Page 1015 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 25 February 2009
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When the Chief Minister of the ACT, John Stanhope, successfully championed this statue, the evidence of Grassby’s corruption and treachery was both abundant and widely known.
In fact, it is worth noting here that Mr Sheehan may have actually got it slightly wrong. Mr Stanhope, by all accounts, was not the champion of the statue. It was, indeed, Mr Hargreaves who procured the avenue of immortalising his ideological hero.
Mr Stanhope has been quoted as saying that had he had a say he probably would have put a bit more thought into it. In fact, he goes so far as to say that this was not the most red hot of decisions. He made that statement on ABC radio, Friday, 16 March 2007. In fact, it is worth looking at the full text of his interview. A news report states:
Mr Stanhope distanced himself from the project on Friday, telling ABC radio that the project had been the brainchild of ACT Minister for Multicultural Affairs, John Hargreaves.
Asked what he was thinking in building the statue, Mr Stanhope said: “Well, I wasn’t thinking anything, I didn’t know about it until it was announced by the minister. I don’t approve the expenditure of every cent.”.
Asked if he would have approved it had he known about it, Mr Stanhope said: “I respect and defend and have absolute confidence in John Hargreaves, but probably not, but he has taken the decision. I am not saying this is the most red hot decision.”
He regretted the statue had caused so much controversy.
“I understand the point that is being made and if I had my time again or if I was involved in the decision perhaps the outcome would have been different,” Mr Stanhope said. “Or perhaps if our processes had been more rigorous at the time, and I acknowledge that they weren’t.”
Well, Mr Stanhope, the process was over four years ago—plenty of time to address the situation. But here we are, four years later and the cause of disunity is still in place. In fact, the groundswell of public opinion in recent days further indicates that the government got it wrong. Some recent comments on the statue include this one letter to the editor in today’s Canberra Times. Under the heading “Statue is a stain”, it states:
It is hypocritical in the extreme for ACT Labor Minister John Hargreaves to dismiss Underbelly allegations of Al Grassby’s smear campaign links to the murder of anti-drugs campaigner as a revival of sensationalism … Long before Underbelly, Hargreaves was himself instrumental in reviving a connection with the sensational.
That was when he commissioned a taxpayer-funded statue in honour of a controversial former fellow Labor politician against the wishes of the murdered man’s family.
One point is often lost in the debate surrounding Grassby’s attempt to implicate Mackay’s family in the murder.
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