Grubby, childish, desperate, pointless. No, Big Brother’s not coming back for another season, I’m talking about the OzCar fake email stoush that’s currently got our nation’s Parliament and press fully occupied, digging through buckets of swill and gleefully paddling about in it, spraying the rest of us with its worthlessness and venality.

Yes, I’m of a mind to shout about this, particularly given that the next issue of the Tribune’s based around politics and what’s gone wrong with democracy. Let’s have a bit of a look at this car-dealer thing and try and get a bit of perspective.

John Grant has a car dealership in K-Rudd’s electorate; he’s a big supporter, and he provides a ute to Kev’s electoral office. No doubt every MP in the country has supporters like this, it’s about the only grass-roots involvement left in politics these days.

Before you start thinking this is corruption or favours for mates of some kind, just remember that industry groups like Fossil Fuels or Pharmaceuticals pay lobbyists millions of dollars a year to shove their interests into the tiny brains of our elected representatives, in order to pass or block legislation that will actually affect all of us for years to come. A car dealer in Queensland being able to say “I’m mates with the PM” to prospective customers or financiers is pretty small potatoes compared to, say, destroying the solar industry for the sake of appeasing the mining industry, isn't it?

So word gets out that Grant was, along with dozens of other car dealers, having trouble getting finance, and wanted to access the OzCar fund. He applies, and he does what anyone with an MP’s email address or phone number would do, and asks for, if not a foot in the door, at least the name of someone at OzCar who can assist, rather than negotiating nine hours of recorded messages and filling in twenty-eight forms before he can register.

The opposition go bug-nutty, calling it misuse of office, favours for mates, special treatment, rah rah rah. Turnbull, on tonight’s 7.30 report, referred to Grant as the PM’s “..crony, his benefactor, who gives him a free ute…” Gee whiz, the Exclusive Brethren never sat down with Howard to push their hateful agenda, did they? Those bastards don’t even vote, but they’ve got a loooooot of money, (but how dare I draw such an inference)….

So Rudd and Swan do what all good pollies do, they deny everything, expressed in terms of the highest dudgeon, and everybody calls for everybody else to resign in disgrace. There’s a Senate enquiry.

Mr Grech from Treasury appears, and anyone who watches more than a minute of his evidence can see that he’s not feeling particularly well. He says, in very equivocal terms, that he may remember maybe seeing an email about John Grant’s OzCar application come direct from the PM’s office.

Turnbull goes even more bug-nutty, because Grech’s evidence directly contradicts what the PM and Treasurer have said in Parliament. Now they must resign. They retort, well there is no email, and you should either produce it or you should resign. The Federal Police are called in to investigate, which instantly gives Turnbull an excuse to not produce the email to the media or Parliament, because it’s now sub judice; of course Rudd knows this, but this gives him an excuse to again call on Turnbull to produce the email or resign.

The email’s fake. Grech has been interviewed by the Feds. Rudd now has no case to answer, and Turnbull, to his credit, has said this. He still wants to go Swan though, because apparently a fax or two regarding this matter were sent to him at home.

Turnbull is still screaming that Grant received special treatment due to his links with the PM and Treasurer, however it emerges that at least two other dealers’ names were mentioned when the head of OzCar and Ford Finance sat down with Treasury to go through some of the applications.

It’s not known yet who produced the fake email, and whether anyone in the Opposition had a copy and supplied details of it to the media. It’s not known what kind of influence, if any, was laid to bear on OzCar regarding Grant’s application. It’s not known for certain if anyone has lied to Parliament over this issue.

However it now it turns out that Grech, in his years at Treasury, was a constant source of “offline” information to the Coalition when they were in power, and now that they’re in opposition it appears he’s still feeding them tidbits. Pity for him, and them, that this particular tidbit was a piece of shit.

Will they, or we, learn anything from this sordid, grubby little episode? Canberra certainly won’t, this is business as usual. Those of us out in the real world who vote for these fuckers have certainly had it confirmed for us, though.

They are vile hypocrites.

Nothing they do in Canberra, or Spring St for that matter, is done without paying heed to the powerful interest groups that donate to their electoral troughs and promise them lucrative board appointments once they’ve done their masters’ bidding for long enough while in office. And yet they’re standing there before the TV cameras, day in and day out, screaming about this alleged “cronyism” and “influence-peddling”, like they haven’t already sold their souls to Big Pharma, the fossil fuel industry, the banks, the big supermarket chains and who knows what other silent scary power players.

Pah! Bloody pollies, flush 'em all and put me in charge of things. At least you'd know beforehand who'd own my soul - beer and coffee companies, naturally.

And my wife, of course.

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