TRUTH OVERBOARD AGAIN

The Melbourne Herald Sun Voteline overnight concerned the socalled “children overboard” saga and the question was: Should Prime Minister Howard take a lie detector test?

More than 2500 readers responded and by a vote of 74% to 24% the answer was a resounding NO.

And I agree. Every president and prime minister has a degree of “Pinocchio’s Nose”.

The lie detector test taken for Channel Nine by former public servant Mike Scrafton with Laurie Oakes was a TV stunt. And if Prime Ministers rolled up for such tests I am sure that all would fail. Howard, Keating. Hawke, Fraser. Imagine if somebody wired up Big Mal and asked him what really happened to his trousers in Memphis.

Scrafton had been seconded to the office of then Minister for Defence Peter Reith, and had those three controversial mobile phone calls with Prime Minister Howard just days before the 2001 election where Scrafton says he told the boss the children overboard stuff just did not happen.

Channel Nine is big on the exclusives but increasingly they don’t ask the right questions. Joe Barbaro and wife Anita were paid a poultice and given a free run about their seamy and steamy backgrounds over the Baby Montana Kidnap affair.

The same applies to Mike Scrafton. I agree with his accusations that the PM probably at least lied by omission in the lead-up to the 2001 election and exploited people’s fears about illegal boat people.

But this shining knight in armour who has already admitted that he put money before morality and stayed silent about the Government lies because he had a mortgage.

But Oakes should have tested Scrafton’s character on other issues. And I raise it because Nine’s News boss Michael Venus has used words like "honourable, decent and earnest" to describe Scrafton.

Venus conveniently omitted the fact that Scrafton is a pervert. That Scrafton is so addicted to pornography that when he worked for the Defence Department, paid by you the taxpayer, he would diligently go to work on Saturdays and Sundays. Not to work on ways to defend our country but to download pornography off his Defenc Department computer.

He downloaded about 1300 porno items and was fined ands reprimanded for using supposedly secure Defence Department computers for his own pervy purposes.

Reportedly this pure, incorruptible public servant claimed he was “helping his daughters” when challenged about the porno picnic. Methinks he was helping himself. He said he would “know what his daughters would come across if they used the Internet”.

Truth overboard indeed.

Thursday, August 19, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004