Gutter politics - Canberra style (Cigarette butts, dog turds and wasted life)

I mean in the local government here, not the big house on Capital Hill.

Chief Minister Jon Stanhope went feral yesterday, attacking Liberal MLA Brendan Smyth for running a campaign of smear and innuendo against him. This stems from questions about Stanhope’s whereabouts on the night before the 2003 Canberra bushfires, which Stanhope has not been prepared to answer in other than vague terms until now. Allegedly Stanhope was uncontactable that night, with fires approaching Canberra, and Smyth and the Opposition have questioned where he was and with who. Of course, his unwillingness to be definite about it, has led to rumours (which I must admit I’d not heard till today) suggesting he may have been attending to a little personal business with someone other than his wife. Now he has given more details, saying he was at a dinner with his wife, a priest and a magistrate. (Now if someone was to concoct an alibi, that company would be hard to beat.)

What was golden about the debate yesterday was some of the insults Stanhope threw at Smyth, for example, he called Mr Smyth a “despicable little man” with a “dirty mind” who belonged in the gutter and then went on to say:

“He likes it there, down with the cigarette butts and the dog turds and the wasted life,”

and called Smyth:

“Mr Slimeball from Tuggeranong”.

Technorati : ACT Legislative Assembly, Brendan Smyth, Jon Stanhope, cigarette butts, dog turds, gutter politics