Hamilton-Smith's vision finally fades

Martin-Hamilton smith appeared to be the rock on which the state Liberal party was perched; a fixture so immovable that even defamatory charges based on forged documents could not dislodge him. Unfortunately for him, once you start to roll a rock, it picks up momentum on the road to unstoppable free fall; and so it was that MHS was rolled.

In the wake of the "dodgygate" scandal - in which MHS claimed that senior Labor party figures were linked to Scientology, basing his evidence on forgeries, apologizing, then giving the victim of his slander legal advice that contradicted his original public story - moves where afoot to remove MHS who the tories seemed to feel had been hogging the poison chalice.

MHS himself called a challenge, to stare down any contenders. When Tory toff Vicky Chapman challenged for the top job, Hamilton-Smith won by 1 vote (10-11) with 1 MP speaking for all sensible South Australian's and unable to vote for either candidate. At the time he said:

"I'm delighted to have won the vote today, but it is not good enough for me .... I feel that the outcome is not clear enough and I've signalled to my colleagues I intend to recommit this decision within the week for a clearer outcome."

Not to be deterred MHS called another spill again, this time for Wednesday, but rather than using an inevitable victory to pressure MP's into a show of unity, MHS did the amazing, and managed to get rolled within three days of winning the vote. He has now announced he will not contest the next ballot only two hours after Isobel Redmond publically said what everyone was thinking and implored him not to run. The contest is shaping up as a contest between Isobel Redmond, Vicky Chapman and possibly Mitch Williams; if this is so, approximately 20% of elected tories will have been candidates for leadership ballots within the past week.

Read the full debacle here.

OzGate - the little email that wasn't

ToryGate: The definitive autopsy of a Tory Fail.

A wehatetories special; the UteGate summary is presented in full. Read on in horror as Turnbull commits political suicide with his own "smoking gun".

Inspiration:

The federal Liberal party appears to have taken a leaf out of South Australian Tory leader Martin Hamilton-Smith's book of political suicide over the last week.

The parallels are uncanny, in both cases, the Tory Leader marched into parliament and screamed till they where blue in the face about a corruption scandal and when quizzed for evidence relied on a fraudulent document they later purported to have nothing to do with.

That's right, the ABC now understands the email at the center of the OzCar "scandal" to be a fake.

Timeline of a Disaster:

June 4: Malcolm Turnbull alleges that Kevin Rudd's neighbour, a car dealer, has benefited from a system designed to help car dealers.

June 19: Malcolm Turnbull threatens the Prime Ministers economic adviser Andrew Charlton over his job if he does not provide an alleged email detailing the Prime Ministers wrongdoing. Tory Senator Eric Abetz reads the text of the email out publically.

June 20: Tired of waiting for Turnbull to provide evidence, Rudd calls the Australian Federal Police to investigate himself.

June 21: Turnbull panics, then claims the email he was talking about is unimportant and has nothing to with anything, and is somehow a nasty trick by Kevin Rudd.

June 22: The email is understood to be a fake.

June 22 ~ 3:30 PM: The email now understood to be a fake, has led police to former Turnbull adviser Paul Lindwall.

June 22 ~ 4:20 PM: AFP confirm the email is a fake, and a forgery.

June 22 ~ 4:30 PM: Tory Senator Eric Abetz claims that he read the email out after it was printed in the paper. After it turns out the text was read out by tory Abetz before it was printed, he suddenly changes his tune, and says he will not comment any further, other than to the Federal Police.

June 23: Turnbull, rather than apologizing, picking up the pieces of his shattered credibility and running for cover, simply admits that there is nothing to his allegations, then suggests "mutual apologies":

I'll apologise ... for saying he misled the parliament when he apologises to me ... we can have mutual apologies. I'd be delighted to do that."

June 23 ~ 6:00 PM: ABC reveals that the AFP has been monitoring treasury for years, suspecting a mole leaking to the Liberal party. With evidence seeming to now point to Grech as the source of the doctored email, Liberal insiders reveal that Grech has been "sympathetic" and leaking to the Liberal party, and possibly to Turnbull directly, Turnbull refuses to confirm or deny this. The AFP is also investigating the potentially related leaking of information about Fuelwatch and the bank deposit guarantee.

