PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull has done his Liberal Party colleague and former Health Minister Sussan Ley a major disservice.
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Mr Turnbull could be excused for thinking he put the travel entitlements controversy which cost Ms Ley her job to bed on Wednesday with the naming of her successor, Greg Hunt.
But in refusing to make public the report into the travel claims made by Ms Ley, including an excessive amount of trips to the Gold Coast in particular, he failed the transparency test.
Ms Ley had agreed to the investigation and so confident she would be cleared of any wrong-doing, the Farrer MP stated she had no problem with the results being made public.
But not so the Prime Minister.
His office informed The Border Mail it was “standard practice not to release information of that kind” which begs the question: What has changed?
One can only suspect the government didn't want to be subjected to further embarrassment about its contents and desperately wanted to move on.
Ms Ley, who protested her innocence to the very end despite handing in her resignation as Health Minister to Mr Turnbull late last week, deserved the right to have her reputation restored.
The first step in achieving that would be making the report public and leaving the public to make up their own minds.
The fallout from Ms Ley's demise as Health Minister has been attended to with Mr Hunt's elevation to her former role and Arthur Sinodinos taking up Mr Hunt’s former portfolio in charge of industry, innovation and science.
There is no doubt the events of recent weeks have been a savage blow to the political career of Ms Ley, who had successfully avoided any scandal in a parliamentary life that began in 2001 when she was elected the successor to Tim Fischer in the seat of Farrer.
But she will serve her time on the back-bench again and devote her energies to the residents of Farrer in the knowledge others on both sides of politics have bounced back from similar predicaments.
Ms Ley has no intention of quitting politics any time soon.
If Coalition leaders felt she could handle the demanding role of Health Minister for the last two years she is more than capable of leading other portfolios at some point in the future.