Piers Akerman is at it again this morning, with his grubby attempt to link Rudd to allegations of child rape. Time is lacking for me to write a comprehensive post on this, but I’ve previously written on the “Heiner affair” and Akerman’s crusade in Crikey. I don’t think I posted the second story to LP when it appeared recently, so I’ll link to it now.
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Ackerman had been trying to get this off the ground a few a months. The public won’t give a toss about a complicated issue from two decades ago in QLD.
Another smear is about Rudd’s health. It seems that having an aortic valve replaced “raised questions about whether Mr Rudd would be fit to take on the job of prime minister.”
Desperate times it seems for the government.
Possum has the smear o meter set to 11
A perspective from down South. I hadn’t heard about this Reiner story until I read it on LP. I rarely read the DT, or much other msm. I vaguely recall hearing of it when it first broke, but. probably like a lot of people from NSW didn’t take much notice of it. I would suggest, regardless of Akermann’s efforts, it don’t have lrgs any more. Except perhaps in Queensland, and I doubt its going anywhere there, by the sounds of it.
The sleaze about Rudd’s heart valve opration is likely to backfire on the Libs. A kid who hasd rheumatic fever being picked on. I might be particularly unhealthy but I don’t think many blokes approaching fifty could undertake the rigours of the Kokada Trail, a test of Rudd’s endurance which I gather was televised nationally, and greatly increased his public profile. Every time its screened it reinforces his fitness, and, incidentally his friendship with Joe Hockey, and so perhaps subtly undermines Hockey’s industrial relations propaganda. Would I be right in suggesting both smears can only discredit the Coalition further, and gain the ALP sympathy and votes? There’s something extremely distasteful in anti-Labor supporters publicly trvraling a potential PM’s medical records for political gain, don’t you think. People won’t like it.
I don’t know whether it is good blogging etiquette, but I also raised this issue.
Obviously there is a file somewhere with all the smear stuff that can be released to ‘friendly’ journalists.
But the personal smear hasn’t worked. You can see that Rudd’s wife stuff, Anzac Sunrise, the stripper thing etc. hasn’t dented Rudd’s popularity. In fact it may have the opposite effect.
Slips like Rudd not knowing his tax rates are far more damaging because as an ‘unproven’ leader any doubts in voters’ mind of not being on the ball is a negative (remember Hewson birthday cake?) even if they like him.
After all Beazley was well liked but the majority of voters still did not vote for him.
Oops! should be trawling not trvaling.
Shaun, would the Herald be as critical of Cheney and his ongoing heart problems? Four heart attacks, quadruple bypass surgery, a defibrillator inside his chest which is always on alert.
And don’t forget, Col. Mike Kelly is a nazi, too!
http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Callers-not-happy-over-Phelps-row/2007/09/20/1189881649529.html
My schadenfreudometer is boiling over…
It is often reflected in academic discourses that when ad hominem gambits surface those indulging in ad hominem have nothing worthwhile to say. After having viewed “Question Time” on a number of occasions this week and especially this afternoon, the appalling impression conveyed and reinforced from the House of Reps is that ad hominem rather than ad argumentum prevails.
It should scarcely be surprising then that muck-racking stories and ad hominem comments are generated in tabloid publications. It does divert attention from scrutinising the government and calling it to account for its policies and actions.
Perhaps the only “value” of these activities from the House floor and tabloid media is that they could be of illustrative use in an undergraduate introductory course in logic.
I find that my friends and acquaintances alike are increasingly sick and tired of the political muck-racking. The accumulated weight of it seems to be prompting people that I know to want the election over and done with immediately.
While it is an admitted pipe dream — It would be a tremendous improvement if the rules governing “question time” were rewritten by people with no vested interest in the political parties to compel strict procedure and observance of rules and conduct. Similarly Dorothy-Dix questions need to be banned, and the role of the Speaker of the House (and Senate) needs to be placed in the hands of an independent person who is likewise not the member of a political party. The current conduct is unsatisfactory and irritating, and one cannot help but feel great antipathy towards the current speaker of the house in the way he decides matters favouring the Coalition and disadvantaging all others.
One could imagine the outcry of “unfair” if the 2007 NRL premiership team played the grand final and the game’s referee was chosen from their team to adjudicate on rules where his team has a vested interest in winning the match.
“The sleaze about Rudd’s heart valve opration is likely to backfire on the Libs”
Which is doubly ironic given that they might not have launched it. It appeared out of the blue when Rudd’s tax gaffe was sucking up all the media oxygen. Good – if not particularly wholesome – tactics if Rudd’s office did put it out there. But all’s fair, etc…
Did the Senate just announce it would commence an(other) inquiry?
If so, chalk one up for the bad guys
I have a few questions though. Did Rofe produce a nine volume piece of work on this matter pro bono? 3000 pages of QC advice would be worth a fortune. If so, why? And on what basis did he obtain access to evidence. if he’s just offered an opinion based on matters already on the record then I say whoop de do. How does that merit an inquiry. If we’re going back that far, let’s go back a little further into conservative politics in Qld and NSW around the time.
Let the fun begin
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22450835-11949,00.html
A Royal Commission is being set up according to the above link. Unlike most commissions I think this one will be run very quickly and will possibly kill Rudd’s chances.
If one was to believe in the government doing whatever it takes (and one would be foolish and cynical to think so) an effective tactic would be to leak the day before the election some story about Rudd being ‘very involved’ in either child abuse or a cover up. Noone wants to vote for a pedophile.
An apology over the inaccuracy of the leak could be published a week or two after the election by a triumphant and kindly Mr Howard. No ‘harm’ no foul.
But look at me, I’m a cynic. It’s not like any other party in recent history has tried to lind child abuse to their political opponents.
Can someone edit my last post? I’ve accidently turned the entire post into a link
Here’s the link confirming the Senate motion
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22450835-11949,00.html
It would be inordinately difficult to set up an inquiry before the election.
I wouldn’t rule it out though. Even the terms of reference would be an attractive outcome for the govt I suspect.
But this year has been so counter intuitive (Burke vs Santoro , Stippergate etc) it may just be the straw that break’s the electorate’s patience with them
Ackerman is living proof that the bumper sticker “Do you know the truth or do you read The Daily Telegraph” is right on the money.
Gillard has pointed to an Abbott dirt unit as the likely source of the Rudd health scare. How safe is Abbott’s seat?
I’ve only just started posting here so forgive me if you’ve been over this, but this election strikes me as a real watershed. Labor gets in and the federal libs will implode while the ALP has a generational opportunity to fix some of the structural problems of federalism. Conversely, if the ALP gets done they’ll fall apart at a federal level and start to lose their hold on the States piecemeal.
The other theory I’ve felt had merit would be the libs being done federally and bleeding some talent back to the States who desperately need it. I’m not referring to Downer here obviously, more the back room boys and girls
But this Heiner things stinks. Tony Koch was head of the press gallery up in Qld and probably reporting for the CM at the time of the original ‘inquiry’. He’s not particularly beloved by either party (prove me wrong chidren, prove me wrong) and i think his peice in the Oz yesterday sums it up pretty well
I made the point in both the Crikey articles I linked to above that there have already been six enquiries into this non-affair. Heiner himself said there’s nothing suss about it. I also made the point that interest in it seems to peak just before federal elections (or with the Borbidge government in Qld, raking over the ashes of the Goss record to try to discredit Labor). It’s a highly cynical exercise.
Also, just because the Senate passes a resolution calling for a Royal Commission that doesn’t mean one will be established. That’s for the government to decide.
Silkworm, Abbott’s got a North Shore seat; he’s got at least 10%.
He nearly became a Presses for the Police Minister at an above average salary, but spoke about it too early. He is a great mate or Pearson and a strong advocate of aboriginal causes. Might not be Labor but certainly not Tory.
Heiner has been sliced, diced and minced.
It was a Cabinet decision and folks Rudd was not a member of Cabinet.
Take your point about the Senate-govt power issue on calling the inquiry.
And I also understand why Auntie Piers is all het up about this. But I’m still not clear on why Rofe has put so much work into it and how they got Shand etc to endorse his call for an inquiry.
Any clues?
“Any clues?”
The dirt unit has the dirt on them?
Someone had a go at wedging Akerman on blog on whether he and Joyce have been cooperating on this but he’s denied it.
Mark:”Just because the Senate passes a resolution calling for a Royal Commission that doesn’t mean one will be established. That’s for the government to decide.”
And how does that happen if Tip’s slip is on the money:
“This is the last question time,” Mr Costello said before correcting himself, “It it could well be the last question time.”
?
Abbott has the electorate of Mosman. Bastion of old wealth, and about as hard-Liberal as you can get.
Setting up a Royal Commission is an act of the executive government, Danny, as the name should make clear. It’s a commission from the Governor-General to be more precise, and as Mark indicated, effectively that makes it a decision of the PM. Legislation isn’t required. That’s how Howard personally got to frame the terms of reference of the AWB Royal Commission.
Regarding Today’s question Time Stoush.
So JHo admitted that the case for his re-election is based on smearing Rudd?
Looks like it. I predict a certain “Voice Artist” will be very busy in the next few weeks revoicing Question Time Quotes for using in Election Advertising, hopefully against JHo
Well, after the embarrassment of the NRMA decison last year, why would anybody give the fat-toad any credibility whatsoever?
He’s the Pilger of the right. Didactic and boring. I’m sure his only audience are the pensioners who listen to Alan Jones. In other words he’s completely irrelevant.
