Martin Ferguson: What was he thinking?

The Australian has one of those scoops journalists dream about this morning: "In a letter to senior colleagues obtained by The Australian yesterday, Mr Ferguson attacked the Fuel Watch scheme as an anti-competitive waste of money and predicted it would leave battlers out of pocket, despite government claims it would lead to lower fuelprices."

This sort of thing always prompts two questions:

1. What motivated Martin Ferguson to commit these serious criticisms of a key government program to paper and spray some copies around? If its in writing it is after all very difficult to deny and the more copies you send out the more likely it is to be leaked, mainly because potential leakers know that the more recipients there are the less likely it is that anyone can identify the culprit. To take this risk, Ferguson must have felt that a) he was being cut-out of the decision-making process, b) the decision was a serious intrusion into his patch as energy minister.
2. The other question is about the motivation of the leaker. The most likely answers to this question are that a) Ferguson is stilled pissed about it, b) someone doesn't like Ferguson (unlikely because it is the government that looks daft), c) some bureaucrat is outraged by what they see as a stupid policy and wants to undercut it.

Of course, whatever the reasons, this is a bad embarrassment for the Rudd Government as it tries to sell its first Budget. Governments shouldn't look frayed until they've been there for a while.

Update: See also Larvatus Prodeo (Ferguson a captive of interest groups?) and John Quiggin (Labor's first big policy disaster?)

Update 2: Ferguson now says he 'strongly supports' the fuelwatch scheme.

Technorati Tags: Rudd, Ferguson, Fuelwatch, petrol pricing

Comments

[David]

You should know by now that Marn Fersn doesn't actually think, he just parrots the lines that have been fed to him by the coal industry (although I think he's right about Fuel Watch). I don't see why it's a huge problem for the government though - surely the whole point of a Cabinet discussion is to discuss things rather than nod like a toy dog in the rear window of a car.

[Trevor Cook]

Cabinet works if its discussions stay confidential - so the leak is embarrasing and indicates either a lack of discipline / experience in the new government or internal tensions or both