And the National Anti-Corruption Commission loses its appeal.

Major General Paul Brereton would be doing well to plan a skilful retreat from utter disaster rather than gallant holding actions pending the arrival of reinforcements. They won’t be coming. Not from a government which is increasingly pissed off that Brereton’s strategic and tactical skills have made a political deficit from what should have been a big plus for the government, and popularity rather than scathing contempt from the electorate. Nor from a political class which for years has championed a body, found its cause adopted by an initially sceptical Labor, and then, as it sees it, saw the project torpedoed by Labor treachery. Perhaps from nervousness about the damage a fair dinkum NACC could do to the government and his reputation.

The measure of the frustration of the lobby for an anti-corruption body is that its present most public defender, after its efforts of recent times, is Peter Dutton, who had originally been against the idea. It is now so weak and pathetic that he does not see it as any sort of brake on coalition government as usual. Mere idle mischief making, indeed, made Labor lose a campaigning week as Albanese was unable to control a random event – one that reminded the electorate that most politicians (as well as most senior bureaucrats, many senior military officers including Brereton, many captains of industry) belong to the Qantas chairman’s club and are plied with benefits, particularly upgrades as well as allowed to avoid the great unwashed, whenever they fly.

A book which was, by coincidence being published that week suggested that Albanese had at times asked the chief executive of Qantas, Alan Joyce personally for upgrades, instead of having them foisted upon him as a courtesy. It took a furious Albanese nearly a week to flatly deny this – the most serious allegation made. Meanwhile other (opposition) politicians picked at a serious wound, and others, including ministers, pretended that it was all OK because the upgrades had been declared in the register of gifts and interests, if without assignments of the value of benefits gained (which could have amounted to $10,000 if overseas travel had been involved).

As ever when a factoid comes out of the blue, Albanese found that neither he nor his minders nor his spin doctors could control the debate or the public dissemination of his fondness for perks and other little statuses. He became increasingly furious, not least at the sheer opportunism of criticism by politicians who had and used just the same perks regularly, as did some of the journalists opining. And he seemed to think that the continuing life of the story was as a result of some high-level Murdoch and Nine-Fairfax plot to undermine him and Labor in the lead-up to the election.

Albanese’s limp self-defence aggravated the damage of Qantas allegations

He was quite right in insisting that it was a small beer issue compared with some of the great matters of state in which he and Labor were engaged. But the person making the story damaging was himself. The public knows, more or less, about such political perks. But it is only rarely that the scale of them is exposed, and the fact that they are greedily taken up by politicians, bureaucrats and military officers, every day engaged in making decisions worth millions to Qantas.

Qantas is engaged in a large-scale influence campaign by which it........

© Pearls and Irritations