Canberra sheep follow Stanhope

THE depression Canberra sits in was a sheep station before being approved as the site for the nation's capital in 1911.The area is now economically, as well as geographically, depressed, and the fact that the left-leaning residents of the People's Republic of Canberra have twice elected Chief Minister Jon Stanhope's ALP Government demonstrates that sheep still rule on the banks of the Molonglo.Though Canberrans point to statistics showing they are better educated and better paid than most Australians, their embrace of Stanhope shows they have less commonsense.Canberrans have shown extraordinary tolerance towards Stanhope and the controversy and scandal that have dogged his administration.They are proof that learning and intelligence are distinctly separate and should not be confused.

In the six years he has run the show, their cost of living has risen and their quality of life has dropped. Last year Stanhope, who is also Treasurer in the kiddy Parliament, slugged ratepayers with unmatched rate rises and simultaneously closed more than 20 schools in a vain effort to save some $23 million and trim the ACT's bloated budget. One of his better budgetary measures was the introduction of a new $17 million tax on telecommunications companies estimated to cost broadband customers an extra $94 to $137 a year, hitting those who use the internet as an education tool. The Chief Minister has also failed to adequately explain why he was incommunicado the night before the 2003 firestorms which razed 500 Canberra homes, not withstanding his vitriolic outburst in the ACT's Legislative Assembly on Tuesday and on the airwaves yesterday, or why his administration failed to act when it knew the fires were bearing down on Canberra. But it is Stanhope's ideological obsessions which fuel the greatest outrage, the latest being his appalling decision to squander more than $70,000 on a life-size bronze statue of his political hero, Labor's Al Grassby, an associate and protector of members of the Calabrian mafia. The work by sculptor Peter Latona will be placed at the entrance of Canberra's new multicultural centre. Grassby, a colourful member of Gough Whitlam's short-lived government, was not the intellectual father of multiculturalism, as Stanhope likes to claim. However, he wrapped himself in that flawed philosophy as securely as he blanketed his puny frame with his gaudy trademark tablecloth-sized ties. Among those most wounded by Stanhope's elevation of Grassby are the family of murdered anti-drug campaigner Donald Mackay, whose assassination was tied to Griffith criminals Robert Trimboli and Tony Sergei, with whom Grassby associated. Retired National Crime Authority investigator Bruce Provost said after Grassby's death in April, 2005, that he had no doubt Grassby was paid to commit crimes and provide favours for the Italian crime syndicate known as the Honoured Society, a Calabrian-based organised crime gang that specialised in marijuana growing, protection rackets and fraud. Among those favours was Grassby's decision to use his ministerial discretion to issue visas to three Calabrian men deported from Australia or refused entry because of their criminal records. Provost said there was more than enough intelligence on Grassby to warrant a full investigation – rather than the narrow inquiry to which the NCA restricted him. The former head of the NSW Cabinet Office, Gary Sturgess, has also said there should have been a proper investigation into Mr Grassby's mafia links, which he termed "despicable and disgusting". Grassby was charged with conspiring to pervert the course of justice and criminal defamation after circulating material suggesting Mackay was murdered by members of his own family. He was eventually cleared. Stanhope's fetish for Grassby is only one manifestation of his irrational and slavish devotion to the cult of political correctness. Last year he nominated Terry Hicks as Father of the Year, despite his on-the-record declaration that his son David (Daoud) Hicks had taken up arms against the West as a terrorist. Stanhope also managed to enrage Queensland's Premier Peter Beattie and the Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin when he put his politically correct view before the pressing issue of indigenous domestic violence, breaking ranks in a bid to maintain Aboriginal customary law as a mitigating factor in cases of sexual abuse and disadvantage in indigenous communities. And he displayed the same appalling lack of maturity as the staff member whom he refused to chastise for spraying anti-Howard graffiti around a Canberra mall in April, 2005, when six months later he attempted to curry favour with his undergraduatish cheer squad by violating the confidentiality agreement he had signed with all other state and territory leaders in an absolutely unprincipled bid to undermine the Federal Government's proposed anti-terrorism legislation. With these sorts of standards being set by the Chief Minister, it is not surprising that a senior ministerial adviser in ACT Education Minister Andrew Barr's office last month decided to masquerade as a member of the Christian lobby spruiking gay marriage. That's where the comparison ends however. The staffer last week did the honourable thing and resigned. Shamelessly, Stanhope remains in office and, sadly, Canberrans are resigned to his ongoing foolishness.