Well thank god for that! Like all good rats, the king of spin is the first to abandon the sinking ship of state the Australian Capital Territory. Yes, strictly speaking the ACT is not a state and nor should it ever become one, so perhaps a more accurate descriptor would be King Rat surfaces in Australia’s cesspool of greed, corruption and shady deals. Yes, I know that the cesspool of greed and corruption and shady deals is really the Australian Labor Party – they are one in the same at the moment though, aren’t they?
Well that’s enough for personal invective for the moment; let’s get to the core of the issue, the years of waste ushered in by Stanhope-less and his cronies.
“My driving commitment during my 10 years as chief minister has been to imbed the core principles of social justice, freedom from discrimination, human rights, equality of opportunity and the rule of law, ever more firmly into our community.”
Social justice, freedom from discrimination, human rights, equality of opportunity and the rule of law … now if there were ever ‘four lettered words’ uttered in the ranks of the Australian Labor Party, they would be these.
During the Stanhope-less years, ACT Policing, a command of the Australian Federal Police, have been given free rein to perpetrate any number of human rights abuses against the people of the ACT and by extension the people of Australia.
It was during the Stanhope-less years that Mr Darren Bloomfield, a former stalwart at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, was run over, bashed, denied medical attention and fitted-up by the Australian Federal Police for no other reason than that he is an Aboriginal Australian. If anyone doubt’s this I will be happy to publish his files from the Ombudsman’s office, the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Federal Police internal investigations unit. What a litany of human rights abuse and racial discrimination these documents reveal! Every reader should wonder what Stanhope-less means when he says ‘freedom from discrimination’; whatever this means it doesn’t extend to Aboriginal Australians, just ask Mr. Bloomfield!
Now we come to ‘equality of opportunity and the rule of law’. In 2001 the ACT Department of Treasury employed an Aboriginal Australian and member of the Stolen Generation(s) to be a senior officer within the ACT Revenue Office. From the day he started he was subjected to an ongoing campaign of racial vilification by others within the ACT Department of Treasury. In 2002 he was appointed Acting Director Revenue Management Branch and Commissioner for ACT Revenue. That’s when the fun really started. Certain elements in the ACT Department of Treasury couldn’t stomach working for a ‘boong cunt’ and a genuine campaign of racial hatred commenced within ACT Treasury against the ‘despised boong cunt’.Things reached such a stage that in 2003 the victim, the Commissioner for ACT Revenue, wrote to Stanhope-less in his then capacity as Chief Minister for the ACT and the ACT Attorney-General. Stanhope-less was advised of the racism issue along with other information supporting an allegation that certain ‘white’ employees of ACT Treasury had conspired to steal a large sum of money from ACT Treasury. What did Stanhope-less do? Nothing, absolutely nothing. You see blak fellas don’t count in his world!
Eventually the Commissioner for Revenue was fitted-up and sacked for having the gall to attempt to hold ‘white’ public servants accountable to the same standards of the ‘rule of law’ that they hold Aboriginal public servants accountable to. This is a very clear example of what Stanhope-less means when he talks about his achievements in enforcing ‘equality of opportunity and the rule of law’. Personally, I think that Aboriginal Australians would have received more honest and transparent treatment under Hitler!
Then we come to the alleged theft and transfer of $130,000,000.00 from the ACT Home Loan Portfolio to the Australian labor Party. While I concede that this did not occur under the Stanhope-less years, it was Stanhope-less as Chief Minister and Attorney-General who refused to investigate the allegations when they were brought to his attention by the then Commissioner for ACT Revenue.
Moving right along we come to the Stanhope-less claims about ‘social justice’. Well, let’s ask Australia’s most senior Aboriginal female bank executive what she thinks about this. She was bashed and racially and sexually abused while in Canberra by an ACT Department of Treasury official. The Australian Federal Police refused to investigate the complaint because they don’t investigate complaints made by Aboriginal Australians against ‘white’ Australians. So much for ‘social justice’ during the Stanhope-less years! I guess ‘social justice’ could be public service speak for, well, anything – as anything can and does go in the cloistered and murky world of the ACT Public Service!
In the words of a famous television sales person ‘but wait, there’s more’ and there is. Stanhope-less has made a big call about his ‘human rights’ record; appalling I know, but he seems to think otherwise. Regular readers will recall that late last year the Stanhope-less ACT Policing Service, a command of the Australian Federal Police, were included in a class action lodged in the ACT Supreme Court alleging human rights violations against ACT Policing clients at the City watch-House:
The Commonwealth of Australia and two former police officers have been accused of torturing citizens and breaking human rights law in what could prove to be a landmark class action filed in the ACT Supreme Court.
A Canberra law firm has lodged the unprecedented claims of negligence, systemic abuse and police misconduct on behalf of eight clients who were sprayed with capsicum foam in separate incidents at the City Watch-House in 2006.
If successful, their request for compensation for physical and psychological pain and suffering could cost the Federal Government and the former police officers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As Chief Minister Stanhope-less should have taken ministerial responsibility for the actions of his police service, though in fairness to Stanhope-less, responsibility is a foreign and misunderstood word in the cloistered world of the Canberra public service.
Well I think with that we have discounted most, if not all, of the Stanhope-less claims regarding his years as Chief Minister for the ACT. So what did he achieve? To my mind at least, corruption and incompetence in the ACT public service seem to be more entrenched than they ever were. I guess that could be an achievement, if you call ‘turning a blind eye’ to the facts, an achievement!