THE kerfuffle started by The Australian on the 10th of February, over the Premier’s brother and the associated perception of a conlict of interest, has taken a fairly normal turn for Tasmania: the Government asserts that black is in fact white and then waits and hopes for the whole thing to just go away.

But after comparing a few notes with colleagues here and interstate, it’s become obvious that the Tasmanian Government has deliberately misled the media on a couple of aspects of the story.

So here’s how we saw it, in their own words:

“I put all this to the Premier yesterday and we gave them about eight hours to come back with a response and we made it clear that we were focussing particularly on these Council issues and we provided everything we had, so I have done everything I possibly can to get a full response back …” [Matthew Denholm (of The Australian) to Tasmanian Labor MLC Michael Aird, 10th February 2006]

… it is true that you did give us a heads up on the story and we did have a chance to get involved yesterday. Now that might have been a bad error in judgement, in terms of trying to counteract it here and then, rather than let it float around.” [Michael Aird to Matt Denholm, 10th February 2006]

“You would have thought in this day and age that people would have checked the facts before they wrote the story, but unfortunately that is not always the case.” [Premier Paul Lennon, 14th February 2006]

“I will say I got on to this story because a member of the public said they thought something was wrong.” [Matthew Denholm, 10th February 2006]

… [Tasmanian Greens MP Tim Morris] and Matthew Denholm got their heads together on this matter in October last year.”
[Premier Paul Lennon, 14th of February 2006]

It would appear that the Premier wants us all to believe that the nasty mainland press prints baseless stories without checking facts AND that Tasmanian Greens MP Tim Morris is behind the story.

Neither of these claims are true and the Tasmanian Government well knows this. But a small thing like the truth doesn’t stop them slagging off everyone else involved, as usual, in a desperate attempt to smear some of the mud onto someone else.

In my opinion, there is quite strong evidence to show that the conflict of interest issue was actually a complete non-event, sparked by somewhat innacurate Sorell Council minutes. But regardless of the issue itself, a number of people are now quite pissed off at the manner in which the Government has manipulated and/or smeared them while conducting it’s “black
is white” defence.