Tudge, the man who never was, thinks we’ll forget about his grubby history

Do Alan Tudge, Michaelia Cash and the Liberal Party take us all for fools? Taxpayers are $650,000 poorer due to a settlement involving Tudge’s former media adviser Rachelle Miller, with whom he has admitted having a relationship while he was her boss. There is also an allegation of him physically assaulting her. Both Tudge and Cash persist in denying anything untoward ever happened despite the settlement, which is larger than when first made public during the election campaign. “I was not a party to these matters or any payment sought and have no knowledge of them,” Tudge bizarrely told Nine newspapers. Nothing to see here. Nothing to do with him.

Tudge claims he was “cleared” by two inquiries. That’s false. The Vivienne Thom inquiry found “there is insufficient evidence to support a finding on the balance of probabilities” about Tudge’s treatment of Miller — “noting that the available evidence was limited by Ms Miller’s decision not to participate in the inquiry”. Miller also refused to participate in an earlier government inquiry by Sparke Helmore Lawyers that “cleared” Tudge. At no stage did the Morrison government agree to a fully independent inquiry that would have allowed Miller to offer her account of what happened with Tudge.

That was the style of the Morrison government — when forced reluctantly into inquiries into its series of scandals, it was always hamstrung, designed to provide defence and delay for political problems.

So we’re left with the mystery of why Miller was awarded $650,000 when, as we’re told by her employers, nothing happened to her — with the implication from Tudge that Miller has lied about his treatment of her.

It’s the same mystery as the role of Tudge in the Morrison government after he “resigned” (despite the Thom review “clearing” him), when he somehow remained in cabinet and yet wasn’t working as the education minister, when he was somehow a member of the ministry while Stuart Robert actually did his job. And it’s the same mystery as Tudge’s location during the election campaign, when he hid from the media and his own voters, turning a safe-as-houses Liberal seat into a tight marginal.

Tudge is a man defined by his absence, the man who wasn’t there — not there in the bed allegedly assaulting Miller, not there rorting car park grants, not there in cabinet, not there in an election campaign. There’s never anything to see here with Tudge.

Now, post-election, he has resurfaced, like some noisome political flotsam, expecting voters will have forgotten all about something he insists never happened anyway, expecting to be taken seriously as an opposition minister, expecting business as usual. Absent a properly independent inquiry into Miller’s allegations, Tudge should be persona non grata. The only media questions to him should be about his treatment of Miller and why she received a $650,000 settlement; his continued presence on the Coalition frontbench a black mark on the Dutton opposition, his continued presence in Parliament a blot on the Victorian Liberal Party — and at a time when its talent pool is already puddle-shallow.

Anything else is a lapse back into the sordid standards of the Morrison years.