A COUPLE of days ago, a woman by the name of Cheryl Carter was prohibited from leaving England to start a new life with her family in Perth. Carter was for many years the secretary to Rebekah Brooks, the Murdoch editrix near the centre of the ongoing hacking scandal. The suspicion that Carter was being rewarded for her silence with a comfy job on the other side of the world, far from Scotland Yard’s investigators, was immediate.
Today sees another story of an aspiring traveller’s intention to pursue overseas opportunities. Like Carter, this one might also shed quite a lot of light on some disgraceful carryings-on. Yes, that person would be the recently unemployed Tony Hodges, the prime ministerial intimate whose phone calls prompted the Australia Day riot. Hodges went to earth after the incident, untroubled in his solitude by reporters camped on his doorstep, which makes him a good deal luckier than Godwin Grech.
Now, according to the Daily Telegraph, he is off to London, where there are rumours of a comfy, feather-bedded job on the staff of ex-Labor minister Bob McMullan, Australia's rep on the European Bank of Reconstruction. Good work if you can get it, although igniting a riot and being fired by a prime minister would hardly seem recomendations. Perhaps McMullan needs someone to fine-tune his speeches -- add a preamble about the Celts, Picts, Scots and Saxons on whose lands he collects his old boy's sinecure today. Given Hodges' demonstrated ability to communicate quickly with natives, especially at an emotional level, that might be the qualification which clinches the deal.
Would it be rude, do you reckon, to call on Federal Police Commissioner Tony Negus to confiscate Hodges’ passport until the investigation is complete, as British authorities have done with Cheryl Carter?
Would it be rude, do you reckon, to call on Federal Police Commissioner Tony Negus to confiscate Hodges’ passport until the investigation is complete, as British authorities have done with Cheryl Carter?
No one is suggesting Negus is there to sweep things under the carpet or let prime witnesses slip away, but if Hodges collects his boarding pass without impediment there are sure to be uncharitable souls who will claim as much. Negus could do himself and his force a bit of good by following his English counterparts' example.
UPDATE: While the AFP has interviewed Kim Sattler, there is no indication Hodges has been called in for a chat. Surely investigators would wish to speak with him -- unless, of course, the AFP recruits its investigators from the ranks of press gallery journalists, who with very exceptions have shown no interest at all in finding and quizzing someone widely suspected of promoting a race riot in the name of cheap political advantage.
UPDATE: While the AFP has interviewed Kim Sattler, there is no indication Hodges has been called in for a chat. Surely investigators would wish to speak with him -- unless, of course, the AFP recruits its investigators from the ranks of press gallery journalists, who with very exceptions have shown no interest at all in finding and quizzing someone widely suspected of promoting a race riot in the name of cheap political advantage.
