Saturday, October 10, 2020

VIP affair

Ivar the Boneful: added Category:Political scandals in Australia using HotCat


The '''VIP affair''' was an Australian political controversy relating to the use of [[Royal Australian Air Force]] (RAAF) [[Royal Australian Air Force VIP aircraft|VIP aircraft]] by the [[Holt Government]] and its predecessor the [[Menzies Government (1949–66)|Menzies Government]]. It occurred in the lead-up to the [[1967 Australian Senate election|1967 Senate election]].

In an attempt to avoid negative media coverage, Prime Minister [[Harold Holt]] provided vague and inaccurate answers to [[Question time|parliamentary questions]] about the VIP fleet, notably denying the existence of [[Manifest (transportation)|passenger manifests]] which might confirm instances of misuse. Air Minister [[Peter Howson (politician)|Peter Howson]] became aware of the inaccuracies and sought to protect Holt, but their statements were soon subjected to further scrutiny, leading to accusations that they had conspired to [[Misleading parliament|mislead parliament]]. The situation came to a head in October 1967, when the [[Opposition (Australia)|opposition]] moved to call senior public servants before the Senate,<ref></ref> but was defused somewhat by the decision of [[John Gorton]], the [[Leader of the Government in the Senate (Australia)|Leader of the Government in the Senate]], to [[Table (parliamentary procedure)|table]] the "missing" passenger manifests.

The controversy weakened Holt's popularity and diminished the reputations of Holt and Howson within the [[Liberal Party of Australia|Liberal Party]].<ref>Liquid error: wrong number of arguments (given 1, expected 2)</ref> However, its significance was lessened by [[Disappearance of Harold Holt|the drowning death]] of Holt in December 1967. Gorton's decisive action, although initially harmful to the government, boosted his standing among government senators and may have contributed to [[1968 Liberal Party of Australia leadership election|his election]] as Holt's successor.

==References==


==Further reading==
*

[[Category:1967 in Australia]]
[[Category:Political scandals in Australia]]


from Wikipedia - New pages [en] https://ift.tt/36QEEzi
via IFTTT

No comments:

Post a Comment