Page 3542 - Week 09 - Thursday, 21 August 2008
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That was on 4 June. On 26 June this year, Crikey again ran an article. It goes like this:
The ACT chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, has directed his staff to find as much dirt on the new opposition leader, youngish Zed Seselja, as they can. The problem is this: Zed is clean. Stanhope, on the other hand, is tainted with an odour that refuses to be washed away: his latest gaffe is the gas-fired power station debacle. Yesterday, he announced yet another major new Power Station project, after weeks of exposure over his bungled “Gas project mark1”. The troops say he is resigned to a policy of “attack is the best line of defence”. One wonders how much longer a weary Canberra electorate will tolerate his media games.
And again, on 27 June:
Re. ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope’s instructions to staff to start looking for dirt on Opposition Leader Zed Seselja, here’s one trick that’s sure to backfire. Even rusted-on Labor supporters are impressed by Seselja, who has shown himself to be hardworking, serious and smart (and by the look of things, up to the job of ousting Stanhope: why the dirt file, otherwise?). Labor staffers and the ACT media are tired of Stanhope’s many, many indiscretions, which have been indulged and tolerated only because the ACT Liberals couldn’t come up with a viable alternative for Chief Minister … until now. Stanhope’s attempts to smear Seselja, who is widely regarded across Canberra as a good guy, may finally lead to his own very messy public unmasking.
On 22 July 2008, there was one titled, “Optimistically patting the dog”:
The Liberal Party candidate who fearlessly engenders goodwill by giving my American bulldogs a pat every morning at the local coffee shop is in an optimistic mood about the chances of the Labor Party losing majority government status when the Australian Capital Territory goes to the polls in October. He is surprised at the civility with which he is being greeted while door knocking in what is normally a very strong pro-Labor town. The style of Chief Minister John Stanhope, he says, is the biggest thing going for non-Labor candidates like him.
And then, on 24 July this year, Crikey continues:
ACT Labor in panic mode. The unofficial ACT election campaign is well and truly underway. We knew that from the moment government instrumentalities started pumping out those tax payer funded adds pretending to provide information about services while in reality attempting to create the impression that the incumbent government had done a very good job. Today the issue has become one of roads with the Stanhope team almost admitting it made a mistake in building only a two lane road connecting the suburbs of Gungahlin with Canberra’s south. That road was only opened in March and now the Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has rushed out a press statement saying that work will start on doubling the size of the road. I say rushed because he wanted to beat an announcement planned for this morning by his Liberal Party opponents promising to do exactly that. This ACT Labor Government is surely in panic mode.
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