Received this in the mail yesty from Senator Carol Brown.
Unbelievably misleading as when I rang the ‘Postal Voting Hotline’ I got her office.
Also the envelope is addressed to her so the ‘Postal Vote Application’ form that you fill out & sign goes to her office as well.
Even if she is forwarding the completed forms onto the AEC, she still has to open the envelopes & then is presented with peoples’ personal information & signature that she would not normally be privy to.
Why is she collecting this info & what is she doing with it? Why not just send out a form with a return envelope addressed to the AEC? Why is her name & details printed so tiny down the bottom?
This is blatantly misleading & she should have to explain to people that the form & information is NOT from the AEC.
I don’t suppose she has also broken any laws by using her printing allowance for obvious electioneering?
And,
This is just bloody ridiculous! MORE misleading election pamphlets, this time from the three Liberal senators, Eric Abetz, Stephen Parry & Guy Barnett. You WOULD think that these people would know better but I suppose after Eric Abetz’s complete stuff-up of Tony Abbott’s electioneering this week when he totally contradicted Abbott’s line about “no more Work Choices”, we can see that they DON’T know any better at all. It’s completely DUMB.
Trying to deceive the voters with shonky pamphlets that are portrayed as postal voting ‘information’ is just wrong, morally if not legally. Not only that but it treats the voters with contempt by assuming that they will be too stupid to notice the deception. The very people that the politicians are trying to win over are treated like idiots. Someone obviously needs to tell these politicians that treating people like morons while asking them to give you their backing just doesn’t work, in the real World. This dishonesty says an awful lot about the perpetrators & it’s NOT good. Australia’s parliament does not need people who think that this type of calculated fraud is OK & changes to electoral laws are obviously needed to outlaw such unscrupulous behaviour from political candidates.
Very pissed-off,
Chris
And:
Related …
Boral to investigate use of company email in election campaign
A major construction company is investigating the apparent use of a company email account to send out election material for a Tasmanian Liberal Party candidate.
Robyn Titmus, the wife of Bass candidate Steven Titmus, has sent the media a press release on behalf of her husband, using a Boral email address.
Boral is Australia’s largest building and construction materials supplier, and a major employer in Tasmania.
According to an online business register, Ms Titmus works as a personal assistant and sales administrator at the company’s Launceston office.
Boral’s head of Corporate Relations in Sydney, Kylie Fitzgerald, was unaware of Ms Titmus’ actions, but says the matter will be investigated.
She indicated it could be a breach of company policy.
Robyn Titmus has declined to comment.
Steve Titmus has told the ABC he sent the release to his wife for distribution, because he was not in his office.
He says it is now an internal matter for Boral and he has no further comment.
Auditor to probe premier’s fund
Tasmania’s auditor-general will investigate whether the Premier’s Sundry Grants program is being used as a Labor slush fund.
Last financial year, 260 grants of more than $840,000 were issued from the scheme.
All but one of the grants were given to Labor members.
The President of the Legislative Council, Sue Smith, says several MLCs made requests but were refused.
She says they were told the fund had run out only to discover it was later topped up in an election year.
“So interestingly enough for independent members of our House generally it appears the funds had run out yet last week we saw where there were two top ups to those funds. So it isn’t treated equitably,” she said.
“It has been the right of the premier of the day to decide where that money goes and the premier has made his choices and the premier must be accountable for those choices.”
Independent MLC Tania Rattray-Wagner was the only non-Labor member to secure funding.
Among last year’s grants was $1,500 to the premier David Bartlett for the Rotary Club of Hobart’s magic show.
Acting Premier Lara Giddings says she is pleased the investigation will also look at the operation of the program under previous governments.
Polley’s lolly jar may rot ethics
SUE NEALES | July 17, 2010 09.23am
IT is a longstanding tradition in the offices of the Tasmanian Premier that Labor powerbroker Michael Polley will pay a formal visit at the start of each new year.
Office insiders say Mr Polley Labor’s longest-serving MP and leader of its governing Right faction always arrives with a lengthy list of funding requests and a firm negotiating face.
The purpose of Mr Polley’s annual ritual is so Labor’s reigning elder statesman can bargain with the premier of the day for as juicy a slice as possible from the $1 million held in the loosely regulated Premier’s Sundry Grants fund.
Usually Mr Polley will haggle for access to between $200,000 and $300,000 from the premier’s fund to spread around his Lyons electorate during the year as his own political largesse to his constituents.
Mr Polley’s argument has always been that, as the Speaker of the Parliament for the past 20 years (give or take a few missing years in the mid-1990s), he has been unable to promote his own political profile to the voting public as, for example, a government minister could.
Accordingly, Mr Polley has maintained that come each election he is at a disadvantage to other sitting Labor MPs in his vast electorate of Lyons, because he is prepared to act as the House’s notionally independent Speaker.
. . . Although as anyone acquainted with parliamentary affairs will know, Mr Polley passionately loves the Speaker’s blackwood chair, the chauffeur-driven limousine, the elevated salary, the rare entertainment allowance and the power over the Parliament that goes with his position.
Mr Polley openly tells anyone prepared to listen that the only way he will be leaving the Tasmanian Parliament, and the Speaker’s chair, is in a box with gold handles.
The argument put by Mr Polley, on the surface, is that $300,000 a year for his constituents, courtesy of the Premier, is a small amount to request for the services he has rendered the Labor Party over the past 38 years he has been in Parliament.
Without its needing to be said, there is also general acceptance within the office of the premier of the day that Mr Polley’s requests need to be fulfilled.
It is usually undeniable that the Labor premier sitting in the magnificent 10th-floor suite of the state’s leader has only been installed in his job or, in David Bartlett’s case, allowed to carry out a bloodless coup to remove his predecessor with the support, lobbying and number-crunching of Mr Polley.
It is equally irrefutable that the machiavellian Mr Polley, having sat through so many years and tiers of Labor governments, knows where all of the “skeletons” are buried.
As one former premier’s staffer involved with the Premier’s Sundry Grants fund said yesterday: “What Mr Polley wanted, Mr Polley got.”
