{"id":2163,"date":"2007-04-01T16:45:47","date_gmt":"2007-04-01T23:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2007\/04\/01\/from-the-australian-outback\/"},"modified":"2007-04-01T16:45:47","modified_gmt":"2007-04-01T23:45:47","slug":"from-the-australian-outback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2007\/04\/01\/from-the-australian-outback\/","title":{"rendered":"From the Australian Outback"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, this is one side of the story<\/a>…<\/p>\n

AMID this particularly bizarre period of federal politics, the matter of a Liberal preselection for a marginal Victorian seat held by Labor might appear trivial. It is not. The Liberal Party’s endorsement of former federal MP Ken Aldred for the seat of Holt represents a potentially astonishing resurrection for a man of objectionable political and personal viewpoints.<\/p>\n

Mr Aldred, a past master of the conspiracy theory and one who treated parliamentary privilege purely as a right, used the House of Representatives in June 1995 to relate a preposterous tale involving the military dictators of Suriname, the drug cartels of Colombia, the KGB, Mossad and two innocent men, the then secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Michael Costello, and the tax lawyer and prominent Jewish leader, Mark Leibler. At the same time, Mr Aldred alleged the Department of Foreign Affairs had 20 pedophiles in its senior ranks, and named one senior diplomat, who was charged and subsequently exonerated. Mr Aldred, isolated by the Liberal leadership (then in opposition) and without endorsement for the 1996 election, crept from the arena.<\/p>\n

The threat of Mr Aldred’s return to federal politics seems unlikely: the Prime Minister and Peter Costello have moved quickly and wisely to ensure the preselection choice will be rejected by the Victorian administrative committee, which has the right of veto. How Mr Aldred came to be selected, let alone why he is still a member of the Liberal Party, is perhaps a conspiracy theory unto itself \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but the party also preselected Gary Anderton, whose internet blog contained prejudicial and racist comments, as candidate for Lyndhurst in the recent state election. He didn’t make it; Ken Aldred shouldn’t remake it. Politicians are there to serve the public, not use Parliament for their own curious purposes.<\/i><\/p>\n

That’s a mildly interesting story.\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t it<\/a>?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A powerful Liberal Party committee has voted unanimously to strip former federal MP Ken Aldred of preselection for a marginal Melbourne seat at the coming federal election.<\/p>\n

An emergency meeting of the party’s administrative committee in Melbourne unanimously overturned Mr Aldred’s preselection for the south-east Melbourne suburban seat of Holt, Liberal Party Victorian director Julian Sheezel said.<\/p>\n

“Mr Aldred was not endorsed by the Liberal Party,” Mr Sheezel said.<\/p>\n

The committee took an hour to decide the fate of Mr Aldred’s endorsement, he said.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Victorian Liberal president Russell Hannan said Mr Aldred was not a suitable candidate for the party.<\/p>\n

“The administrative committee of the Liberal Party of Australia (Victorian division) tonight voted not to endorse Mr Ken Aldred for the division of Holt for the upcoming federal election. This decision was unanimous,” he said.<\/p>\n

“The administrative committee considers that Mr Aldred is not a suitable person to receive the endorsement of the Liberal Party.”<\/i><\/p>\n

Okay.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe not so interesting, but it blipped on my radar nonetheless.<\/p>\n

This brief foray into Australian political matters has been brought to you by our favourite political cult leader and conspiracy theorist… that, of course, being Lyn Marcus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, this is one side of the story… AMID this particularly bizarre period of federal politics, the matter of a Liberal preselection for a marginal Victorian seat held by Labor might appear trivial. It is not. The Liberal Party’s endorsement of former federal MP Ken Aldred for the seat of Holt represents a potentially astonishing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-larouche-challenge","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}