June 24: Joe Hockey says that the opposition Tories are entitled to form relationships with public servants such as Grech, but refuses to comment any further, other than to say that he understands that "there is a political story which is of interest to some if not many, about Godwin Grech".

June 25: News Limited Newspapers report that Godwen Grech met with Turnbull and Abetz met with Grech in the leadup to his senate estimates evidence and further that he had showed them the faked email during these meetings. With more than a whif of a conspiracy to con the public, Turnbull has refused to comment on this meeting other than to drop the bombshell that he had "spoken" with Grech recently.

June 28: Malcolm Turnbull gives a statement to the Australian Federal Police about his involvement in the forged email scandal. Despite admitting his argument could not be sustained on June 23, to distract attention from the embarassment of having to meet with the AFP over this, he repeats his claims of corruption against the government.

Summary of Players:

For your convenience - the summary of players involved in the scam.

Name: Malcolm Turnbull
Position: Tory Leader
Lies: Claims he had nothing to do with the email; turns out his mole is likely source of forgery. Refuses to comment on the mole any further.

Name: Eric Abetz
Position: Tory attack dog
Lies: Claims he was reading email from the newspaper; turns out the newspaper didn't print it till the day after. Refuses to comment on his earlier statements any further.

Name: Godwen Grech
Position: Tories rat Grech out as a Liberal mole
Lies: Claims he vaguely remembers an email; AFP are investigating him for producing the forgery. A senior Liberal claims he is "sympathetic" to the Liberal party; Turnbull is asked whether Grech leaks to him, refuses to confirm or deny; uncontactable.


The full timeline and summary of the debacle available only here.

Hamilton-Smith exposed as liar not dupe

Things have gone from bad to worse for SA tory leader Martin Hamilton-Smith. A few months ago, he was caught out for using a forged document to argue that Mike Rann and others in the ALP had tried to secure illegal campaign donations from Scientologists, claiming that his supporting documents came from within the ALP.

When challenged by the ALP to out the source of the forged documents, he then ran two lines of argument simultaneously, firstly, that he didn't know where they came from, secondly that they came from within the ALP headquarters. He then of course had to offer a humiliating apology, which is hosted on his own site here.

In a letter from MHS's lawyers to Mike Rann, it is now revealed the MHS simply lied, and never knew the source of the documents at all, with the story about the ALP headquarters apparently just another poorly thought through political tactic.

The letter also claims that MHS got the forged documents from the member for Unley, David Pisoni gave them to him, but conveniently he seems not to know the source either. It then claims that MHS made the "reasonable" conclusion that they had come from ALP headquarters.

Rann has decided not to pursue a defamation action, however as there is talk of the damages from such an action sending the campaign broke thankfully Nick Bolkus and ALP secretary Michael Brown are proceeding with their actions. The tories have pinned their hopes on the profile of former federal tory MP Alexander Downer to rake in some more cash, a man with sufficient experience in the area of dealing with large cash gifts and arising out of dodgyness.

It appears MHS may have finally sent the party financially as well as morally bankrupt.

Full debacle is available only here on the web so far.

Tories fall apart over climate change

We are used to hearing about the Australian Tories as a "coalition". In common parlance this is simply a respectful way of acknowledging that the cyst on the side of the Liberal Party is still formally registered with the AEC.

Keating once called it "vaudeville", and commentators often refer to the National Party as the tail with the power to occasionally wag the dog. In truth however, the National Party is more correctly described itself as the dog, the dog with one trick: rolling over.

So it is when the National Party "draws battle lines". The last time they did it was Telstra. This time however climate change denier Barnaby Joyce is drawing the battlelines on the CPRS.

Malcolm Turnbull, keen too avoid an embarrassing division within the coalition wants to delay voting on the legislation until after after the Copenhagen global discussions, arguing Australia should go to the negotiations with no trading scheme and tell others to implement one. Joyce however, has said that like the Greens the Nationals want to have the vote immediately so they can shut it down.

