Otto von Bismarck commented that politics is the art of the possible.
Finally, at the eleventh hour, Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones realised that it was going to be impossible to belligerently stick to his refusal to meet with tax practitioners to fix his broken laws that they had been complaining about for a month.
Back in August, Jones introduced new laws requiring tax practitioners to disclose any matter that might influence whether or not a client engages their services.
Legal advice confirmed this would force some mental health disclosures, and the Chair of the governments Tax Practitioners Board responsible for administering the new law also said mental health could possibly be relevant as a matter for disclosure.
Proving that denial isnt just a river in Egypt, Jones insisted this wasnt the case and refused to budge, having already introduced the new laws without industry consultation.
Understandably tax practitioners were up in arms and wanted the law fixed. To guarantee mental health issues would not need to be disclosed to clients, alongside a number of other repairs the faulty laws required.
The Coalition and the crossbench came together to call out the inappropriateness of what Labor was doing. In the end only political desperation got Stephen Jones to actually do his job and fix the mess he had created.
Labor was set to get rolled in the Senate, and they came within a whisker of losing a vote there anyway, even after Jones at the very last minute agreed to every demand hed previously refused to compromise on, to the satisfaction of the tax industry.
The assistant minister Stephen Jones (pictured) refused to meet with tax practitioners until the last minute, angering the industry and the crossbench
The disallowance vote went ahead anyway and was a tie, at 31 a piece, meaning that Labors laws almost got cancelled despite its last minute backflip. Before the vote the minister issued a statement confirming hed backdown on every single one of the tax practitioners demands.
If he had agreed to do that at the beginning there never would have needed to be a vote, an advertising campaign condemning the Labor government, nor all the unnecessary anger Jones has caused because of his lack of consultation within the industry and amongst the crossbench.
Independent Senator David Pocock voted with Labor after it agreed to every one of the tax practitioners demands, in writing, but took to his feet in the Senate after the vote to declare that if the minister didnt honour his promise to fix the mess he created within the promised time frame, Pocock would move another disallowance motion himself and switch sides, guaranteeing Labor would lose.
There was no better demonstration of the frustration and distrust at the way Labor has acted on this matter.
This is a story of a stoush that never should have happened, and wouldnt have happened if the junior minister and his office had shown even basic competence before being dragged kicking and screaming to the negotiating table.
They denied their laws forced mental health disclosures, even though legal advice confirmed they did. They backed down.
They refused to concede that forcing disclosures of any ongoing investigations, rather than findings, was damaging to businesses. In the end they backed down.
They stood by their insistence that tax agents needed to dob in their clients, breaking every tradition of client confidentiality that exists across other professions such as law and medicine. In the end they backed down.
The Prime Ministers chief of staff, Tim Gartrell (pictured left), needed to step in to ensure Assistant Treasurer Stephen Joness mishandling of the accountants issue didnt get worse
The governments changes to the law are exactly what the industry asked for months ago. What was the point of all the arguing before now?
Joness unwillingness to even meet with the industry his new laws would damage managed to unite the crossbench in a way rarely seen.
Labor only had the support of the Greens in the Senate (of course).
Not that even the Greens were united in backing Labors now abandoned belligerence on this issue.
Lower House Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather wrote to Jones demanding changes to his vague and contradictory laws.
Former Labor Senator Fatima Payman crossed the floor again, this time not on the issue of Gaza, but rather to support tax practitioners under siege.
She sided with crossbenchers such as Pauline Hanson and Jacqui Lambie, amongst many others, as well as the Coalition.
A unity ticket that Jones managed to bring together only via extraordinary incompetence.
Pocock was with them too, until he gave Labor one last chance to fix its own mess.
That was when Jones finally did what a responsible minister should have done long before - he asked to see the industry bodies hed ignored, dismissed and insulted for months.
His first meeting with them was just over an hour before the vote.
The minister had been told to fix this mess by none other than Anthony Albaneses chief of staff, Tim Gartrell, who himself started calling crossbenchers to see where the numbers were once the failures of the assistant treasurer became all too apparent.
Mental health expert Patrick McGorry (pictured) was pleased Labor fixed its laws to exclude mental health disclosures, telling Daily Mail Australia the move was positive
Senior intervention became necessary to save political face.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers was asked about the sorry saga at a media conference on Tuesday. Working hard to keep a wry smile off his face, the Treasurer kept well clear of the mess, telling the journalist to take the matter up with his junior minister, because responsibility for the matter was in Stephen Joness very capable hands.
Jones had insisted his laws didnt compel accountants to disclose mental health issues to clients. He was cheered on by his media parrots, echoing the line that such worries were unfounded even though they all knew legal advice proved otherwise.
It was disgraceful behaviour, a tad dross.
Jones backed down on that issue even before yesterdays wider capitulation. Mental health expert and former Australian of the Year, Professor Patrick McGorry, who had expressed concerns about the possibility of forced mental health disclosures, told Daily Mail Australia upon learning of Labors backflip that it was positive that they seem to have ruled out the possibility of disclosure of any mental health history.
Yes it was.
In a bid to muddy the waters before the disallowance motion came to a head, the ministers fan club in the media shamelessly tried to suggest McGorrys concerns, clearly articulated in writing, were being overstated. Which, as we have seen, they clearly were not.
Of course once the war of words was over and Labor had firmly tucked its tail between its legs agreeing to fix its bad laws, polite corporate speak took over.
One of the dozen bodies critical of the governments laws - Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand - issued a media release thanking the assistant treasurer for listening to the tax professions concerns.
Stephen Jones thanked the industry for their constructive engagement with us on this matter.
In the end Jones compromised, thats true.
Compromised in the same way the Black Knight of Monty Python fame compromised with King Arthur: Letting him pass after the Black Knight was reduced to a limbless torso in the dirt, screeching threats that hed bite King Arthurs leg off if he ever returned.
The famous Monty Python scene