Federal Government

LOSING IT: Sophie Mirabella gets a much-needed holiday

Senior Coalition figures have expressed concerns about the health and stability of Liberal heavyweight Sophie Mirabella after extraordinary scenes in the House of Representatives late last night that saw her expelled from the House for 24 hours by Liberal deputy Speaker Peter Slipper.

DIRTY MONEY
Mirabella has been thought to have under considerable strain recently following extraordinary revelations by Fairfax’s Michael Bachelard that she had seduced a man forty years her senior while in her twenties and had continued a relationship with him for decades (not necessarily sexual in the latter years) including after her marriage where she moved him into a neighbouring property, took hundreds of thousands of dollars from him and then ensured he left her his million-dollar-plus estate, with her as the executor too.

The man’s children were unimpressed and have threatened to challenge the will through the courts in what could prove a major embarrassment for the MP who has a history of making rather tough personal reflections on MPs, including on her own side.

ILL-DISCIPLINED
The debacle in the chamber – for which we will soon have vision – apparently involved her attempt to table a petition denouncing the carbon tax. When leave was refused – a normal thing to do apparently – Mirabella’s reaction has spectacular and led her to eventually defy the rulings of the Liberal MP Peter Slipper who was in the chair.

He named her, prompting a division.

The trouble was that ear-ring wearing Tory Whip Warren Entsch had allowed at least a dozen Libs to go home for a relatively early evening. The stockman was give his cattle a spell.

But when Mirabella had what some colleagues presume was a “mental health moment” and Entsch needed the numbers there to protect her, they weren’t available. So she was duly suspended from the House for 24 hours.

Entsch was furious.

Mirabella left the chamber, visibly shaking and in tears. Recent reports of foul-moods, a changed physique and the mess revealed by Fairfax’s Bachelard over her weird relationship with Colin Howard and the potential scandal over his will already had colleagues asking her “Are you OK?”

HELPING THE CARBON TAX
The consequences of the Coalition going one vote down for a whole day when the numbers are so tight in the Reps could be serious depending on what the government brings on.

Its much-loved carbon dioxide tax could be pushed through the window of opportunity created by Mirabella’s antics. Potentially so could the Malaysian Solution proposal which, while not going to pass through the Senate, the government has been rightly keen to push as far as possible to make it clear they have done everything possible to stop the boats.

Mirabella has generally got a good run out of Tony Abbott’s leadership. She has political instincts not greatly unlike his: go for the jugular, although her take on that is wholly more personal and sometimes borders on the vicious and perhaps mad. Abbott is famously tough but generally avoids the personally-directed trash-talking that is Mirabella’s stock-in-trade.

UNPRINCIPLED AND OFFENSIVE TO COLLEAGUES
Many of her colleagues hate her and regard as “uppity psycho trash with an eating disorder” as one backbencher sick of her abuse described her not long ago.

Certainly she has puzzled many of her traditional friends in the Victorian Liberals who assumed she was an ideological warrior of the most patriotic kind by being a big advocate of corporate welfare, industry planning, rent-seeking and any other government hand-out industry stake-holder groups can dream up on the flight to Canberra. “She has feasted on the industry groups’ smorgasbord of rent-seeking,” one surprised internal enemy told us:

“Mirabella is a maddie and always boasted of being a free-marketeer. But she’s shown herself to be an unprincipled old-style populist, maybe she’s operating under Abbott’s instructions or maybe she just never really believed in much beyond screwing a sad old man out of his millions while giving him the ride of his life. Look at the disgraceful government meddling in what mining companies choose to buy, Abbott and Mirabella were a pathetic little ‘me too’ echo on it. If she’s industry minister it will be ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ meets ‘Brewster’s Millions’ in the sector.”

This incident in the chamber will do little to quell concerns about her health and stability.

Even one sympathetic colleague this morning thought she needed time off.

“YOU FAT C’NT, MIRABELLA SAID”
Labor opponents were unsympathetic, recalling many appalling instances of weird behaviour in the parliament. They say that under pressure, she turns very, very nasty in the manner of a foul-mouthed street-walker. Legend has it that in remarks sadly not reported in Hansard, but clearly heard in the official digital audio recordings, that Mirabella screamed at one of her opponents during a debate on suggestions she’d corruptly received donations from Big Tobacco that he was, in her considered opinion, a “fat c*nt,” an epithet she had occasion to repeat many times in the people’s house chamber several times in a manner suggesting a case of Tourette’s.

There’s no doubt Mirabella is a troubled, if not tortured, soul. Normally, we’d think Canberra needs “maddies” rather desperately rather than just another suit who goes on SkyNews and parrots talking-points from overly-cautious press secretaries.

That’s why she’s such a disappointment to many of the Kroger-faction Liberals in Melbourne who passionately supported her, not only has she proved to struggle to control herself at key times, she’s adopted policies more in keeping with Socialist Left Industry Minister Kim Carr (and has sometimes tried to out-flank him on the Left) rather than the free-market rhetoric she once convincingly expressed. It’s all a bit sad.

“The criticism that Baillieu stood for nothing seems to apply equally to Mirabella. It’s a bit disappointing, the only passion for freedom she seems to have left is for ‘freedom fries’” one former supporter and Warrior on Terror told VEXNEWS.

It may well be time for Abbott to give his wayward protege a ‘time out’ from the front-bench to give her the opportunity to sort out the will of her former lover Colin Howard, come to terms with his gravely displeased children, to focus on getting well, keeping fit for office and to reflect on her public behaviour which seems likely to attract more scandal and trouble to her party if not substantially corrected. As things stand politically, Mirabella is due to become a senior minister sometime after the election expected in 2013. She is an accident waiting to happen unless she sorts herself out now.

UPDATE: Sophie Mirabella could normally be expected to get a favourable hearing on MTR radio.
Steve Price was pretty tough on her today, suggesting her suspension could be enough to cost the Coalition a key vote on the Malaysian Solution.

It was all bad but the worst of it was when Steve Price asked her about what her traditional foe Manager of Opposition Business Christopher Pyne said to her about the debacle:

PRICE: What did Chris Pyne say to you about this?

MIRABELLA: Oh, ah, well, I’ve had chat with Chris Pyne, and, um, he was fairly professional about this, he was, um, ah, as you would expect him to be, I don’t think it’s appropriate to go into the detail of private conversations I’ve had with colleagues.

Indeed. She wasn’t done there. While we give Mrs Mirabella credit for being brave in showing up to do media today, her reluctance to concede error made her look rather foolish. It was all Peter Slipper’s fault, it seems:

MIRABELLA: I can’t second guess why the Speaker moved so quickly to the actual…..from a warning to a naming- I’m sure if Harry Jenkins had been in the Chair, um, he doesn’t usually, ah, um, move that quickly…

Price went on to explain that Mirabella’s Liberal colleagues are furious with her lack of discipline and stupidity, giving the government breathing space at a time when the Leader’s office had been directing Steve Ciobo to fly back from half-way around the world to keep the pressure on. As Effie would say, how embarrassment!

© 2011 VEXNEWS © 2013.