Attorney-General Dreyfus authorised a large payment to Brittany Higgins in December 2022. There was neither a legal basis nor compliance with the well-established procedure for dealing with compensation claims against the Commonwealth. But does the well-funded National Anti-Corruption Commission care, asks columnist HUGH SELBY. 

I am one of the three-in-five men who are not cat lovers. 

For all human time, The Cat that Walked by Himself has said it all: “Then the Man threw his two boots and his little stone axe… at the Cat, and the Cat ran out of the Cave and the Dog chased him up a tree; and from that day to this, Best Beloved, three proper Men out of five will always throw things at a Cat whenever they meet him, and all proper Dogs will chase him up a tree. 

“But the Cat keeps his side of the bargain, too. He will kill mice, and he will be kind to Babies when he is in the house, just as long as they do not pull his tail too hard. But when he has done that, and between times, and when the moon gets up and night comes, he is the Cat that walks by himself, and all places are alike to him.” 

As that Kipling story relates, it was a woman who made the deal with the cat that let Cat come inside from the wild, sleep by the fire, and be fed for nothing more than having made Baby laugh aeons ago.

As it was in the cave so it is and always will be. For a dozen years her cat, a stunning seal ragdoll, has roamed our house, slept in the cupboards, on the sofas and the beds, hidden from strangers, and – just before dawn – meows for attention.

No doubt you have picked the misogynistic error: it is not her cat. The reality is that she is the cat’s human.

But all things come to an end and for Cat it is the slowly enlarging growth that day by day is sapping his strength and appetite. More and more of his time is spent as a sleeping, curled up, bundle of lavish hair. Even his ebony tail swishes less often. 

Only one activity has increased: the attention-seeking meows come more often, including in the wee hours when it is otherwise black and silent as a cave.

Those calls serve as a warning to be ever vigilant for the unseen enemy. The big C is not just cancer of the body, it is also corruption of the body politic. Both are silent, both are incremental, both are fatal, but both – if dealt with early enough – can be defeated.

Michael Wolff in “Landslide”, his third book about the Trump years, reported this exchange on Page 286 between the former president and David Schoen, his near last lawyer for the 2021 impeachment, when Trump wanted Schoen to take the lead during the hearing:

Schoen: “I’m a wimp, sir.”

Trump: “What? What did you say?”

“I’m a wimp, sir. I’m a pushover. That’s me. I can’t stand up for myself. That’s just who I am.”

“A wimp? You’re supposed to be defending me in an impeachment trial. My lawyer’s a wimp. A wimp. Did you just call yourself a wimp?… You do it. Man up.” 

Why was Trump left with a wimp? Because, records Wolff, Trump had exhausted all those who might have offered good advice and good representation. “To a man, all the lawyers in his first impeachment trial begged off” any part of the second, Wolff writes.

No matter: the US Supreme Court’s last rites to US Independence Day was its six to three decision this year that invested their once and (they thought soon to be) future king with the 17th century attributes of a French monarch.

That indefensible decision was inevitable. The debilitating disease had been spreading for a long time: permitting the offshore Guantanamo prison so that alleged “terrorists” had no access to standard legal process; being blind to “extraordinary rendition”, the process of moving “suspects” from one location to another to facilitate torture. How quickly we forget that our citizen Mamdouh Habib was one of its victims.

We are no better. We set up and maintained off-shore facilities for would-be migrants – Nauru, PNG etcetera – even when Nauru’s government abandoned any pretence of an independent judiciary by “refusing re-entry” to the chief justice. Sadly, they had no trouble finding someone ready to take their money.

Attorney-General Dreyfus authorised a large payment to Brittany Higgins in December 2022. There was neither a legal basis nor compliance with the well-established procedure for dealing with compensation claims against the Commonwealth.

But does the well-funded National Anti-Corruption Commission care? If it does, it chooses not to say so. Meantime it has refused to investigate the corruption aspects of Robodebt.

“Wilful blindness” is a feature of anti-corruption bodies. They are set up to reveal corruption; however, the price of doing so is either having their powers clipped, or appointing people who are as politically adept as they are poor sighted investigators. Best to put heads in the sand.

T’was ever thus. The cat has been indulged for a dozen years. It has done well, its lifespan being much longer than any committed corruption investigator.

Former barrister Hugh Selby is the CityNews legal columnist. His free podcasts on “Witness Essentials” and “Advocacy in court: preparation and performance” can be heard on the best known podcast sites.