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Citizenship Minister Upstine Tartrous yesterday referred himself to the Standards
Commissioner over accusations concerning his senate flat. The Tumbril has published
a series of stories in recent days alleging that Tartrous’s partner is not in fact
his gay lover, but is in fact an estate agent making use of the upmarket senate apartment
block address to run a highly-
‘I can appreciate how this might, taken out of context, appear less than 100% above board at first glance,’ said Tartrous in a statement. ‘Which is why I have decided to refer myself to the Standards Commissioner. I am confident that the Commissioner’s investigation will vindicate my position, which is that Blosker and I are very much in love. That is why we live together, and it’s unreasonable to expect him to give up his career for my sake. I understand that people do wonder what our wives make of the situation, but that is a private matter. All I will say is that they’ve been very supportive. As have our children.’
Tartrous is no stranger to the Standards Commissioner, having referred himself on no fewer than twelve separate occasions since becoming a minister eight years ago. The Commissioner’s rulings, when they eventually appeared, have varied from complete exoneration to fairly serious censure, but in each case came long after the media had lost interest in the case. Indeed, some have noted that Tartrous has often referred himself on matters in which the media had previously taken no interest at all. ‘Upstine treats the Standards Commissioner like a kind of publicity fruit machine,’ comments longstanding political enemy Finity Volume of the Aspersion Covenant. ‘He pulls the handle and sometimes he wins big, sometimes he doesn’t, but it always gets his smug face in the media to one degree or another.’
Tartrous has in the past flirted with other official censure bodies, having referred himself to organisations ranging from the Good Grammar Campaign to the International Genocide Tribunal. Notoriously, in 2008, he applied to have himself entered on the National Paedophile Register over an affair with a friend of his daughter. When the registrar pointed out that the girl in question was 26 years old, Tartrous countered, ‘Yes, but I thought she looked 15.’
In a terse response to our reporter late yesterday, the Standards Commissioner said, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, not again!’
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Tartrous refers himself to Standards Commissioner