Wait a minute! Hold on! Just a second! Being a ‘nice guy’ should be meaningless in the world of politics.
Big Pollies in the major parties, we are told, get to where they are, not by being agreeable/pleasant, but by having the ability to out-shine, dominate, undercut and be willing to push all off the Big Rock on which their ego demands they stand.
Congeniality, we may frequently surmise, is merely a cover for gargantuan vote garnering.
However, $3,000 for a bottle of wine, given as a ‘gift’, is now seen by those in our political ‘clubs’ as a normal pattern of behaviour.
Joan and I happen to be fairly well middle class and once we spent $50 on a bottle of wine to celebrate the birth of our twentieth grandchild. We thought THAT was too much.
O’Farrell’s error, we are told, was in not reporting the gift. The now-acceptable political culture behind the gift is where the real corruption lies: open acceptance of corrupting gifts.
That bottle of wine exposed the venality and superficial level of political life today. Both columnist Henderson and ex-premier Greiner saw no problem in accepting the gift; no two people could be more woven into the political culture of today than Gerard and Nick. Unfortunately, their thinking is the norm…for both big parties. It would appear such operatives view themselves as ‘above the fray’.
These past few ‘wine bottle’ days have been like a scene from the 1962 movie, ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ i.e. dozens who had been brain washed by the Chinese and North Koreans and worked with the US presidential candidate said the corrupted American candidate was a ‘perfect person’. Trouble is, everyone interviewed used the identical words to wit: “He is the most wonderful person I have ever known…”
In the light of Premier Barry O’Farrell ‘falling on his sword’ (ten times) and being a most ‘courageous’ man (perhaps twenty), we are informed he was the ‘most trustworthy person’ (ad nauseum including identical words from Abbott) in politics. More accolades continue in almost indistinguishable words. Obviously the minders of the Liberal Party had put out a pro-forma for the party faithful: “You are to say, the following…!”
A basic question must be asked of our current system, “How can a $3,000 bottle of wine, given as a gift to a top politician by a registered lobbiest, be seen as ANYTHING BUT corruption?
And then Barry ‘forgot’. Also, Barry ‘could not remember’. He said he had a ‘severe memory lapse’. And then he said he wrote the note of thanks to the lobbyist but it did not jog his memory. But, he added, “ It is my handwriting,”. It is to Barry ‘s credit that he can still identify his own penmanship.
I will be kind to Mr O’Farrell and say that he is possibly suffering from Early Dementia or Alzheimer’s and the people of NSW are fortunate that it was caught early…before he could do more damage.
A $3,000 bottle of wine is acceptable for any politician to receive as a gift. My Fat Aunt!
Goodbye Barry. What will be the next ‘bottle of wine’ for any subsequent politician? Certainly not a coal mine!
