’t take out their Glocks unless they intend to use them.

Ross Jones is the author of 'Ashbygate: The Plot to Destroy Australia's Speaker'. Find out more about the 'Ashbygate' book HERE.

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