Just in review - when I refer to 'Adelaide greenies', 'inner-suburban green voters', etc, I acknowledge now if I haven't clearly already, that 20 years ago that is exactly what I was, and it is not always a denigration so much as a collective noun for quite a substantial and diverse section of the community.
At one point I lived in a share house with the people running Greenpeace's Adelaide office. From hippie and feral to yuppie and inner-city professional, many people are and/or can be influenced by the Politique Environmental. But I digress...
This weeks Labor Party Health Minister Jack Snelling was on ABC Radio this week 'admitting' that the much heralded (by him/Labor) $23million expansion of the Mt Gambier hospital has been delayed.
And the official Snelling excuse; Labor has yet to organise approvals for that work with the Asia-based consortium that actually owns the hospital...we lease back our own hospital...and that is thanks to the Liberals (1997), who now say (MLC Rob Lucas) that this delay/oversight is not the unfortunate oversight that Jack Snelling claims, but a deliberate ploy to delay because Labor do not have the money.
Apparently Rob Lucas was the Liberal minister who arranged the private ownership of the current Mt Gambier hospital...charming.
Labor have moved from their usual and much discussed indeed infamous 'declare and defend' strategy of simply announcing projects are happening and then saying 'now we'll do public consultation', eg, public consultation about the $40million footbridge that is already under construction, to now simply stating things are happening before even the most fundamental issues are addressed.
Jack Snelling then stated that despite the fact that, a) the 'development' approvals have not yet been negotiated and, b) the declared start date was a month ago, the whole expansion will still be completed on time which is late next year...apparently.
'Don't worry good citizens of Mt Gambier' he said 'It's all going to be ok' he said...no definitive date for approval negotiations, or start date, no detail - all assurances...you could almost hear him nodding and winking like that 'iffy' mate who's trying to sell you a set of 'perfectly legal second-hand' mag tyres...'orr, don't you worry about that mate' (nod, nod, wink wink)... a nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat...he did everything short of say 'Trust Me'.
Apart from that, the Expansion appears to be an outright lie, set in the exact same mould as the 'Mental Health Unit'* deceit, to distract from the reality that Labor has abandoned, nay betrayed and sold, Regional South Australia and are not about to spend anything in the regions, particularly the South-East.
*I note that Labor also promised a stand alone Mental Health unit of at least 12 beds at the 2006 state election and again going into the 2010 election, but that that project does not exist even in the planning stage..even if it were 'approved' today, there is simply no plan to apply, and it will therefore not happen in the next 5 years if ever.
This was stated to me and others at the Mental Health Forum held in Mt Gambier January 2012 by the government repesentatives present....no plan, no foreseeable Unit to be built. What Labor has done instead is say that they have met that commitment by quite literally walking into public wards and declaring random beds as 'Mental Health Beds' (?-I don't know the actual name)....outrageous.
Given Jack Snelling's performance on the ABC I have no faith that anything is going to happen anytime soon and again hope to be very wrong.
I hope to be just as wrong about the impending exoneration of former Labor minister Bernard Finnigan, whom I understand can be named in the media (this week at least) which is sooo annoying because it completely undermines how hilarious I was in a recent post with the whole spiel about police helping the then Acting Police Minister clean his car and house, etc.
I was of course referring to the much publicised if heavily pixellated footage of Bernard being arrested at his home nearly 2 years ago on charges of 'Possessing Child Pornography' (?- specific charge?).
This case has been heavily suppressed by the Courts as it has been shuffled from one jurisdiction to another and back again and the charges repeatedly changed and/or dropped.
A cynical person with a long experience of the institutionalised pro-paedophile corruption that defines South Australian politics might begin to think that this case is being carefully manipulated into the control of those whom have defined histories of leniency and even sympathy with Child Abuse perpetrators...for example Magistrate Bill Morris.
The longer the case goes, the more chance it gets stuffed up and the charges dropped, particularly if you keep changing those charges and moving it from Court to Court...each change offers an opportunity for 'accidental' error that can be reverse-justified as impinging on poor Bernard's legal rights.
Indeed the current defense to the multiple charges are that, a) the web-search addresses (unknown) were not specifically indicative of Child Pornography, and, b) it is not possible to establish that the children are under 14 years of age.
I thought that the 'age of consent' was at least 16 if not 18 (I'll check) but regardless, how does the defense become about whether or not it's immediately obvious that the 'children are 14'?
How convoluted; how bizarre; how South Australia.
The facts are irrefutable:
1) Bernard Finnigan was the Acting Police Minister and was involved in some sort of parliamentary 'inquiry' or committee into Child Pornography when he was arrested;
2) Despite the clear public interest in that extraordinary situation, SA Courts suppressed case details including identifying the name of the Acting Police Minister for 16 months, briefly removed those restrictions, then re-imposed them and...I'm not sure what at the moment, other than he's now back in the news visage sans pixel (with his face shown);
3) The Labor Party have squawked relentlessly about 'innocent until proven guilty' whilst immediately dumping Bernard from the party...whaaa?...so he just moved to the 'Independent Benches'...whaaa?...where he continues to vote on various bills...whaaaaa?
3) The various charge changes and movements between Courts.
I'm a bit like that cynical guy you were talking to earlier in that I believe that the Bernard Finnigan case has been and still is being carefully manipulated to ensure a quiet and desperately unfortunate cock-up gets Bernard exonerated after which there will be the usual chest-beating and hair-pulling from all involved and a deafening chorus of disingenuous 'mia culpas'...oh gee whiz, how unfortunate, never mind...
Obviously I will re-visit this issue in future posts.
Tomorrow: Some Recent Child Abuse Cover-ups in South Australia
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