It's been a while since politicians have been heard calling each other "UnAustralian." A 'while' being about the same period of time since the Howard government lost office. But here we go again, and shockhorror, it's a former Howard government minister dealing out the accusations of UnAustralianism :
Former indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough has accused the prime minister of being "un-Australian" for not including him in a war cabinet to tackle Aboriginal disadvantage.
"It's putting politics before Aboriginal children," Mr Brough told Sky News. "I think that's very disappointing and very un-Australian."
Not just UnAustralian, but very UnAustralian.
More accurately, it's UnMalBroughian behaviour, but for legitimate reasons.
The former indigenous affairs minister also denied he would have had a conflict of interest if he'd participated in the policy commission.
Mr Brough has a business interest providing services to indigenous communities.
PM Rudd claims that they're more interested in experts for the 'war cabinet', instead of politicians, particularly former politicians, which seems fair enough.
Mal Brough is so upset by even the thought that he could have a conflict of interest by running a business supplying housing to indigenous Australians, while insisting he should be part of a government consultation and policy body dealing with indigenous housing, that he's come over all George Constanza, and has started referring to himself in the third person :
"(We wanted) to tender in a joint venture with the Tiwi islanders to build houses on the Tiwi islands that Mal Brough would not make one cent out of. But we weren't even allowed to tender."Yeah, that's not a good look.
