“With an election looming, it is difficult to imagine voters not taking integrity into account when determining their vote,” says political columnist MICHAEL MOORE. 

THE Fierravanti-Wells attack on the Prime Minister adds another arrow into the armoury regarding lack of integrity in the current government. 

With an election looming, it is difficult to imagine voters not taking integrity into account when determining their vote.

This is why the Fierravanti-Wells Senate speech is so devastating for the Liberals. No matter how much Scott Morrison spins an alternative discourse, the accusations of corrupt behaviour and lack of integrity really hit home. 

It gets worse for Morrison. Catherine Cusack MLC from the NSW Upper House has long been a factional foe of Fierravanti-Wells. However, on the integrity issue she sings from the same songbook saying the Prime Minister had “trashed” the values of the Liberal Party.

Had these accusations come from just two people, it might have been possible to dismiss them as sour grapes. However, over the last few years there have been far too many accusations of corruption, scandals and ministers having to stand aside because of issues such as misuse of taxpayers’ money. It is no wonder these revelations have been taken up so widely in the media.

There are the broad corruption issues and other separate accusations specifically aimed at Scott Morrison. “The fish stinks from the head” is a pretty powerful accusation. It is even stronger when the context is provided by the Senator who explained the Prime Minister’s hypocrisy as he is “adept at running with the foxes and hunts with the hounds, lacking the moral compass and having no conscience”.

Prime Minister Morrison has sold himself as a man of faith. This speech reveals a picture much more of a man consumed by hypocrisy where “his actions conflict with his portrayal as a man of faith” and as a man who simply uses “faith as a marketing advantage”. 

Catherine Cusack, writing in “The Guardian” adds: “I am happy to endorse her (Fierravanti-Wells) character assessment of the Prime Minister. She was spot on”.

The stench that Senator Fierravanti-Wells identifies is not limited to Scott Morrison but includes the Special Minister of State, Alex Hawke. She described his “corrupt antics in NSW” and went on to say “despite clear evidence of fraud, Hawke’s role in this process has never been fully disclosed”. 

There are even stronger words when describing her own party: “There is a putrid stench of corruption emanating from the NSW Division of the Liberal Party”. This is a leader and party that will be seeking our support in an election that must be held before the end of May.

It is hard to imagine how ordinary voters will perceive a Liberal Party when the NSW Members “have lost faith in the party” and goes on to point out that “our members do not want to help in the upcoming election”. The sort of infighting revealed by this broadcast is a dire warning about what can be expected if the Liberals/Nationals are returned to office.

One of the most damning comments by Catherine Cusack is that in the Liberal Party, “we have forfeited the precious integrity and values that Australia admired and needed and that served our country so well for decades”.

The picture painted by both of these stalwarts of the Liberal Party assists in explaining why the Morrison government failed to set up an Anti-Corruption and Integrity Commission. Despite this being promised before the last election, such a commission has clearly been too risky for the government to expose itself to examination on the sorts of issues raised in this extraordinary speech.

Integrity and ethics are integral to a successful democracy. Seeing our Prime Minister described as a “bully” with “no moral compass” is bad enough. However, the rule of law is also fundamental to democracy. So the Senator’s reflection that “Morrison is not interested in rules-based order. It is his way or the highway” hammers yet another nail into the integrity coffin of Liberal Party leadership.

Senator Fierravanti-Wells concludes with: “In my public life I have met ruthless people. Morrison tops the list followed by Hawke. Morrison is not fit to be Prime Minister and Hawke certainly is not fit to be a minister”. 

With such cross-factional assessments from women within senior elements of the Liberal Party, unless they are just blind followers, Liberal Party voters are put in an awful quandary.