Listening to Cosgrove on Nine-to-Noon brings up waves of nausea. If our Westminster inheritance meant anything he’d have resigned. Instead he is raising utterly spurious legal “obstacles” to him having ensured that corruption was rooted out of his department.

There was no legal impediment. He had every right to demand a full explanation, and the constitutional duty not to rest until satisfied that the agency under his stewardship was clean.

I believe the true impediment was his utter lack of morality – corruption simply rings no alarm bells to him. It is just business as usual until the public howls. I realise how extreme that claim could sound, but I base that opinion on days of strong evidence.

He was the only government member who constantly interjected speeches from our side of the house with accusations of corruption. It was his favourite theme for me, whatever the subject of my speech.

I used to wonder then whether it was a classic case of projecting the flaw that most gnaws at you. Now I’m convinced.

No honest man could have had the reports he had, yet decided to let a false claim about the law governing the State sector shield him from unwanted further knowledge.  In his shoes, if anyone had even raised the law as a reason for not knowing more, I’d have said “bugger the law – I must have the truth, and the whole truth”.

Of course no one would have raised such an objection because the law is not that stupid.

Cosgrove’s excuses put him among the crooks in this affair. If he was subject to securities law, or even the existing law for the real estate agents he’s been pasting, he’d be liable for misleading and deceptive conduct. Of course he relies on journalists not reading the law he claims to rely on, and may yet get away with his lies.