Piers Akerman: Our ABC ‘smeared Dave Sharma in a racist attack’
YES, the Liberal candidate Dave Sharma lost the seat of Wentworth to Independent Dr Kerryn Phelps but she didn’t win in a fair competition, Piers Akerman writes.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
IF last Saturday’s Wentworth Stakes had been the Melbourne Cup, the stewards would have had an inquiry and probably overturned the result.
The beaten horse, Liberal Sharma, was interfered with right around the track and in plain view of the punters in the stands.
The nobbling was effective, narrowly giving the race to independent Phelps.
The most egregious meddling was the introduction of a slimed email during the last leg of the race which the laughably self-regulating and neutral race caller, Our ABC, falsely claimed targeted Phelps. It didn’t.
It disgustingly smeared Sharma in an unbelievably sickening racist attack.
Yes, the Liberal candidate Dave Sharma lost to independent Dr Kerryn Phelps but she didn’t win in a fair competition. The email alluded to was leaked by the ABC and news of its existence was broadcast on high rotation by the ABC in the closing days of the by-election.
In one line it claimed Phelps had been diagnosed with HIV and was no longer in contention.
But the ABC didn’t tell its viewers and listeners that the email also claimed Sharma’s candidacy was designed to open the doors to immigrants from India and ensure Australia had a Hindu prime minister. The dog whistle could be heard from Bondi to Harold Park.
LABOR’S COLD, DEAD HAND
Throughout the race, the Labor Party ran dead. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten didn’t want to know his party’s candidate, Tim Murray, and a slew of Labor advisers had their way cleared to work for Phelps.
Such party disloyalty normally results in suspension if not expulsion but Labor conveniently overlooked their fickle folly in Wentworth and there’s no doubt that those who steered Phelps’ tactics will be putting their shoulders behind Labor in the general election.
Incredibly, the NSW division of the Liberal Party was also less than brilliant. It owes its unreformed anti-democratic nature to the former member for Wentworth Malcolm Turnbull and it wasn’t about to hasten erasure of his influence.
It assigned a former Turnbull staffer Sally Betts to run the Wentworth campaign for the new chum politician who had beaten a field of local candidates, many of them women, during the preselection battle in which Prime Minister Scott Morrison had expressed his hope for a female to win.
Betts, a former mayor of Waverley and long-time councillor, had incurred the enmity of the beachside suburbs with her contribution to a long-running dispute over the revamp of the iconic Bondi Beach Pavilion.
On her watch as campaign boss, the North Bondi Surf Lifesaving Club, a Turnbull stronghold, fell to Phelps and became the site of the Independent’s election victory party. The Liberals, long identified with the club, had to settle for a pub across the road.
Sharma’s September 14 victory was declared a “shock” by that independent news source, the ABC, as he had thrashed “former Woollahra deputy mayor Katherine O’Regan, who had been the expected frontrunner. The ABC understands there were audible gasps in room when Ms O’Regan was knocked out of the running”.
On the night and in any comparison of CVs, Sharma was the outstanding candidate.
His selection was certainly no shock to those who weren’t receiving their briefings from the NSW division of the Liberals.
Locals knew that, thanks to her work in local government, Ms O’Regan was just as discredited as Ms Betts.
Despite all this unnecessary lead in his saddlebags, Sharma still managed to get a greater percentage of votes (43.12) than Turnbull garnered in 2004 (41.79) — not a bad result at all given that his predecessor had refused to offer unconditional support for the Liberal candidate in the critical days immediately before the election.
Some claim Turnbull’s defenestration by his colleagues cost the Liberals the election but that’s too trite.
MORE FROM PIERS AKERMAN
SACK THE ABC BOARD AND RID US OF ITS BIAS
LEFT MANUFACTURES FAKE MURDOCH CONSPIRACY
Turnbull is a serial political assassin having knifed his predecessor in Wentworth, Peter King, and two Liberal Party leaders Brendan Nelson and Tony Abbott, whom he relentlessly leaked against and undermined.
As was pointed out in the weeks before the by-election, Wentworth is not a microcosm of the nation. It is a wealthy, well-educated electorate divorced from the concerns that wrack the majority of Australians.
You have to be very well-off to be Green or insouciant enough to throw away a vote in protest — like the yuppie Wentworth voter seen clutching a GetUp poster as they stepped out of a top-of-the-line Range Rover at one polling booth last weekend.
Phelps won on preferences — the votes of the candidates least popular.
BEWARE ‘KEVIN’ TURNBULL
The result has little bearing on next year’s federal election but PM Morrison should decide how he will treat Turnbull in future. Sending him to tomorrow’s Our Ocean Conference in Bali was a deal done before the by-election and before the true extent of Turnbull’s disloyalty was fully exposed.
As a former PM, Turnbull should be treated with a modicum of respect but not a jot more than is civil. And any thought that Wentworth should be gifted to Turnbull son-in-law James Brown down the track must be carefully considered.
The conspicuous absence of the Turnbull forces in the fight to retain the seat must be remembered.
Morrison may think it better to try and keep Turnbull in the tent rather than see him go the full Kevin Rudd and bitterly turn against his party but rarely is appeasement worth the price.