While the latest storm involves the Victorian Labor Party the accusations at both federal and state level have been coming thick and fast. So fast that the prejudiced observer might fall into the error of thinking they were all tarred with the same brush. On one hand politicians are easy game. At a time of peak disillusionment and incensed name calling from the extremes, the language of pigs and troughs is both clichéd and ineptly simplistic. At the same time the need for thorough accountability at all levels of government is necessary to stem this easy labeling and ensure that an “entitlement is a financial recompense for the difficulties of the role and not a right.

And impressions can sink deep. The issue was not so much that Federal Employment Minister Michaelia Cash owns a $1.4 million investment property but that she failed to disclose it before she was questioned by the media. Similarly the outrage at Sussan Ley was not so much she owned a similar financial asset, however affluent, but that she claimed travel expenses for a whimsical trip to buy it. In the wake of such rorts scandals as the Peter Slipper and the now infamous ‘choppergate’ of Bronwyn Bishop, it adds to the sense that somehow politicians dwell in a different world from us engendering both disbelief and outrage. The democratising effect of the Australian outlook does not perceive “the very rich are different from you and me” only “they have more money”.  At the same time an appreciation of hard work should not deny its rewards. The envy at an accumulation of wealth is very different from a taxpayer sense of being ripped off.

The premier has acted decisively to distance himself from Nardella in the hope this cloud and all its reputational implications on leaders will disperse. Politics of both colours would agree, the voting public needs more confidence than this.