Bracks Watch

ALP Corruption Marathon

It might just be starting to dawn on you by now that The Age is running a campaign against branch stacking and other corruption in the ALP. In this weekend's Saturday Age there was yet another piece suggesting the possibility of a Police investigation, and in addition the always insightful Shaun Carney discusses the ALP malaise and the context of the current fiasco in his opinion piece.

This means that since March 10th there have been 11 articles about the ALP stacking and corruption in just 9 days. Here they are:

• March 10: More than half of state Labor members 'bogus'
• March 12: Labor split over action on stackers
• March 13: Faction deal got Bracks his seat
• March 13: Premier refuses to act as crisis grows
• March 13: ACTU head rejects stacking claims
• March 14: Kirner calls for revolt on stacking
• March 15: Labor's stacking crisis worsens
• March 16: ALP faction takes aim at Beazley's frontbenchers
• March 17: Three branches suspected on stacking
• March 19: Police probe expected on Labor row
• March 19: Polls mask Labor morass

Also there's been 8 journalists involved in this story : Ian Munro, Paul Austin, Kirsty Simpson, William Birnbauer, Jason Dowling, Farrah Tomazin, Ewin Hannan, Shaun Carney. So its not just one hack with a bee in his bonnet. The Age is putting quite a lot of resources into this. This is not some page filler. It is a campaign.

The question is why? The right faction who are the ones who recently siezed control, and are the ones principally being accused of the skullduggery, must surely be feeling the heat under this sustained media barrage. They have of course tried to serve up their counter spin. They're saying that its just the Left faction being sore-losers, and there might be an element of truth in that, but if that was all this was about then The Age would have dropped this long ago.

No. I think they know that they've got their teeth stuck into something really meaty. The stories ring true.

posted by JP @ 1:46 PM