The Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecution can’t be trusted with Cash referral

Well blow us down with a feather: Crikey readers aren’t convinced that the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions will prosecute a Liberal minister. Elsewhere, readers contested the legitimacy of Turnbull’s much lauded “jobs growth” in Bernard Keane’s review of Mathias Cormann’s tax cut stance, and also had a few things to add to our SBS director roundtable.

On Cash’s referral to the CDPP

Marcus Hicks writes: The AFP have a sordid history of saying “nothing to see here” whenever the issue of Coalition malfeasance comes up (just look at the issue of Brough, Ashby and Slipper’s commonwealth diary). So even if they feel there is a case for the Director of Public Prosecutions to pursue, then it must be really bad for Cash’s office. Now lets just hope that the DPP isn’t so hideously compromised that it thinks dropping this case is a good idea.

Mr Denmore writes: This is what happens when governments make partisan appointments to public agencies. McNaughton may well be an utterly impartial and objective Director of Public Prosecutions, but she looks utterly compromised. The trade union royal commission was a stunt, a star chamber created purely to pursue the government’s political enemies, as was the Registered Organisations Commission. Justice has to be seen to be done and in this case, there looks to be a lot of fiddling going below the surface.

On Cormann’s company tax-cut defence

Bref writes: I’d love to weigh in yet again on the “huge jobs growth” myth, but we already did it to death last week. If you include one hour a week jobs the growth figures are meaningless, regardless what the international reporting method is. The figures allow the govt to pull the wool over an unsuspecting public’s eyes and shouldn’t be reported uncritically by journos.

Arky writes: At the 2016 election, as Turnbull endlessly parroted his line about the “government’s strong economic plan for jobs and growth”, some of us were begging for journos, any journos, to ask what was in this plan beyond company tax cuts, and none of you sods did.

The protection racket for Turnbull to avoid scrutiny of his policies was astounding. No one pressing him on his IR policy. No serious questioning of his scare campaign aimed at Labor’s negative gearing changes (but happy to parrot Turnbull’s lines about “Mediscare”). Godwin Grech couldn’t be mentioned. Climate change? Nope, because of journos believing that as long as Turnbull won in his own right without scaring the horses he could then deliver stuff he didn’t promise, so they’d better not ask him difficult questions (and hasn’t that worked well?), like Lenore Taylor’s repeated fantasy land insistence that Turnbull and Hunt were going to introduce a backdoor emissions trading scheme. It’s really hard to think of any scrutiny applied to Turnbull in the 2016 campaign, really, much like the collective lack of skepticism at Tony Abbott’s promises in 2013.

On the next SBS director appointment

Harry Spratt writes: I’m off the firm opinion that the new boss of SBS must ensure that the broadcaster maintains and indeed extends the range of nationalities which are catered for in its programming. This is aside from the obvious imperative to protect the broadcaster from political and social pressure to narrow it’s focus. SBS must not fall into the trap of trying to be all things to all people. It rightly must not mainstream it’s content.

Lesley Gruit writes: Whoever it is, they need to axe any more of the fucking Great British Railway Journeys.

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