Even after announcing his exit from Parliament, former Coalition minister Stuart Robert is causing controversy.
But could he have the last laugh?
Mr Robert wore scorn on Wednesday, two weeks after announcing he would quit politics after a tumultuous career.
His plan to leave Parliament without coming back, even to deliver a valedictory speech, was condemned by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese who said he should not be claiming a $200,000 salary to miss Parliament.
Mr Robert seems set to go in a blaze of controversy whatever happens.
Emails published by the Parliament on Wednesday have shed fresh light on a lobbying scandal that gradually engulfed the Gold Coast MP in the year since the Coalition’s election loss.
Leaks showed he had been serving as an MP while also opening doors, providing advice, and even setting up meetings for his long-time friend, former fundraiser and business partner John Margerison.
His friend’s company, Synergy 360, represented major multinational corporations bidding on lucrative government contracts, collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and for which it was paid a juicy success fee when contracts were awarded.
Mr Robert has always denied this was an improper or unethical relationship, and said he was making introductions just as he would for any other constituent.
Damning evidence
But an inquiry into Mr Robert’s relationship with his friend and the contracts he was lobbying the government over has turned up damning evidence.
Money was being paid by Synergy 360 directly into a trust ultimately owned by Mr Robert – Australian Property Reserve – and which he had disclosed to Parliament personally.
While most journalists were locked up covering the budget last week, Government Services Minister Bill Shorten, who is overseeing the inquiry, drew the links in a bombshell question time allegation.
“Money derived from Commonwealth contracts was being funnelled through to a member of Parliament,” Mr Shorten said.
Mr Robert did not respond to an interview request or questions sent via text messages from The New Daily.
But he told a News Corporation newspaper that the emails were stolen and had been tampered with “to assert improper conduct to which Mr Robert has strenuously and consistently rejected”.
With many layers of this business relationship yet to be examined, it seems certain that the former social services minister and confidant of Scott Morrison will end his 15-year parliamentary career under a cloud.
Does that spell an ignominious end for a minister famous for a litany of sometimes ridiculous scandals such as his accidental Rolex, $38,000 home internet bill and a vast network of financial interests he controversially stopped declaring during the last Parliament?
Don’t be so sure.
History might yet be kind to Mr Robert because, like Winston Churchill, he could well write it.
One for the history books
Scandals have rolled in over the past year, but Mr Robert has showed his flair as a historian – and his work is in high demand.
As allegations about his business dealings mounted last year, Mr Robert was in the middle of a productive period as a writer.
To little notice, he self-published three books last August, not long after the most recent election, including a history: The Trial of Lieutenant General Hiroshi Tamura.
Despite only being a self-published reprint of his own 1992 undergraduate thesis at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra, demand seems red hot for Mr Robert’s take on public justice in post-war Japan.
The self-published book sells for $20 here and is stocked overseas at a range of reputable international retailers, from Barnes & Noble to Amazon Mexico.
Mr Robert’s writing has connected with a Mexican readership. An earlier self-published work, In the Footsteps of Jesus, is sold as a “collectable” in that country for the price of $130 despite never being available in Spanish.
In Poland, fans of the outgoing MP can buy identical copies of the same brand-new book at three very different prices ranging up to about $180.
Japanese readers hold Mr Robert’s gospel scholarship in such high esteem even second-hand copies go for more than $160, Amazon data shows, even when new volumes are going for not much more than $20.
Whatever the upcoming inquiry unearths about his deeply complicated personal assets and web of financial interests, or the seamy insinuations made by Labor MPs about the overseas and offshore companies looking to win government contracts, Mr Robert has found a new, rich and evidently adoring public overseas just at the right time.
