For years I have considered the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to be an unsavoury organisation.

My disillusion really set in when I realised the ABC had no intention of giving fair and balanced coverage to the story of the century:accumulating evidence that the official story about 9/11 – Founding Myth of the “War on Terror” – is baloney.

That was years ago. Soon I realised the ABC’s reporting about wars such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria is more like war propaganda than genuine impartial news coverage, that its narrative on Israel/Palestine is biased and deceptive – and that a strand of Judeophilia runs through the organisation that’s inappropriate for a national broadcaster in a multi-cultural society.

In short, the ABC exercises bias and practises deception. These are not good traits for a publicly funded organisation. The ABC’s Charter, remarkably, does not require the organisation to tell the truth. Staff – presumably with the Board’s connivance – take considerable advantage of this convenient omission. We, the public, pay for a service that practices systematic deception and exercises gross bias on what are arguably the most crucial issues of the day – matters pertaining to war and peace.

ABC's Breakfast News duo - smug war sales every morning with coffee, toast & marmalade

Yet I’ve also acknowledged throughout that good people do work for the ABC and that some of its services are high quality – such as sports (although I don’t honestly know because I rarely watch it), arts (usually BBC re-runs, but even so…), gardening (definitely fine Australian programs!) and local news. I usually threw in the latter acknowledgement out of a sense that at least at a local/regional level, ABC news coverage is likely to be reasonably truthful.

Whether it’s true that the ABC’s local/regional coverage is truthful and balanced throughout the continent is debatable. I should be honest and admit I don’t listen enough to ABC Far North know. But it’s nice to be charitable.

Yet whether or not local my ABC does do a good job reporting, interviewing and storing information about our ongoing political process, one thing is apparent. It is NOT keen on giving the public easy access to this information.

ABC Far North: It will decide on what's news and the circumstances under which is will be made available!

During the recent Queensland election campaign, I didn’t catch any of the interviews conducted by ABC Far North with the candidates on local radio, but assumed I’d be able to access them online after the election. At the very least, I thought, interviews with winning candidates would be downloadable from the website – ideally (but not necessarily) with an accompanying transcript..

How wrong I was. When I checked, NO interviews with candidates were on the website. I phoned ABC Far North to ask if that could be rectified. My inquiries were treated like nuisance calls. When I finally spoke to the Station Manager she was abrasive from the outset and at one point remarked on poor rates of pay at the ABC as some kind of justification for not providing this material to the public via the ABC website. She referred me eventually to the ”Cross Media Reporter”. With her assent, he reluctantly promised to send me one audio file of the interview with my own new local MP – Michael Trout – by email. It arrived in my email the next day, without any conditions set as far as I could see. I put the file online on the website of a local community group and notified him, with thanks.

Happy Sam Davis, Cross Media Reporter

The next morning Sam the Cross Media Reporter called. He was extremely cross and demanded prompt removal of the audio file from the web, as it breached the ABC’s copyright.

Of course I comply with legitimate copyright infringement notices (actually it’s the first I’ve ever had!) and agreed to remove it. But I also asked him to put the file up on the ABC website, so I could still link to it. What’s the harm in that – especially as his time had already been invested locating the file from ABC archives?

But no, Sam won’t put this material on the ABC website and is vehement it has no “news value” at all.

I’ve issued a formal complaint to the ABC and we’ll see whether it gets anywhere. Past experience has not been encouraging.

Here’s a challenge to Mark Scott, ABC Managing Director, who himself maintains a 100% track record of never replying to my many tweets.

Why not let the PUBLIC decide what’s got news value and what doesn’t?

If members of the PUBLIC express interest, doesn’t that indicate PUBLIC interest?

What are we expected to do? Organise a petition?

This is a small but not isolated case of ABC staff behaving like tin-pot dictators. Has the malevolent arrogance that so enrages informed people aghast at its one-sided coverage of certain overseas conflicts permeated the entire organisation?

