I am rather embarrassed to admit this, but many years ago I was friends with a mad keen Collingwood supporter. He was not typical of the rabid Collingwood supporter, mind you: he still had all his teeth, no tattoos, no criminal record, and had recently completed his law degree.
We were close enough friends that I was invited to his wedding, where we were all compelled at the reception to join him in singing ‘Good Old Collingwood Forever!’. [It is to my lasting shame that I do know the words of that song.]
Apart from the rendition of the theme song, the reception was a pretty normal sort of wedding. It was held in the hall next to his family’s parish church, there were the usual complement of groomsmen and bridesmaids etc, and all the right people made the sort of speeches about how great the newly weds were together. [They divorced within a decade or so, in case you were wondering. Nor did I get invited to his second wedding as the friendship had died around the time the first marriage did.]
And as happens at just about every wedding reception or gala dinner I have been to, the tables were numbered, although I do wonder whether or not my erstwhile friend was tempted to name them after Collingwood premiership coaches and captains. It was not the fashion in 1991 to release doves from a basket outside the church, but it is just as well this idea did not occur to the wedding planner, as I don’t think releasing magpies from a basket would have ended well.
The news report that David Sharaz and Brittany Higgins have just officially gotten married in Queensland has got me wondering about how the wedding planning went, particularly the reception.
You see, the starter wedding of David Sharaz, current partner of Brittany Higgins, had some more bizarre features to ornament the wedding reception. One was featuring official photos of the happy (not for long) couple holding rescue cats, rather than being surrounded by either the bridal party or close family and friends. Another, more intriguingly given Mr Sharaz was a journalist at the Canberra Press Gallery, was that the tables at the reception were not numbered, but rather, they were named after Federal Labor Party leaders. [Although that might have had more to do with the fact that Mrs Sharaz mark 1 was a one eyed Labor tragic and staffer.]
You get the idea: the Shorten table, the Gillard table, the Rudd table, the Whitlam table etc. I expect that the closest family and friends would have been put on either the Curtin table or the Hawke table, and that the C-listers would have been put on the Calwell or Hayden table.
I doubt very much that there would have been a Cook, Hughes, Lyons, or Latham table.
Knowing from news reports that Kathy Gallagher had been invited to this 2018 wedding, as she was regarded by Mr Sharaz as a dear friend, although she did not attend, has seriously picqued my curiosity. Which table would she have been placed on if she had graciously RSVPed her attendance? Is she dear enough a friend to merit being on the Hawke, Curtin, Chifley or Whitlam tables? Is she a little more than just a work friend, meriting the Keating, Gillard or Rudd tables? Or is she just there as someone they wanted to curry favour to, and hence only getting placed on something like the Shorten table? And what do they think of someone who gets placed on the Evatt or Calwell table?
I am not sure about the Forde table – probably where the doddering maiden aunt or embarrassingly drunken uncle gets placed in the far corner.
Which leads me to the issue which has been foremost in the minds of our Canberra Bubbleers this past year, given compensation payments and a certain defamation case – how well did Kathy Gallagher know David Sharaz, and when exactly did she find out about the allegations which were going to be raised around the alleged sexual assault of Miss Higgins at Parliament House in 2019?
This issue of foreknowledge is important to us taxpayers. As Minister of State responsible for administering the Department of Finance, Senator Gallagher is responsible for making decisions under various Acts of Parliament, including those administering the Commonwealth’s worker’s compensation scheme (ComCare), and other related liability insurances (ComCover). She also would be responsible for decision making on any Act of Grace payment outside of those liabilities.
This means that she was responsible for authorising the confidential payment to Brittany Higgins in settlement of the lawsuit which she had bought aside the Commonwealth in relation to any injuries she may have incurred as a result of the incident in 2019. She also would have been involved in the decision to settle the matter, although I suspect that under the terms of the ComCare and ComCover legislation, it would be possible to mount a vigourous defence in relation to claimed liabilities incurred where someone entered a Commonwealth premise outside of their normal working hours and in a severely intoxicated state.
As a decision maker in such matters, it would have been appropriate for her to declare any potential conflicts of interest and prior relationship with any of the parties privy to this settlement.
However, it appears that Senator Gallagher has denied any fore knowledge of the 2019 incident before it was made public by Miss Higgins, and any imputation that her conduct in making decisions on the settlement were influenced by either personal friendship or political expediency.
Parliament House is a workplace where occupational hazards and incidents will and do occur – and it appears that this particular incident has resulted in an exceptionally fast and generous compensation payout (it is a confidential figure so we do not know the exact amount). However, in other cases, where there are incidents or workplace injuries which occur that do not involve high profile or well connected employees, they do not get the expeditious settlement of their workplace injury claims by ComCare or ComCover.
In this case, a settlement was reached which is both generous and expeditious. If this is a reasonable standard, then other employees in Parliament and elsewhere deserve similar treatment? And to what extent should the taxpayer wear the significant expense of this standard, which is in this case significantly beyond what victims of crime in similar cases can expect.
I consider that it well may be that this settlement was a reasonable outcome, and that it may have been appropriate for Senator Gallagher to make the decision herself rather than step aside for someone else to do so. However, if she has misled the Parliament and the public about her relationship with Sharaz and her foreknowledge of the 2019 incident, then it is reminiscent of the Watergate scandal – Nixon was forced out of his job not because of the burglary committed by his henchmen, but by his involvement in covering it up.
Hence I call this current matter Compogate.
But I am dying to know answers to several current burning questions, namely: whether Senator Gallagher was invited to David Sharaz’s latest wedding, whether the tables were again named after Labor leaders, and which such-named table she was seated at?
Lost For Words! 