The Guvmin Gazette on 6 December 2015 attempted to put the best spin possible on what MP for Fisher Mal Brough was required by precedent to do:
Special Minister of State Mal Brough has asked for a $108,000 pay cut and to move from a ministerial suite to a backbench office as he stands aside from his post while the Australian Federal Police investigate him for any wrongdoing in the Peter Slipper affair.
Malcolm Turnbull announced last week, on the same day as junior minister Jamie Briggs’s resignation, that Mr Brough would step aside from his ministerial duties pending police inquiries into the alleged 2012 illegal copying of the official diaries of the then Speaker Mr Slipper.
Mr Brough wrote to Speaker Tony Smith on the day of the announcement requesting the ministerial component of his salary not be paid from that day and for the
allocation of an office in the House of Representatives wing.
“Mr Brough’s requests were communicated to the Department of House of Representatives on the same day, and appropriate action is being taken to action them,” a spokesman for Mr Smith said.
Mr Brough’s ministerial salary of $307,329 will drop to a backbench salary of $199,040.
The Australian has also been told Mr Brough has relinquished ministerial entitlements, including a mobile phone…..
One has to wonder if the interview, media release or phone call to journalist which is the likely trigger to this newspaper article is part of Brough’s strategy to make himself the smallest target he can manage ahead of the start of the 2016 parliamentary year, when more questions about his past conduct are bound to be raised with the Prime Minister by the Opposition.
2 comments:
did brough stand down on 6 dec or 28 dec,
On 29 December 2015 Prime Minister Turnbull announced that Mal Brough was standing aside as Special Minister of State and Minister for Defence Materiel and Science.
http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/ministerial-arrangements
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