I’ve always believed that funding a national – and local – public broadcaster is worth doing. But there must be truthfulness, diligence, accountability and responsiveness to the public.

If the local ABC can’t be bothered to keep a publicly accessible archive of its own unique material of the ongoing political debate in this region, it should lose its contract.

The public should not have to beg or pay twice for information about our own democratic process – just as we should not have to plead for truthfulness.

Mark Scott, ABC Managing Director; such a lovely portrait it would be a shame if more people don't see it

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Please note: all images on this webpage are the copyright property of the publicly funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

If the ABC hierarchy wishes them deleted a phone call will suffice and I’ll strip the webpage bare of offending material, with a humble apology for inconvenience caused. The local station has my number.

Of course, it would be discriminatory if only my website alone is required to do this, so I presume any such instruction would be extended to all websites bearing any images sourced from the ABC website.

Before embarking on this course, ABC management may reflect on whether they wish to attract howls of derision from thousands of webmasters and web-mistresses – all for behaving as though it has an impediment at the read end of the alimentary canal.

You may be able to shrug me off  Mr Scott – but beware the wrath of the blogosphere en bloc.

The Australian Labor Party’s leader in Queensland, Premier Anna Bligh, is an excellent communicator and a very personable politician. She is the first female State Premier in Australia to win an election. Just over a year ago, Bligh’s leadership during the flooding crisis was exemplary and her personal popularity went sky-high. During this years election campaign she’s been a dynamo once again, working tirelessly against the tide to sell her Party’s message.

Yet if the opinion polls are correct, Labor is about to cop a disastrous hiding at the polls. Why?

I’ve observed Queensland politics from within the State, with growing concern at the prospect of an avalanche win by the Liberal National Party – a party that doesn’t seem to me worthy of government by any standard.

My theory is that while Labor has a better team than the LNP and a better case to sell, it’s picked the wrong election themes. I don’t know why. As party leader Bligh will take the blame – but I suspect she’s had bad advice. Here’s what I’d have said had I been her political adviser. I’d have begun saying it about a year ago; nothing I’ve seen since has led me to change my mind.

Unused Meme 1A

It’s about a year since the leader of the Brisbane City Council, Campbell Newman, resigned that position and was nominated leader of the LNP’s State Parliamentary Party even though he didn’t have a seat in Parliament. Since then, the Queensland LNP has actually had two leaders: Campbell Newman the “leader-in-waiting” who hasn’t been in Parliament – and Jeff Seeney who has served as his deputy and Parliamentary leader.

It’s an unprecedented arrangement. I’ve followed a lot of elections under the Westminster system in many countries. I’ve never heard of this before. I have heard of parties drafting in leaders from outside parliament – but always by first finding that person a seat to win via by-election first. Once in Parliament, ‘star’ politicians may be promoted fast. But what the LNP have done here is unique as far as I can determine. They’ve nominated a leader who has no Parliamentary seat.

When the LNP did that, I thought it likely they’d already lost the next election. How could the electorate take this kind of arrangement as anything more than a joke? I imagined Labor would ridicule it persistently until the penny finally dropped for the electorate: if a political party can’t even find ONE competent leader within its parliamentary ranks, why should anyone imagine it’s ready to govern?

Yet as far as I can tell, Labor hasn’t hammered this point at all.

Labor has been attacking Campbell Newman’s credibility - especially his business dealings and unusual campaign funding arrangements while Brisbane Mayor. That’s fine – but although it seemed to come close, Labor couldn’t land a knock-out punch. Since last weekend when the Crimes and Misconduct Commission announced it wouldn’t investigate Mr Newman further, the LNP has been able to claim it’s been victim of a negative campaign all along.

That’s ironic in the extreme. The LNP’s own campaign has been unremittingly negative, relying mainly on the “It’s Time” factor and a persistently repeated claim that “Labor has Failed!” (without troubling much to explain why).

