Call me a penny pincher, but why am I helping fund a $650,000 payout to former Liberal staffer Rachelle Miller, who had an affair with her boss?

This is not how taxpayer money should be spent, and we shouldn’t let it rest.

Miller had an affair with her boss Alan Tudge, who was married, and also happened to be a federal government minister. She also worked, later, for another minister, Michaelia Cash.

And this week, we learnt that she’d been handed a cheque for $650,000 for the hurt, distress and humiliation she alleges she suffered by working for them.

But where is the finding here, over what that hurt and distress and humiliation involved?

No admission of liability was made. Tudge has rejected the allegations, and said he was cleared by two previous and independent inquiries. Cash has rejected claims of any bad treatment, and said Miller was offered support, leave and flexible working arrangements.

So why are taxpayers funding a huge cheque – when we have not been told of any adverse finding against either of the former ministers here?

Is there something I don’t get? Or is the treatment of taxpayers now so shoddy, we don’t deserve to know more?

If the accusations were proved, then Miller deserves a strong apology from Tudge and/or Cash – not the taxpayer.

And she would deserve more than an apology. If the accusations were proved, it should be the former ministers who are emptying their pockets to pay her – not the taxpayer.

Miller said this week that it was never really about the money anyway. So why not give it back – because 99 percent of taxpayers have never met either Tudge or Cash. Nor are they responsible, in any way, for what two former Coalition bigwigs might or might not have done.

And while Miller will walk away with a tax-free sum that makes the mind boggle, you can bet your bottom dollar on the fact that the Opposition won’t be doing its job by examining the decision through estimates or other parliamentary processes.
Nothing to see here.

Cheating hubbies – because that’s what Alan Tudge was – are dominating our news feeds this week. If you could have a meme for each of them, we’d quickly pay off that $650,000.

And call me square, but rarely does something good come from jumping into bed with someone who isn’t the person you promised to stick by, through good times and bad.

And it’s hardly a textbook response for women wanting to look out for other women.

But no doubt there’s lessons here for men too. Alan Tudge should still be contemplating them.

The same goes for David Larkin; the cheating husband of Christie Lee Kennedy, the wife who has been found not guilty of intentionally running him over in her BMW – but now faces a possible retrial.

If that happens, it will be up to 12 wise men and women to decide her fate. But however that unfolds, it hasn’t been a good story for Larkin either. Or for the woman he was having an affair with. Her life has been changed forever too.

As has the family of a Brisbane service station auditor who died, tied to a bed while working in Cairns. I wonder if they are confused over how different his life was when he was working away from home? And on a tangent, do they really deserve his last few hours to be splashed, as click bait, over media sites hourly?

Call me old-fashioned, a penny-pincher, a square. Call me what you like. But this week’s news is not good for taxpayers, already struggling with cost of living rises.

And with one review showing one in three people in Parliament have experienced some kind of sexual harassment, our bill might not be finalised yet.

But this week’s news hasn’t been good either, for those struggling to understand where their wandering hands might lead.

And perhaps that’s the good news in all of this.