Benjamin Haslem
This from this morning's Sydney Morning Herald:
THE Greens senator Bob Brown has said he was offered a $1 million bribe by a large media company eight years ago. He has used the incident as an illustration of why he believes the Federal Government's attempts to regulate lobbyists' activities do not go far enough.
Senator Brown would not say who had made the offer because he had received legal advice that disclosing the person's identity would lead to a defamation case that he would probably lose because it was one person's word against another's.
That's a strange response from a man who is acutely aware of the power of Parliament and the protections it affords Senators and MPs.
Why didn't Brown use Parliamentary privilege to name the person who offered the bribe? He could have told the Senate the person's name with 100% immunity from litigation.
Brown never ceases to call for full Parliamentary inquiries to get to the bottom of things or even as a foil to his political opponents. He knows how to work the system, so why not here?
Trevor Cook has made a similar observation.
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