Confusing? Here's a summary of positions:

ALP: Want vote immediately to pass the bill;
Greens: Want vote immediately to defeat the bill;
Liberals: Want vote delay to negotiate the bill;
Nationals: Want vote immediately to defeat the bill;

To complicate matters, the Liberals are still apparently negotiation with the Labor party as representatives of the coalition.

So while the coalition looks set to implode one question remains: will the dog roll over?

Read the full debacle here.

Turnbull claims he thought of the policy he opposes

Insulating houses has been a big ticket item in the government's stimulus package; a plan fought tooth and nail by the tory opposition as "fiscally irresponsible".

However, it now comes to light that the plan slammed by tory leader Malcolm Turnbull, was his own in opposition.

Turnbull approached then PM Howard who signed off on the scheme immediately, but it was shut down by Costello as a waste of cash.

Turnbull however, didn't ditch the plan there. He kept quiet about the scheme, until Kevin Rudd launched it as part of his stimulus package. Hearing "his" idea discussed in public Turnbull blurted out at a doorstop:

[I] made the point that it represents probably the single biggest opportunity for straightforward, easy gains in energy efficiency. So it’s a very important area.

Days later he had changed tact somewhat. The policy he supported was now obviously still unpopular within Tory ranks, so he rephrased his comment on the matter:

We would support an insulation subsidy of a lower amount

But of course they didn't. The Turnbull opposition opposed the legislation in its entirety in favour of a scare campaign. Turnbull cast off his own idea and a concept he had labelled the "biggest opportunity for ... easy gains in energy efficiency" as part of a "spending binge".

Its tragic to think that the tories got so close to an innovative policy, yet ran so far.

Read the full debacle here.

Sexist Tory babe recruiting strategy unveiled

The Australian Liberal Students Federation has a history of bigotry, but usually avoids the media spotlight by confining their activities or university campus shenanigans.

However, former president Tim Andrews took recruiting (tory-speak for stacking) to a new low today when he was exposed for unveiling his personal strategy on his blog (now password protected): the "Babe Theory of Politics" - essentially that where there are "hot babes" there are eager young male stacks.

Women lying on beds, posing in suspenders and even a bikini clad young Tory. "We have the hot babes" he posts, on a blog so appalling that even Howard government appointed sex commissioner Pru Goward, now Tory MP, has slammed it.

These pictures, uploaded to the blog, are used to support the contention that the young liberals will succeed. In the words of former Liberal Student's Federation President Tim Andrews:

“However – there is reason for hope! For optimism! Definite proof that here in Australia we shall triumph!

“How do I know this? Easy – the Babe Theory Of Politics. To put it simply – we have all the hot girls.” - Tim Andrews

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at the conduct of an organization that once proudly sang "God Save the Queen" over an indigenous speaker at a national conference of students but you'd like to think - at least publicly - they have something more going for them than using photos of their own members in a degrading fashion.

Read the full debacle here.

Liberal addiction to PPP's compromises defence

The Tory party has an addiction to the private sector. Sometimes it's possible to hide the crippling effects of addiction from those around you, sometimes when you go on a real bender the truth is obvious for all to see.

So it is with the recently discovered Howard era Bungendore defence facility. Defence media advises that this photo was taken at the "turning of the first sod" (no pun intended) at the facility. A recently discovered National Audit Office report has found that the government saved 0.4% on the project by going into a private public partnership agreement.

That's right, the Tories commitment to private public partnerships saved 0.4%, but only by substantially reducing the size of the facility.

This from the party who trumpets economic management and defence as their core business.


Whats more, the Howard government knew about this at the time because they were advised that compromising the plans of the facility by entering the PPP would save 4 million dollars only as a result of the fact they commissioned private consultants to audit it for them; a review that cost 14 million dollars (3.5 times the value of the "savings" achieved by reducing the size of the facility).

To compound the bungle, under the terms of the agreement, defence does not take full legal possession of the nations new defence HQ until 2036; in the meantime it makes annual payments to the private consortium which in the first year alone were valued at more than 39 million dollars.

The "first sod" on the facility cost defence ownership of the facility till 2036, compromised the plans for the facility and then spent 3.5 times the value of any savings they made to hear it.

Read the full debacle here.