Sunday, December 13, 2009

I think the Polls are wrong...

This week the polls showed that dear old Media Mike has had his lies believed by the gullible and the media. The polls don't show the dip there should have been from the fall out around the Michelle Chantelois affair and the St Clair land swap deal.

Lets recap on these things. Mike had an affair with a married woman. That isn't actually the news or even particularly noteworthy on its own. What is the issue here is that when this surfaced, after the attack at the Wine Centre, Mikes first response was to lie. He denied knowing who the man was or what the issue was. He did this in public but not in parliament. This is quite significant.

Subsequently it has come out that he not only knew the man, he also was well aware of what the issue was. If he had lied in parliament he would have been forced to resign for misleading parliament.

That is the real reason for the uproar in the house when the Liberals wanted Mike Rann to make statements in session. The uproar was to deflect the questions and to use up time so Mr Rann wouldn't have to lie in the house or tell the truth. Neither option was palatable to Mike or the Labor party.

When the story came out in the media Mike, again in public but not the house, started by making the extraordinary claim that paid stories were false - not in so many words but that was clearly the insinuation. Says a lot for his paid media manager Jill Bottrell doesn't it.

He then did a Bill Clinton and stated "I have never had sex with that woman". He then proceeded to deny statements that were never made. Such as having sex in his office when parliament was in session during appointments. Michelle never made that claim. To suggest that Mikes office is a revolving door 24/7 is just as rediculous as his denials of having sex in his office.

What Mike does in his private life is mostly private but when it flows into his public life and he lies about it then there must be serious questions about his reliability with all his statements. You cannot say "well yes I did lie about that but the rest is the truth" as Malcolm Turnbull found out with the Godwin Gretch emails.

Now for the ST Clair land swap. The ministers involved keep falling back on the line that the council have requested the swap and they are only checking that they have followed the rules. The problem with this is that they are hiding the stated fact that this land swap is crucial to the government's TOD proposed for the park to be swapped.

How fortuitous that the council, all on their own, would suddenly decide that it would be a major benefit to their local residents if they could swap some well established parklands with 100+ year old trees for a contaminated industrial site with no trees.

If you don't recognise BS in these statements then you are probably past redemption in any case. No, this isn't a council initiated land swap, this is a Land Management Council initiated land swap 100% instigated by the Rann Government for their own pet project. To stand back and claim it is all at arms length is a massive deception being perpetrated on the people by a bunch of developers politicians.

Claims that it is a bigger parcel of land is just laughable, the additional bit is less than the size of an average house block. Claims that it will be completely rehabilitated is also a joke, they'll have to cart away millions of tonnes of soil and bring in a similar amount of clean fill. Where from? Where will they dump the contaminated soil? How many years will it take to establish a park of similar stature to the one they want to steal? How many years of construction noise, dust, parking problems, traffic problems before this quiet suburb will once again be a quite suburb?

Have a look at the site on Google Maps use this as your search "brocas avenue, woodville, sa".

See that really nice lump of industrial land? That's what they want to swap with the area marked as Woodville Park Oval. If you read the statement on the Charles Sturt Council website you will see that they are claiming that the Cheltenham Racecourse will be parkland, it won't that has also been earmarked for redevelopment and is also subject to citizen protests in what is another dodgy government deal. Read the Cheltenham FAQ here and check the sites out again.

If they really wanted a proper development they could easily use the industrial site for their TOD and build the tram line, which is coming down Port Road, to loop through the proposed Cheltenham racecourse, the industrial site and then onto Port Road. A relatively minor re-alignment which would significantly add to the ability of all of the residents to use public transport. I doubt they have that much imagination..

It's no wonder that the Rann Labor Government refused to call parliament back for another sitting before the election, the questions just might reveal how dodgy all this is. Where the hell are the investigative journalists? Has journalism sunk so low that they don't even bother to check any of the spin (lies) from the government press releases?

Clearly not. Go to these sites to express your support for the citizens and disgust for the bully boys of the SA Labor Party.

http://www.loadofbullshit.com

http://www.criticaltimes.com.au

http://www.charlessturtratepayers.org

Water Lies Exposed

There are others, if you find some please let me know and I'll put them in the blog roll or a special post or something. If we all share the links around then all the protest sites will be at the top of the search results and we will create change.

Hugs all round.

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