During the bit of Friday afternoon usually reserved for embarrassing announcements, former education minister Alan Tudge quit cabinet, despite a report into his alleged abusive relationship with former staffer Rachelle Miller clearing him of breaching ministerial standards.
But Tudge’s quiet move to the backbench was disrupted by a bombshell report in the Nine newspapers, which included text messages indicating Tudge had pressured Miller into not disclosing their relationship during a security vetting process.
Tudge was stood down from the ministry in December, after Miller alleged their consensual relationship in 2017 had been emotionally and, in one instance, physically abusive. In response, Prime Minister Scott Morrison ordered an inquiry, conducted by former inspector-general of intelligence and security Vivienne Thom, into whether Tudge breached ministerial standards.
Those messages were not addressed in the report, and Miller did not participate in the inquiry, which she called a “rushed political fix”. But the messages raise further questions about Tudge’s integrity, despite him getting the all-clear. According to the statement of ministerial standards, a minister “must ensure that they act with integrity — that is, through the lawful and disinterested exercise of the statutory and other powers available to their office, appropriate use of the resources available to their office for public purposes”.
A minister must seek to advance the public interest when taking decisions in an official capacity. The standards also note that: “Although their public lives encroach upon their private lives, it is critical that ministers do not use public office for private purposes.”
It’s unclear whether the text messages would have changed the outcome of Thom’s finding. But they show Tudge pushing Miller not to be truthful when applying for a new security clearance, in a manner that doesn’t seem consistent with a disinterested advancement of the public interest.
“You are opening a large can of worms,” Tudge wrote, after Miller first said she would disclose the relationship.
“This leaks and Labor will pursue relentlessly,” Tudge later told Miller.
“Why do I always feel like you are threatening me?” Miller replied.
“I don’t mean to. Just being brutally frank about the risks. I am sorry,” Tudge said.
But over in The Australian, another article, by columnist Janet Albrechtsen, based on leaked texts between the pair and evidence provided to the inquiry tried to reframe the relationship, alleging Miller had attempt to rekindle the affair. According to unattributed claims in the piece, Miller’s “deluge” of messages affected Tudge’s emotional state, leading him to end communication with her in October 2020.
Tudge’s messages pressuring Miller over the security clearance weren’t featured in The Australian’s article, although many of her messages were. Meanwhile, in an accompanying opinion piece, Albrechtsen argued the response to the affair was a case of Me Too gone too far, and that Morrison “made it known he was willing to snivel in the face of a bunch of graceless women”.
On Saturday, Miller hit out at Albrechtsen’s article.
“Hard to believe a woman in 2022, published by a national newspaper, could be this uneducated about women’s issues,” she tweeted.
“This is so wrong, on so many angles, I can’t decide where to start.”
During Senate estimates last month, Labor’s Katy Gallagher criticised the treatment of Miller and the government’s handling of the report as part of a pattern of “pathological backgrounding around women who make complaints about men in this building.”
Since then, that backgrounding against Miller has clearly continued.
Meanwhile, Tudge, whose main contributions as a minister were overseeing robodebt, the fallout from his affair, and the occasional bit of culture war, will quietly recontest his Melbourne electorate of Aston.
In a statement, Tudge said he was not seeking to return to the frontbench “before the election,” leaving open a comeback for one of Morrison’s worst-performing ministers if the Coalition wins another term.
