CarnalNation

A traffic jam on a busy Australian highway last month has suddenly turned into a career-halting sex scandal involving a government minister, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.  Transportation and roads minister David Campbell resigned from his position Thursday after a reporter from Channel Seven aired footage of the minister leaving a gay sauna.

The troubles began back on April 12, when a vegetable truck crashed into a fuel tanker and some Sydney residents spent up to twelve hours trapped on the F3, one of the major roads out of Sydney.  Campbell took a lot of heat for the government's slow response, and Seven began to question the minister's whereabout during the fiery debacle.  Campbell claims that he was working in his office that day and no one has yet come forward to either confirm or deny that.  Mr. Campbell didn't use his cell phone that day, suggesting that he was using the office landline, though his office has yet to confirm that.

Since the truck crash, Seven has been trying to find out where Campbell was on the day of the crash.  Reporter Adam Walters has been following the minister, and that's how he came to film Campbell leaving the spa.  Still, there is nothing to link that visit to Walters' implications that Campbell may have been engaging in illicit gay sex while Australians were trapped in their cars.

Campbell, whose wife is fighting cancer, immediately resigned upon hearing that Seven would be airing the footage.  According to Crikey.com.au, Campbell's private life was "an open secret in state government and media circles for years."  Premier Kristina Keneally has publicly announced her support for Campbell, though initially she called his actions "unforgivable."

Walters, by the way, is hardly a non-partisan reporter.  Former health minister Reba Meagher is the mother of the journalists' hird child, and their very public split--one during which he ran stories calling her "The Grim Reba"--has led some to suspect this expose was mostly motivated by revenge.