Samuel's Blog

Chief Turnip Acts Like Goose

The Chief Turnip of the ACT, Jon Stanhope, has released a confidential document on his chief ministerial website (Warning, site contains large scary pictures at the top of every page).

The document he leaked was a confidential draft copy of the federal government’s anti-terrorism legislation. This was given to each of the state and territory leaders as part of the briefing they received on the new legislation.

The draft legislation is due before Federal parliament in a couple weeks, and will probably be refined by then, so not only is this leak a breach of confidentiality, it is also unwise and irresponsible. Not only has the chief turnip broken the trust between the federal and ACT government’s, he has also placed further sensible and logical revisions of the legislation at risk.

I will admit that it does appear to have a few rough edges, but these would have been revised before or during their time in parliament, and the early release has provided extra amunition for a propoganda campaign from the “no anti-terrorism legislation” camp. Already Green’s senator/leader Bob Brown has said that it contains a section which enables police to shoot to kill, and frankly, I don’t think anti-terrorism legislation would be complete without such a clause, and I strongly suspect that Mr. Brown has taken it out of context, and omitted any safeguards/regulations which would be part of the paragraphs in question. The federal government aren’t stupid enough to just hand out guns to the police and say “If you see something, shoot it.” They know that the “rogue senators” wouldn’t stand for it, and neither would the other parties.

ACT Shadow Attorney General Bill Stefaniak produced a press release in which he stated the obvious and true facts of the matter:

“I have to question the judgement of the Chief Minister to circulate this document on the world wide web when it clearly states on the front page ‘Draft-in-Confidence”
“To my knowledge no other Labor state leaders have sort to betray the Federal Government’s confidence in this manner.”
“Mr Stanhope was the biggest critic of the Anti-Terror approach that the Federal Government was proposing to take, but then, after a special briefing at the COAG meeting he finally realised the Prime Minister’s number one goal is national security.”
“Why then has Jon Stanhope betrayed the trust of the Federal Government and his state colleagues in posting what is a very private and confidential document to his personal website for all to see?”
“This is not a smart move and shows a severe lack of judgement on the part of the Leader of this Territory.”
“Jon Stanhope has embarrassed the ACT in his actions and will never be able to be trusted with confidential material of this nature again. “

Perhaps that is just it, perhaps the chief turnip only pretended to be pleased about the new legislation so that he could leak it in an unfinished and rough state which could ultimately destroy it. If so, then this has to be one of the worst cases of political grandstanding in the history of Australian politics.
Regardless of his intentions, he has leaked a confidential government document, and deserves to be punished. If his intentions were as I stated above, then a charge of treason should also be considered…after all, isn’t an attempt to unfairly influence the proceedings of potential anti-terrorism legislation an unusual form of terrorism?

I haven’t read the draft legislation yet, but I will make sure I get read enough to get an overview of it. As unfortunate as it is, the draft legislation has been viewed by so many people now, that it would be impossible to remove it from public knowledge, and to not get see some of it now would open myself up to manipulation by those of Stanhope’s ilk. I will not store a copy of the draft legislation on this site, but I will retain my two-pages-per-page double-sided copy of it for now, and if requested, I will shred it and make sure I don’t disclose any of the contents.

For now the offending document can be viewed from the Chief Turnip’s website (warning, site contains a large scary picture of Stanhope on every page), but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is removed sometime soon…even if a court order is required.

Chief Turnip Stanhope is an outright twit, and shouldn’t be allowed to hold public office, he is a danger to our society, and can never be trusted with confidential documents ever again. The release of the draft legislation will hamper efforts to logically fix up any problems which may be part of the legislation, and has almost certainly fueled a proganda war between the “for” & “against” camps, as can be seen in the incredible amount of press releases relating to it.

Samuel

Disclaimer: Neither I, nor anybody related to this website can be held responsible for any consequences that may occur should you decide to view the confidential draft legislation, information provided here is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a recommendation, direction or otherwise that you should view the confidential document. Should you choose to do so, it is at your own risk. Comments which contravine this notice will be removed without notice.

9 comments October 15th, 2005 at 09:00pm

Samuel’s Tape Highlights: A Decade Of Samuel

Apparently these recordings, or highlights thereof, are scary, and if you found the other two scary then this one will be no different, nor will any of the future releases, so if you find them scary, then keep clear of this category.

Now that I have the disclaimer and warning mumbo jumbo out of the way, on with the recording. This particular recording is called “A Decade Of Samuel” as it was recorded as a special event as part of my tenth birthday. My birthday parties were always small and unconventional, my tenth was no different, in fact this recording took up a fair chunk of it.

The party was on the Saturday before my birthday (May 31, 1997), and that morning I started the recording by randomly starting recording at the start of a song on the radio and then recording the whole song. This was back when 2CC were half way between being a music station and a talk station. The first part of the highlights package has the tail end of the song (Moody Blue) and then the announcer, whose voice I recognise but can’t quite work out, announcing “1206 2CC” at which point that segment ends. By the way, if anybody can enlighten me as to the name of the announcer I would appreciate it.

It then cuts to a small section of the recording session which took place in my room as part of the party. My tenth birthday was the smallest one on record with one guest, which probably made the recordings easier. The segment contains me and my guest (Thomas) singing in Opera, I perform the high pitched sections whilst he performs the low pitched sections.

Obviously there were large parts of the party which were not recorded, but the end of the party consisted of our efforts in commentating the AFL match which was on the TV, this was somewhat amusing and continued even after he left (albeit with just me), dad came over a couple times as various boundary riders, and the highlights of the AFL coverage are included in this highlights package.

Those few things took up all of Side A of the tape, and my plan for Side B consisted of starting off by recording all of the Television news themes, and some others, I did this on that Saturday and Sunday, and I have chosen a couple for this highlights package. At that stage I absolutlely loved the David Young’s Garden theme, so I have an extract of that, if you listen carefully you will notice that the voiceover mentions the “Bruce Bond Investment Program”, I always found that name to be quite fitting for someone handing out financial advice. I also have an extract of one of the many bits of theme music Channel 7 used for the AFL…not only did they have the best AFL coverage (something that nobody has been able to match to this day) but they also had fantastic taste when it came to music.

The rest of Side B was recorded on the Monday of the following weekend (Queens Birthday Monday, June 9, 1997) and a very short segment at the end which was recorded the next weekend, on one of the two days.

As was the style of my recordings, this was all “The Samuel John Gordon-Stewart Program”, the highlights of which include an interview with one of my new toys, Dinosaur, a segment called “Teddy’s Major And Almost Major Issues” which was my take on the commercial television current affairs programs, the news (Including the news theme which was me singing “The News” in my opera), a horse race with two horses paying astronomical dividends and various other things. I had a bunch of callers who all tried to guess what the time was ten minutes ago from the time I announced the competition, as well as talking about such amazing topics as how much a chop weighs. The final segment was just me talking.

I haven’t included any callers on this occasion (there will be plenty of time for that on future releases) but I have included a section where I have to wake up my panel operator/receptionist (and don’t ask how he does both jobs at once…he just does) using a bicycle horn.

Of course the most important part of this whole post is the link, so click here to listen to the highlights of A Decade Of Samuel.

Samuel

October 15th, 2005 at 08:14pm