Mood:
lyricalTopic: aust govt
A nasty pre budget leak of a treasury document has apparently set the cat amongst the pigeons in the Canberra Press Gallery. They are talking about this 'scoop' or 'non story' depending on your party allegiance, by Dennis Shanahan in The Australian page 1:
TREASURY: Coalition leaked warning, PM says
DENNIS SHANAHAN BLOG: IR dragon set to breathe fire
with this editorial
Wages threat defined, Labor faces conflict over IR and interest rates
But we commented on this crikey.com.au thread as follow:
[Our comment follows]
Tom McLoughlin Wednesday, 7 May 2008 4:34:41 PM
Call me stupid but my quick reading of Dennis is that the document was "obtained" but doesn't say from whom. It is "subject " of an FOI request but it doesn't say that was the source. Last week Laurie Oakes wrote a story as per Sydney Daily Telegraph Saturday edition that was clearly based on a Howard regime cabinet or cabinet related document. ....What I'm saying is - how do you know Costello isn't the source? And good luck to him too. Who could begrudge the guy some consolation prizes. I mean Dennis virtually gives away that he got it from Costello given the ABCTV were refused the document "last week". Call it dumb intuition but methinks the old Peter Costello is getting a whiff of the old battle smoke in his nostrils.
Tom#2 Wednesday, 7 May 2008 4:42:02 PM
By the by, it would be one good way to build interest in the Costello memoirs too. A leak here, a leak there. Could turn into quite a crescendo. Mark Latham set the bar quite high with his Diaries. Let er rip I say.
Back on Saturday 26th April 2008 we noted in our obsessive way about the earlier Laurie Oakes article implying Costello was playing politics again as follows:
Costello as former treasurer has apparently leaked a similar 'reform' previously considered by the Howard Govt to veteran Laurie Oakes writing Bulletin style stories out of place in the Daily Telegraph cartoon book:
[offline] Howard plotted to scuttle the states April 26 2008 p26
Maybe a leak so Costello can shore up his dormant leadership ambition? Or to sell his memoirs? Or even to distract from FoI expert Peter Timmins (SMH today) who implies that Costello's Govt deliberately squibbed criminal sanctions for cartel behaviour (like big Liberal Party donors and a certain cardboard box king).
(Actually such stories by 'the sphere Laurie Oakes' are offline for google search in Australia and absent from the Daily Telegraph's own website. But there is a global google search which brings up press screen shots of such stories if you search the exact article name and newspaper. It may be web subscription only - we haven't got that far - and it may be only temporarily accessible. Obviously someone has a buiness model literally scanning the press pages from Australia - maybe via license from local Media Monitors or similar who would be doing this scan anyway (we speak from depressing experience 1999-2001).
And now we have a copy from the blessed recycling here:
