CONTACT Richard Farmer PO Box 613 Tanunda SA 5352 Phone: 0422 083 285
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Friday, 10 November 2006
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"The incestuous relationship between government and big business thrives in the dark."
Inquiries in two states by anti-corruption bodies are currently shedding a little light on the relationships between property developers and those in government with an influence on development approvals. In Western Australia a minister has gone. In Queensland it is a former minister being investigated. These cases are making me change from an opponent of anti-corruption bodies to a supporter.
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Take a Reality Check on Gesture Politics I wrote yesterday that we should expect a dramatic change in rhetoric from Prime Minister John Howard. “Staying the course,” I said, “will disappear along with US Defence Chief Donald Rumsfeld.”
Well the change is certainly not happening immediately. Yesterday Mr Howard was downplaying the significance of the American election result. Some excerpts from his door stop press interview:
I think therefore we have to take a little bit of a reality check. Clearly the President has reacted to the vote, obviously he has and that is sensible. But his reaction does not amount to a fundamental change in direction. …
But there is a measure of gesture politics in what the President has done …
I do not believe that either the United States or the United Kingdom is going to begin withdrawing, except in circumstances where they are as satisfied as you can be that you're leaving behind conditions of reasonable stability. …
I think as a result of the vote in the Congressional election it was obvious that the President decided that a gesture acknowledging the unease that some people feel about the way the operation is going in Iraq that he had to do that. And I would see Rumsfeld's departure very much in that context.
Put the Editor of the Tele and the Premier in the Dock Years as a youth sitting in courts taught me that there are normally two sides to most crime stories, even the most sordid and sad ones. In that sense covering police rounds for Tassie and Melbourne Truth was a great teacher. I learned the wisdom of keeping “the presumption of innocence” until a verdict was finally delivered. Whether it was the high life or the low life on parade there was rarely a case that turned out as straight forward as a police prosecutor's initial summary.
New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma is not much of a one for believing people are innocent until proven guilty. Mr Iemma was happy that his Aboriginal affairs minister Milton Orkopoulos was arrested, charged, sacked as a Minister and stripped of his ALP membership all on the one morning. The Premier had no time to listen to Mr Orkopoulos' denial of all the allegations and his promise to defend his reputation. There was scarcely time to pretend that he was not prejudging his former colleague before setting about helping to create a climate where it is guilt not innocence that is presumed.
Not that the Premier is the principal creator of the warming climate of guilt with its strong overtones of homophobia. The Sydney Daily Telegraph takes that prize. This morning it did its best to paint some kind of serial homosexual child molester with a story that “Labor Party figures knew in 1997 that child sex allegations had been levelled against disgraced MP Milton Orkopoulos but were dismissed by police. A Newcastle father told The Daily Telegraph yesterday he approached Hunter region MP John Mills almost 10 years ago with claims Orkopoulos had interfered with his 15-year-old son. Just two years later, Orkopoulos was preselected as Labor's candidate for the seat of Swansea .”
Now I am not sure what impact stories like that will have on a jury when the case finally comes to trial in 12 months or so. I do know that the law assumes there is a capacity for such stories to be prejudicial.
Perhaps the first case that the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery QC should consider mounting out of this investigation is against the editor of the Tele for the contempt he has shown for the administration of justice. Mr Cowdery should have a look at the same time whether there are grounds to put the Premier in the dock as well.
Now that would be a court case that an old Truth man would love to cover!
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