With news that Sophie Mirabella got her start in politics through an affair with a man 40 years her senior – and is now being sued by his children over her administration of his estate – the Government has been given an unexpected gift. Barry Everingham reports.
Well, Christmas has come early for Julia Gillard this year and it’s in the form of a gift wrapped Sophie Mirabella — the take no prisoners collation frontbencher who, had she been a man, would have made a marvellous out of control thug — in fact, another Tony Abbott.
Mirabella has gained a huge amount of publicity in the past few days – with our cousins over at Crikey starting the ball rolling and The Age following up with a marvellous piece by crack writer Michael Bachelard.
Sophie, it seems, has a thing about older men — which doesn’t surprise me.
Let’s start at the beginning; I always suspected there was rock that Sophie hid under — her behaviour, crass rudeness and her ever so common demeanour made her an accident waiting to happen. The Federal Government must now really believe there is a God after all.
And before I go, let me say if the attack dogs on the Speaker’s right of the House of Representatives don’t milk this episode to the very last drop they don’t deserve to be where they are.
It’s called payback.
I lifted the rock during the lead up to this dreadful woman’s election to the seat of Indi after a nasty pre-selection battle. The good voters of Indi, until Mirabella descended on the seat, had always enjoyed decent MP’s to represent them. Her reputation, though, preceded her.
One disaffected constituent-to-be called me to say Mirabella (who was then Panopolous) was being escorted around the electorate by the disgraced and disgraceful Noel Crichton Browne — the man all Liberals (with the exception of Mirabella) would run a mile to avoid.
So I called her:
My notes tell me the conversation went as follows:
BE: Would you care to comment on reports that Noel Crichton Browne is helping you with your Indi election?
SP: Yes, as a matter of fact he is. He’s a friend — what’s wrong with that?
BE: Well, he does have history and only recently he told a woman reporter from the Financial Review that he’d “like to screw her tits off.” And I’m wondering what the mother of a single Greek girl would think of her daughter keeping such company.
SP: [Before she banged down the telephone] Why don’t you go fuck yourself?!
Dear oh dear — all the charm of the barnyard has Sophie.
Well, as it now transpires, Sophie’s Mum might have been outraged on two counts — and the Crichton Browne revelation would have paled into insignificance.
Sophie Mirabella was in a relationship.
Not a relationship with a Greek boy she might have been expected to marry.
No siree.
A relationship with a distinguished Queens’s Counsel, the former Dean of Law at Melbourne University and general counsel to Lionel Murphy while he was Attorney General — Colin Howard.
The holier than thou Mirabella was Howard’s de facto wife — and he a man 40 years her senior.
Such was his fascination with his young mistress, he made her the executor of his will and a beneficiary of his $1million plus estate.
Now it seems Mirabella could be headed for the Supreme Court at the behest of the two adult children of her former (now deceased) lover.
The children aren’t after the money, Professor Howard may or may not have left Mirabella — they had no expectations.
But they wonder about Mirabella’s efficiency at the handling of their father’s financial and medical affairs while the couple were...well…a couple.
They believe their father gave his mistress a substantial amount of money to help her election campaign — the one orchestrated by the appalling Crichton Browne.
That’s not all.
In the meantime, Mirabella met a man who made her an honest woman — he married her.
Whether she had the temerity to wear white at the Greek Orthodox ceremony isn’t known, but what has been revealed is that she and her now hubby, Lt. Colonel Greg Mirabella were given, by Sophie’s former lover,$695, 000 to put towards their Wangaratta farmhouse, to which the married couple, Sophie and Greg, moved the former lover to live.
None of this needed to become public, however such is the hatred and derision Mirabella attracts within the Liberal Party, the electorate of Indi, the legal community and even Australians for Constitution Monarchy, many people are reacting with glee at her predicament.
Not the least of the ones enjoying it, of course, will be her Aboriginal constituents to whom she screamed: “Not Sorry!”
Mirabella is a thorn in the side of the dignity of the House of Representatives, where she is an Abbott frontbencher known for her arrogance and ability to demean those she doesn’t like, and as she waddles to the despatch box to make her repulsive points, manages to attract many sniggers from both sides of the House.
To illustrate the feelings, it is well to quote the most eloquent of the many emails and tweets which have come my way since the Mirabella revelations have been made public:
“I knew Howard much better than Mirabella – which is not to say that I was personally close to him.
"I am shocked to know of this relationship.
“Howard was man of great professional integrity and enormous personal propriety. I cannot imagine that in the normal course of events he would have been attracted to Panopolous, 40 years his junior without her having strategically set her cap at him.
“Old men can be overwhelmed by the flattering attentions of a younger person.
“Sex is a powerful agency in bonding.
“My heart goes out to his children, and would do so even if Mirabella possessed even one – just a single – redeeming feature.
“It must be truly galling for them to know how abused their father was in his twilight years.”