Not to mention a knob.
What hansard can’t show is JWH’s face as Julia Gillard takes it
Oh yes, saw it on 7.30 report. BTW, House of Reps Question Time will be on Your ABC at 12.20am after GEt Up, Stand Up, which covers the Charity Single ala Band -aid and Live Aid.
.. to him over the Koutsoukis meeting in a minisiterial office with a manilla folder on offer. She beards him straight over his feigned outrage at the suggestion that his party could get up to dirty tricks, and challenges him to find out which misister it was that was making the offer, that he was a nasty little hypocrite. The expression on his face was excruciating, a hamster caught in the headlights.
No doubt about it, she can stick up for herself, cool calm and effective.
Yep Gilly had me out of my seat this evening…..sticking it to the man….the rodent looked, well, like…….a rodent. Guilty as charged he was, and it was obvious.
Yep , Gilly did well. Usually we dust the rodent poo off, after taking the back off the tele, every month. This time it dripped, straight down, onto the carpet.
Gilly has been all over the air waves in the last few days. Plus Swan and others. It must be a response to the Lib’s ‘team’ approach after Howard’s near death experience.
Last week sometime Senator Ian Macdonald made a speech in the Senate where he cited a whole string of Qld MPs who had been in trouble with the law, starting with convicted child abusers Keith Wright and Bill D’Arcy. He was saying, that is the type of people they are in Labor in Qld.
Yes but surely the manilla folder affair is small beer compared to Piers Ackerman’s blatant attempt to use the Heiner affair as a political football. Julia Gillard seems to be right to suggest there are people outside the halls of parliament working on smearing the Labor campaign as she did on Lateline tonight. And who do we have here but Ackerman! It may be old news although deserving to be re-examined in the context of a broader examination (ie royal commission) of the issue of aboriginal child abuse, but repackaged with Ackerman’s typical explosives who knows how the average punter might react. Certainly his posting today is filled with people practically ready to lynch Kevin Rudd, which is a worry. On the edge of this election, the forest has been parched for nearly a year now and the air is so dry it hurts the throat…
But then maybe Piers Ackerman is a legend in his own mind and if the Liberal Borbidge government didn’t do anything much about the Heiner affair in the way of for instance, official enquiry then surely they should be at least be sharing some of the blame too. God, there is definitely going to be a lot of sudden jolts in this election campaign…
Former Premier Borbidge on the issue of Heiner
Former Premier and National Borbidge also considers the case closed according to the Government Gazette.
Ah, yes I see that now – forgive my ignorance. But it’s interesting that Rob Borbidge himself is dismissing claims that Kevin Rudd could be linked to the affair. At least he’s not buying into the smear hysteria. Honestly how desperate can They get? They really are just looking for that killer blow that brings the whole Kevin07 edifice toppling down. What a waste of time.
The unique thing about JWH’s Government dirt file is that they appear to have used private investigators to create it. Jack Lang had a capacious dirt file, some of which he published in his various biographies, but he did all the legwork himself. Eddie Ward, the Labour Member for East Sydney, had a huge dirt file most of which he probably burnt before he died. (At least its not in his papers) and he gave some of his material on the Brisbane Line to Curtin to background journalists with. I suspect Ward passed it on to the Tribune journalist, Rupert Lockwood and it surfaced as Document J in the Petrov Commission.Artie Fadden, the wartime PM, also had a dirt file, but that has definitely been destroyed.
The thing is people came and told these pollies things.. They never stooped so low as to employ P.Is.
Maybe like Anthony in the Whitlam days they’ll even employ the CIA (cf. The Falcon and the Snowman.)
Ackerman and the Heiner conspiracists (including the clownish David Flint) ask the credulous to believe that the newly elected Goss government acted on the instructions of Kevin Rudd to shred documents that implicated officials of the newly-defeated Bjelke-Petersen/Ahern/Cooper government in child abuse. Yes of course, the motive is so so clear and obvious. Of course Goss and his ministers would want to protect the reputation of the former regime. Naturally the responsible Minister, left firebrand Ann Warner, would want to shield her discredited National party predecessor from further ignominy. What could be more likely?
It’s such a dumb story – fodder for conspiracy theorists everywhere. Google it and see what lunatics are obsessed by it. However, it’s likely to be lost in the noise this week, and Labor have put up a bit of a preventive firewall against further smears with their actions in nailing the gov’t for them in Parliament this week.
Do these private investigators exist or not? If they do, do taxpayers pay for them or are they paid from a private slush fund?
It’s a fruitloop magent alright. Anytime someone starts writing their webpage in CAPITAL LETTERS I begin to worry. It’s just about moblising the base. And the timing of the pension top one off was just conincidental. Actually, it could have been, but it does seem increibly fortuitous