Australian MP Sues Her Own Party Over Headlock He-Said-She-Said, Because Nothing Says Party Unity Like Court
Moira Deeming sues her own party over a headlock misunderstanding, while the government takes the NDIS inquiry 'seriously' and the Greens accuse it of politicising fraud. Also, snow!
Victorian MP Moira Deeming has launched an 11th-hour court challenge against her own party before a meeting to decide her fate after she made an assault allegation against a former leader, AAP reports.
Deeming has lodged a legal action against the Liberal’s Victorian president, Brian Loughnane, which is listed to be heard in the state supreme court this morning. Loughnane and other Liberal executives are planning to meet on Friday evening to determine Deeming’s candidacy after she made a police complaint against Matthew Guy, the opposition’s public transport spokesperson, alleging he put her in a “headlock” at a gala dinner on 23 May.
Victoria police investigated the incident and found “there was no offence detected”. Guy has demanded a public apology from Deeming but she says she misunderstood the meaning of headlock and has refused to apologise.
She has been invited to the state executive meeting to tell her side of the story.
In a statement to AAP, Deeming’s lawyer said his client’s complaint was made “honestly, in good faith and only as a matter of last resort”.
Meanwhile, the government takes the extended NDIS inquiry “seriously,” according to Health Minister Mark Butler, who told RN Breakfast the government is “very keen to work on registration schemes for workers across the care economy.” Butler said the priority is registering providers: “It doesn’t make much sense to have workers registered if they’re employed by providers who are not registered and whom we know nothing about.” He assured that the government will take the extended inquiry “very seriously and treat it with the respect that all of those inquiries deserve.”
The Coalition’s report identified the unregistered market of providers as being beyond the regulator’s reach, while the Greens’ report accused the government of “politicising fraud” to justify significant reductions in NDIS spending. Greens NDIS spokesperson Jordon Steele-John said: “Disabled people deserve an NDIS that is both protected from fraud and designed around their rights, not one where they are treated with suspicion because governments have failed to crack down on those actually exploiting the system.”
A parliamentary inquiry into NDIS integrity and fraud controls recommended a national NDIS worker register to remove unsafe providers and improve information-sharing. During hearings, the National Disability Insurance Agency’s deputy executive John Dardo said around 8.3%, or $3.7bn, of the NDIS’s $45bn in payments last financial year were affected by “integrity leakage” - a term covering suspected fraud, mistakes, or non-compliance. However, non-government MPs criticized the report as doing “little more than welcome the steps that responsible agencies already have in train,” with opposition MPs stating: “The evidence pointed to an organised and systemic threat; the committee report answers a smaller and more individual one.”
And in happier news, it finally snowed significantly in New South Wales and alpine Victoria - good news for skiers, bad news for anyone who has to drive through it.
The Good Times
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