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| Too much Gravy Train or too much pork barrel? | |
Micheal (Dr Smoothy) Wooldridge has been unceremoniously dumped by his new
employers (the Royal Australian Colleague of GPs), who have prescribed a
$100,000 golden handshake, and a long rest. Dr Smoothy had a bit of a rough ride into politics - shortly before he gained
Liberal preselection he was filmed shouting "I've never voted liberal in my
life" at a protester, who was accusing him of being a Liberal sympathizer.
Later he said that he was lying, and justified it by saying that he was
frightened by the demonstrator. Frightened enough to lie apparently, but not
frightened enough to simply leave. His actual time in parliament was relatively uncontroversial except for letting
his radiologist mates know that they could cash in by buying an MRI
(imaging machine) in the few days before the budget was released. He managed to
keep out of trouble by using the Sergeant ('I know NOTHING') Schultz defense, but
some his his mates faced charges. Perhaps that made his some enemies who were instrumental in later recent events. He managed to allocate a cool 5 million taxpayer dollars in his last weeks in
office to his future employers. The 5 mil' was sitting around in a forgotten
bank account because the health department was too incompetent even to spend
money in time (I wish I had that problem). He was presumably expecting
to get most of transferred into his bank account in the form of consultancy
fees after he left parliament, but Johnny (this-is-going-too-far) Howard got
the money back before it was actually transferred. The operation was looking pretty sour for Dr Smoothy by this stage, so
spent the next few months continuing to access his parliamentary email,
perhaps trying to resuscitate a plan 'B'. Meanwhile the Royal Australian Colleague of GPs had missed out on their
commission on the 5 mil', and were simply paying consultancy fees to a
political liability. They couldn't dump him straight after the 5 mil' fiasco
(that would have been a little obvious), so they turned off his life support as
soon as they had another excuse - the parliamentary email access. Anyway, $100,000 is not bad pay for four months work, and he's got has fat
parliamentary pension to keep him, but Micheal had still better be budgeting
carefully. His old mates at parliament house have no intention of giving this
old-boy a job, and at this rate he may be joining Cheryl
(no-one-has-offered-me-a-job) Kernot on the dole queue. Watching a doctor having to wait long periods to see other people would be
compensation for waiting all that time in the dole queue. And rubbing shoulders
with Dr Smoothy would be a laugh too. Just be a little cautious if he uses the
old line 'trust me, I'm a doctor'.
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