Clive Palmer 'cowardly': chorus of outrage over attack on Peta Credlin
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Version 0 of 1. Government ministers have called Clive Palmer "cowardly" and "ignorant" for suggesting that the paid parental leave scheme was designed to personally benefit Tony Abbott's chief of staff. The Palmer United party leader rejected government calls to apologise for the personal attack, which ministers said was not only offensive but factually flawed. Palmer drew the prime minister's chief of staff, Peta Credlin, into the political fray while arguing that the planned parental leave scheme helped "wealthy Liberal women as against normal Australians who may live in the regions or may be stay-at-home mums". During a speech to parliament on Monday, Palmer said: "Why should Australian citizens and businesses be taxed, and working women discriminated against, just so that the prime minister's chief of staff can receive a massive benefit when she gets pregnant?" Palmer was forced to withdraw a further comment about Abbott: "If there was any doubt about the prime minister's misogyny, that doubt has now been removed by the introduction of this bill." The leader of the house, Christopher Pyne, said it was cowardly for Palmer to launch a personal attack on staff members who could not defend themselves in parliament. Pyne said Palmer was factually wrong to suggest the parental leave scheme had come about because of Credlin's influence over Abbott "and in order for her to benefit from the scheme in the event that she had a child". He said Abbott had proposed a paid parental leave scheme first in his book Battlelines, "written a great deal of time before Ms Credlin worked for him as his chief of staff". Pyne said if Credlin were to have a child she would already benefit from a generous paid parental leave scheme because she was a member of the public service, so there was "no possibility that she could benefit personally" from the government's proposal. "If the member for Fairfax [Palmer] wished to, it would be an appropriate thing for him to return to the parliament at some point and apologise to the chief of staff for making statements which quite clearly are: cowardly because she cannot defend herself; are wrong because in fact the prime minister proposed the paid parental leave scheme long before she worked for him; and are ignorant because the chief of staff would already benefit from the government's public service paid parental leave scheme, and the prime minister's proposal extends that further to people who are not currently members of the public service," Pyne said. The foreign affairs minister, Julie Bishop, called on Palmer to reflect on his behaviour, saying it was hurtful to focus on the prime minister’s chief of staff as it was well-known Credlin had sought IVF treatment. “For him to accuse the PM of putting in place a policy to benefit her is particularly hurtful in these circumstances,” Bishop said. The Nationals MP Andrew Broad said Palmer's attack was "gutter politics in the lowest form … her journey to become a mother is not your business". On his way into parliament on Tuesday, Palmer was asked if he would apologise. "Of course I won't," he said. Palmer said a Liberal senator, Ian Macdonald, had previously raised concerns over Credlin's influence over the elected government. In a later tweet, Palmer said he had "not intended to personally attack Peta Credlin" in his parental leave criticisms but "no key position in government should escape scrutiny". The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said political arguments should focus on the issues involving Abbott's "unfair and unaffordable" scheme. "What Mr Palmer said was unwarranted and it was wrong," Shorten said. MPs had been debating legislation to remove the requirement for employers to administer the existing government-funded paid parental leave scheme. It was a relatively simple bill to to end the "employer paymaster role" from July and did not include the substantive paid parental leave scheme, which the Coalition will outline in separate legislation in future. Nonetheless, many MPs took the opportunity to express views about the broader scheme. |