Will Slipper’s rattery prove to be a Colston rerun

POLITICS ... with Mungo MacCallum
There is an old political saying: A man who will rat once will rat twice. Obviously it has escaped Tony Abbott, or if he has heard it he assumed it only applied to Labor renegades; because Peter Slipper has form.

Originally elected as a member of the National Party in 1984 he lost his seat in 1987 and defected to the Liberals, who were at that time in Queensland seen as even more hostile to the Nats than the Labor Party. This act of treachery was rewarded when he returned to parliament in 1993; in 1997 he was appointed government whip and in 2002 elevated to the position of parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, John Howard. Howard disposed of his services in 2003 but he remained on the front bench as parliamentary secretary to the Finance Minister, Nick Minchin, for another year. During this period he continued to practise as a lawyer, and, improbably, as a priest of a fringe religion known as the Traditional Anglican Communion.
By the time the coalition lost government in 2007 there were moves to dump him within his electorate of Fisher, led by a savage campaign in the principal local newspaper, the Sunshine Coast Daily. But he retained control of his branches and was re-endorsed for the 2010 election as a candidate for newly formed Nat-Libs. However, stories about his massive parliamentary expenses were already accumulating and last year the federal police conducted a brief investigation; no charges were laid but he was forced to repay $14,000.
He was by now considered a serious risk by his coalition colleagues, with no hope of promotion. Labor realised this and backed him for the plum job of deputy speaker against the coalition's official candidate, Bruce Scott. Slipper won and basked in his victory.
It should by now have been obvious that his loyalty to the coalition was at best negotiable, but neither Abbott nor anyone else made any serious attempt to win him back; on the contrary, the former Howard minister Mal Brough emerged to threaten his preselection in Fisher, with the open support of Howard and, it appeared, the tacit endorsement of Abbott.
In a hung parliament in which every vote was vital, this was political stupidity of an almost suicidal dimension. In contrast, Labor was cosseting every member, even Craig Thomson, the former union official under a police investigation. Slippery Pete was allowed to slip away. He was not the first parliamentary rat, or the most outrageous. Much has been made of Howard's seduction of Labor's Mal Colston, whom he bought with the Deputy Presidency of the Senate in 1998. But the tradition of bribing political opponents with the promise of high office is an old and dishonourable one, reaching back almost as far as federation.
Alfred Deakin, now regarded by the Liberal Party not only as a founding father but almost a patron saint, was a serial offender, moving his Protectionists effortlessly between the left and right, and finally uniting with his mortal enemies, the Free Traders, to wrest the Prime Ministership from Labor's Andrew Fisher. Not long afterwards Billy Hughes deserted the Labor Party to join the conservative Nationalists in the top job and in 1931 the Tories of the United Australia Party purchased Labor's Joe Lyons as their leader.
More recently Gough Whitlam attempted to secure the numbers in the senate by suborning the Labor rat, Vince Gair, with the offer of an ambassadorship. For Abbott to bewail the enticement of Peter Slipper as the death of Australian democracy shows a lamentable lack of knowledge of the real history of democracy in Australia. Nor has any convention been broken by the appointment of a speaker from outside the government ranks.
In the parliament of Westminster itself it is common for speakers to preside over governments from both sides, while in Australia state parliaments have more than once resorted to the device of appointing independent speakers to prop up the government's numbers.
In any case, Abbott's own frequently stated position is a preference for an independent in the job, and only last week he was trying to persuade the independent Rob Oakeshott to nominate. Spare us the confected outrage.
Nor does the argument that Slipper is not a suitable person for the high office of speaker stand up to scrutiny. In the Australian parliament the speaker's job is not so much a high office as a sinecure. It is very well paid and the perks are terrific, but it does not entail much onerous work: on the rare occasions that hard decisions are needed, the speaker invariably takes the advice of his clerks. In the past it has almost invariably been the gift of the government of the day to one of its loyal and long serving members who has not been sufficiently talented to make the ministry; a consolation prize for has beens and never will bes.
Among the speakers of the last 20 years have been Leo McLeay and Steve Martin from the Labor side, and Bob Halverson, Neil Andrew and David Hawker from the Libs - not exactly names to conjure with. Back in the Whitlam era, Jim Cope - the last speaker to resign in office - gained the job largely as a result of his reputation as parliament's snooker champion. And Harry Jenkins, for all the praise heaped upon him in the last few days, was never more than a good-humoured and personable journeyman.
This, of course, is where Slipper is vulnerable: he is neither good-humoured nor personable, and even before becoming a serial rat, he was carrying a lot of political baggage. Julia Gillard can only hope that he can survive the barrage of mud which will undoubtedly be flung at him by the parties he has spurned - and, of course, that this time he stays bought After all, a man who can rat twice can rat three times.
Towards the end of his marathon political career Billy Hughes was asked: "You've joined every other party, Billy; why not the Country Party?" Hughes famously replied: "Oh, you've got to draw the line somewhere."
Someone should ask Peter Slipper if he has plans to join the Greens next. After all, Hughes was 90 when he died in office. Slipper, at 61, still has plenty of time.