by Quentin Cockburn

Over the past few electoral cycles there’s been a lot of talk about Working Families.  Both sides of politics have shown a remarkable uniformity of opinion when it comes to this constituency.  Wrapped up in the concept of Working Families is the very essence of being Australian.  Beyond all this talk of other emergent Australian families, single sex marriages, single mums, Catholic priests rogering kiddies and the hopeless, ghastly, status, “devastating breakdown” of families in aboriginal communities, the Working Family stands as being the very acme of decency, thrift and struggle.  By definition Working Families are noble.  The foundation of everything we hold dear, and their contribution to the Australian politic immeasurable..

I suppose that’s why so many politicians and bureaucrats recently, (who have been accused of not working quite hard enough in the interests of Real Working Families) have gone that extra yard, to prove that being family, and working can be a benefit to all sorts of people above and beyond the singular and vulnerable nuclear family unit.

Eddie Obeid

Take the Obeids for example.  Nobly, Eddie and his sons, Missus Eddie and their mates have managed to thriftily utilise the resources of whole public departments to ensure that his family achieve a level of comfort and security.  Security is very important to Working Families.  They are vulnerable.  And Eddie, as minister for Labor, was rightfully entitled to ensure that very important decisions at the highest level would ensure that tens of million of profit was redirected away from the public purse to ensure that his family were secure from the vagaries of economic struggle.

Thoughtfully Eddie even sent quite a bit of public funds to his extended family home in Lebanon to build a sort of palace there.  Who said foreign aid was dead?  It’s a symbol of success to show a bit of largesse, and if it was “borrowed” from public institutions, the return to the wider community is entirely justifiable.  Community is family, there’s symmetry in that!  It’s called the trickle down effect.  Not criminal really as Stuart Littlemore (defence Q.C) rightfully suggested, but the canny use of loopholes, and opportunities in the system.  Which reasonable person wouldn’t?  And like Eddie, who wouldn’t seek public funding to pay for his defence.

Now in Victoria we’ve recently heard about Nino Napoli.  He nobly, is an exemplar of Working Families.  In Sicily, there’s a whole network of Working Families that support each other, where the state can’t.

Nino Napoli with publicly funded Toupee

It seems Mr Napoli has brought that cultural preference to the Education Department.  Over a decade, he redirected funds intended for struggling public schools, (being “old school”, I always get confused with private schools, but John Howard ensured that they’re looked after) into the accounts of a few mates and his extended family.  Millions were sent directly to brothers and cousins under alleged “false invoices” to procure other stuff.  Other stuff: gifts, expensive wine, entertainment, trips, and study tours to everywhere exotic and expensive and exclusive.

Nino and his mates got so used to such largesse, they became naturally quite casual about covering their tracks from the auditor.  Funny though, they made themselves the auditor.  Some families from really quite poor schools were peeved that their hard earned through fund raising, sausage sizzles and the like were squandered amongst this elite.  But they don’t get it!!  Some working families just work that little bit harder than others, and deserve a little bit extra.  That’s only fair.  And lately some of the money was used to buy Nino a new hairpiece.  Keeping up appearances!!

So what happened to the principle of Conflict of Interest you say?  Conflict of ‘who’s interest’? I say.  Isn’t that the core principle in ‘Commonwealth’.

‘Help yourself, mate ‘cos if you don’t some other bastard will’