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The federal health minister Greg Hunt, human services minister Alan Tudge and assistant treasurer Michael Sukkar are lucky men. The three have been spared contempt of court charges after issuing a grovelling, if belated apology to the Victorian appeals court, chief justice Marilyn Warren and her colleagues Stephen Kaye and Mark Weinberg.

The apology was reluctant: only last week the two ministers and Sukkar, via solicitor-general Stephen Donaghue QC, expressed half-hearted regrets for making potentially prejudicial remarks about an appeal that was before the court. They accused the judges of being “hard-left activists” who were “divorced from reality”. Hunt accused the court itself of being a forum for “ideological experiments”.

Only when Warren warned the trio there was a prima facie case of contempt against them did they withdraw their remarks, which were published on the front page of the Australian, and apologise unreservedly. As is so often the case, sorry is the hardest word to say.

Most reasonable people would regard an apology as more effective and more sincere when it’s not said under the very real threat of jail time, the end of one’s career and bringing down a government all at the same time. But let’s step away from this unusual case and consider the predicament of the human services minister, Alan Tudge, who might be thinking about whether he owes a second apology.… Read more..