Leesa Vlahos says only contact with SA mental health chief Chris Burns over Oakden disgrace was at Bunnings
HEAR THE AUDIO: Embattled Minister Leesa Vlahos says the only contact she’s had with SA’s mental health chief Chris Burns over the Oakden disgrace was a chance meeting at Bunnings — as she comes under fire over Facebook posts.
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EMBATTLED minister Leesa Vlahos says the only contact she’s had with SA’s hand-picked mental health commissioner over the Oakden disgrace was a chance meeting at Bunnings.
Ms Vlahos came under pressure for the third straight day in Question Time on Thursday, as the Opposition also seized on private Facebook posts from Ms Vlahos as proof she was “sipping champagne” in an airport lounge when she should have been reading the Oakden report.
In an at-times bizarre Question Time performance, Ms Vlahos was asked if she’d discussed the scathing report with SA Mental Health Commissioner Chris Burns.
“I bumped into him the other day at Bunnings at Mile End,” she responded.
“He said, ‘Seen the report?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ and that is the limit of my involvement.”
The Opposition and The Advertiser have anonymously received copies a series of restricted Facebook posts made by Ms Vlahos covering the time over which the Oakden scandal became public.
In a post dated April 11, the day Ms Vlahos was grilled in Parliament over having received the report but not reading it, she posted: “28 questions to me in question time. A new experience for me! Learning things every day”.
The day after the report went public, Ms Vlahos said she was “sitting in McDonalds listening to Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide before going on the ABC”.
In one, made at the start of the Easter weekend in which Ms Vlahos finally read the Oakden report, she posted of excitement about a trip interstate to visit family and drink gin and tonic.
It was accompanied by an image that appeared to show her watching conservative columnist Andrew Bolt on Sky News in an airport lounge, while showing off leopard print shoes.
Late on Thursday Labor hit back at the Liberals, saying Ms Vlahos’ Easter trip was to visit a sister who’d recently had a baby and been diagnosed with cancer.
“For a political party that spends most of its time in the gutter, this is a new low for the SA Liberals,” a spokesman said.
Opposition Deputy Leader Vickie Chapman told Parliament that Ms Vlahos had shown a “scandalous” lack of interest in the scandal since complaints were first raised.
“I do not care what the minister does in her spare time, but it is utterly shameful that she refused to read this report for at least a week, tells nobody ... and then apparently is sitting in the chairman’s lounge, sipping champagne, talking about her new boots,” Ms Chapman said.