Page 3545 - Week 09 - Thursday, 21 August 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Maybe Mr Gentleman did not know about that poll. He might not have even known about another poll. Mr Barr must have known about the poll that said that he and Katy are going to be the next team and then asked, I think, “Do you think Mr Stanhope is arrogant?” We thought that might have been a push poll from someone else, but apparently it was a Labor Party poll which said, “Do you think Jon Stanhope is arrogant, and by the way what do you think of Katy, and by the way what do you think of Andrew?”
Mrs Dunne: You are on first-name terms, are you?
MR SESELJA: The first names are in, Mrs Dunne. Apparently they have taken off now. We no longer call each other Mr Stanhope and Mr Barr. It is Jon—J-o-n. It is apparently now cool to be called by your first name. There is a marketing angle there for Mr Stanhope. “Jon” is the new way to go.
Mr Pratt: Jonno.
MR SESELJA: Jonno.
Mr Barr: Coming from you, Zdenko, that is quite a—
MR SESELJA: I am happy to have started the trend, I suppose. I am a little bit flattered. He was once Jonathan; it is Jon. I was Zdenko—Zed. I am really grateful that he has now followed that lead and it is Jon. Come the election—
Mr Barr: You’re the artist formerly known as Zdenko, are you?
MR SESELJA: According to Labor Party press releases, it is actually the artist formerly known as Zed. They have actually reverted to the strategy that was there six months ago: “the leader who we dare not speak his name”. Earlier on, they would not mention me and I was very disappointed about that. Then they went to mentioning me all the time. Now it is back to “We will not mention the person’s name.” It is “Liberal leader” or some other such description.
Certainly these things are in, but in terms of Mrs Dunne’s comments in relation to the divisions, we are seeing them open up. We have seen the amazing, extraordinary attack from the Chief Minister on one of his backbenchers today, essentially criticising her intelligence. He was criticising her character really. He was criticising the character of all the members of the committee, saying that this report was a grubby report and that Ms MacDonald had voted for a report that was timed to coincide with the election. Apparently the three of them got together and created the situation whereby Jon Stanhope would have a report dropped on him as close to the election as possible. The allegation that has been levelled by Jon is that Karin was apparently conspiring with Deb and Brendan to bring about this scenario.
It is quite extraordinary. We saw Mr Stanhope kicked out yesterday, with none of his colleagues willing to vote to keep him in. I thought the Labor Party still had the numbers for a couple more weeks. I thought they actually had the numbers until at least 18 October. I would have expected that they would have jumped to the defence
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .