No, Mr Porter, it is not OK.
The former attorney general’s pursuit of the ABC for defamation over its reporting of historic rape allegations ended when he discontinued the action.
The ABC issued no retractions or apologies but agreed to add an editor’s note to the article stating that it did not intend to suggest Porter had committed the alleged offence, and that “both parties accept that some readers misinterpreted the article as an accusation of guilt against Mr Porter.” The ABC paid no damages, although it did meet the costs of mediation.
That left Christian Porter carrying his own costs. Even allowing for a discount from his senior counsel, Sue Chrysanthou, legal sources estimate the hit to his finances at $600,000 to $1m.
That’s gotta hurt.
On Monday he adjusted the parliamentary register to reveal that some angel has slipped him “part” of the fees.
His benefactor, he declares, is a “blind trust known as the Legal Services Trust”.
The legal structure means, he says, “I have no access to information” about the trust’s conduct or its funding.
He is not saying how much he got. Might have been a million. Might have been 500 bucks and a birthday card. We’ll probably never know. But it is a fair bet that if it was at the lower end he would have pointed that out.
We know he perceives a potential apprehension of conflict because that’s what the parliamentary register is for. It only exists so that MPs can declare gifts and other financial arrangements that “may conflict, or may be seen to conflict, with (the parliamentarian’s) public duty”.
Porter’s register also notes his role as patron of the Midland Junction Poultry Society. New members are welcome, says the society’s website, as it “promotes, educates and encourages the breeding and showing of pure bred poultry”.
How bizarre that we know far more about the Midland Junction Poultry Society than we do about the person or persons who gave perhaps up to a million dollars to a serving cabinet minister.
Porter claims, improbably or not, that he doesn’t know who gave him the money. For all the rampant speculation now running, the public doesn’t know either.
But it surely has a right to.
Porter might have lost his job as the chief law officer of the land but he remains minister for industry, science and technology. If the money came from a high-net-worth individual, it is possible their source of wealth may have come from commercial interests that come under his very portfolio.
What is to stop, once all this has died down, a well-heeled figure sidling up to the minister and revealing themselves as the benefactor? Perhaps offering the last four digits of the bank account to prove their bona fides. Then the quiet request for the quid pro quo.
Might that benefactor have links to a foreign government? Or organised crime? Did Porter seek advice from security agencies?
This is so clearly fraught with possible peril, to the potential for undue influence or even blackmail, it is astonishing he didn’t just say no.
As the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, argues: “If Mr Porter genuinely doesn’t know who his donors are he shouldn’t accept their money.”
Things have been tough of late for Western Australia’s one-time golden boy. Since his second marriage ended last year he has sold an investment property in Wembley, WA, and his Canberra residence in Kingston.
Whoever helped him out with his legal fees needed only to chart those property moves in the parliamentary register to know that here was a man likely to be grateful for a helping hand.
But all that assumes he has no idea who fronted the cash.
Is it possible that he put feelers out for help among wealthy members of the WA Liberal elites as his legal fees rapidly started to build? If so, then he may not know precisely who tipped in cash to the Legal Services Trust but he might have a pretty good idea.
If so – and of course we don’t know if it is – that would be very concerning indeed, making him potentially susceptible, if not actually bound, to return favours.
Whatever the answer, if this stands, there are two immediate tragedies for Australian public life. The precedent is now set that senior federal politicians can accept large sums claiming not to know who sent them.
And for Porter’s specific portfolio, if Australia is to make more than token efforts to combat climate change – and if it is “technology not taxes” that will get us there – the office of the minister for industry, science and technology has never been more important.
Yet we have a minister who cannot hold a news conference without being besieged with valid questions about where he sources his private funds. A gun-shy minister at a critical time.
Pitiful. And utterly avoidable.
Hugh Riminton is national affairs editor at 10 News First