When Sussan Ley said sorry to Malcolm Turnbull, it wasn't for failing to meet the high standards he demands when it comes to slugging the taxpayer for personal expenses.
Nor was it for bringing his government that ended last year behind in the polls into disrepute, just as a new year begins.
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Sussan Ley explains herself after she flew to the Gold Coast on official business but bought an apartment while she was there. She has stood aside as Health Minister. Courtesy ABC News 24.
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Minister steps down
Sussan Ley explains herself after she flew to the Gold Coast on official business but bought an apartment while she was there. She has stood aside as Health Minister. Courtesy ABC News 24.
No, as the Health Minister explained it on Monday, three days after the story of her Gold Coast apartment purchase broke, she apologised because the story had caused a "distraction" from the government's agenda.
Not once in her media conference at Albury did she say sorry to the public for not just one, but a number of errors of judgment when it comes to spending their money.
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On the contrary, she expressed supreme confidence that two inquiries would clear her of breaking the rules covering travel claims by politicians and ministers and presented herself as one always seeking to save the taxpayer money.
Yes, she could see that some of her constituents who were battlers on fixed incomes might get the wrong idea from media reports of a politician out of touch with their concerns when, as she put it, the exact opposite was the case.
But that was as far as it went.
There was doubt, after the Prime Minister finally seized the initiative and announced that she would be stood down while her travel claims were investigated, that Ley would still front the media.
To her credit she did, though she must surely doubt the wisdom of that decision after a performance that raised more questions about where she draws that blurred line between work-related and private expenses.
Off the bat, she defended two trips that took her to the Gold Coast on New Year's Eve, asserting an unnamed prominent Queensland businesswoman - later revealed as one of Australia's richest women, Sarina Russo - had invited her to a business lunch in 2013 and to her annual New Year's event in 2014.
"In 2013, I claimed flights and taxis to get to the lunch, but as I was on annual leave from the next day, I didn't claim accommodation," she said, as if this demonstrated a commitment to frugality. Did it not provide her with free travel to her holiday destination?
Ley added that she had "very important conversations" about the government's agenda with the said businesswoman, but this raises another issue of cost and benefit when it comes to the public purse. Was the knowledge gained worth the cost?
There were also some new details about the spontaneous apartment purchase, including the revelation that she arrived at the auction in the Comcar that had driven her from Brisbane to her Gold Coast hotel. "I should have just got out at the hotel," she said.
And there was a clarification on another point. On Friday, her spokeswoman had said she had gone from an announcement in Brisbane to the Gold Coast to attend "meetings" with patients about access to new medicines. In fact, it was one meeting with one patient and her family.
The bottom line is that, if there are still questions to be raised about the claims that are now being refunded, there is a very real prospect that that public/private line has been blurred in other cases, and not in ways that reflect well on the minister.
The impression that is hard to escape is that some ministers, including this minister, believe that this seizing of such personal opportunities is a kind of payback for the extraordinarily long hours they work and the time spent away from family. It isn't.
For Turnbull, this is a disaster when he can least afford to confront one. The Prime Minister recognised as much overnight by taking control of the issue, standing her down (she insists the decision was a mutually-agreed outcome) and commissioning his own investigation, on top of the one Ley initiated with the Department of Finance and announced by press release late on Sunday.
Ley is exuding confidence that both will clear her and that she will be back doing the job she feels privileged to have been assigned sooner rather than later.
I wouldn't bet a Main Beach apartment on it, even if I had one.
What this sorry episode does afford Turnbull is the opportunity to recast his ministry well out from the next election, an opportunity he would be wise to take.
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