Unused Meme 1B

A year ago or more it was entirely predictable that the LNP’s campaign would use those negative memes. It had used them before. A political strategist’s job was to work out how to counter them. When Campbell Newman was appointed LNP leader while outside Parliament, ALP strategists were handed a gift-horse. But they didn’t seem to recognize it. Now it’s rather late…

A spin-master’s answer to “It’s time” is surely “No it’s not!”, which could be further finessed to “Not yet anyhow!”

The answer to “Labor Has failed” has two parts. The first is “No it hasn’t” (defend the record). The second is “Even if you don’t like Labor, be even more afraid of our opponents!”. At the last election in 2009, when the same two negative memes were also used, those defenses worked to some extent. They kept Labor in power, albeit with a reduced majority.

Winning this election was always going to be even harder for Labor. The “It’s Time” factor never gets better for a party in government, by definition. Additionally, having lost some seats in 2009, Labor now defends a slimmer majority.

Enter the gift-horse… By the unprecedented measure of nominating an extra-Parliamentary leader, the LNP signalled, in effect, that NONE of its Parliamentary front-bench are really up to the job. What does that say about the Party as a whole? The extreme measure of drafting in Campbell Newman was really another way of saying “we need to put EXCEPTIONAL lipstick on this pig!” From that day on, Labor should have focused on that point relentlessly. Had it done so, I think it might now be in a winnable position once again.

What kind of political party, operating within the Westminster system, is so thin in leadership talent that it needs to draft in an outsider? Only the LNP in the 2012 Queensland election, as far as I’m aware. Labor let it get away with this admission of extreme weakness. That’s bad politics.

Rather than focusing on what will happen if Newman doesn’t win his seat in Ashgrove – a dominant theme of the 2012 election campaign – Labor would have been better off with different spin.  Even if Newman gets into Parliament, what kind of government will it be with no other obvious leadership talent? How can a party be a serious contender for government if it’s so reliant on one person? What happens if – God forbid – Mr Newman walks under a bus? Will the LNP draft in ANOTHER new leader from outside? Who might that be? How about a mining magnate such as Clive Palmer? The mind boggles…

Labor has tried to defeat the LNP by claiming (1) Newman is bodgy and (2) he might not win his seat anyway. Let’s call that STRATEGY A.

I think it would have been better with a different focus which I’ll designate as STRATEGY B: (1) The LNP is so bodgy it had to do something utterly unprecedented and pick an outsider as leader and (2) Even if Campbell Newman gets into Parliament, his team is obviously so wafer-thin on talent it’s not ready for government.

STRATEGY A might have worked if Labor had enough evidence of corruption to make a case stick – and if the polls showed Newman losing in Ashgrove. But it clearly never that crucial evidence – and couldn’t count on the polls showing a loss for Newman, despite very spirited campaigning by the sitting Labor MP Kate Jones.

STRATEGY A was a high risk strategy. Additionally, Labor’s mauling of Campbell Newman hasn’t really hurt the LNP as a whole.

STRATEGY B had none of those downsides. It couldn’t be falsified and rested on some fairly unarguable principles.  It focused on the exceptional way the LNP sought to resolve it’s own crisis – a crisis of lack-lustre leadership. Labor failed to take advantage of what was clearly a sign of desperation on the part of the LNP.

If the LNP does win this election an extraordinary precedent has been set.

Should parliamentary parties ever get used to nominating leaders from outside their team, where will it end? How long before we have plutocrats parachuted into leadership of political parties without bothering to get elected at all?

Those are questions Labor might have got us all thinking about. They might have planted the seeds of doubt on sufficiently fertile ground to keep the LNP out of power one more time.

Regrettably, they haven’t.

In Queensland we pride ourselves on being different.

The Australian States

Compared with Queensland’s southern sisters, this huge state that makes up the entire north-east of the Australian continent has a reputation for extremes.

It’s partly deserved. Queensland’s weather is wilder, our red-necks have redder necks, our greenery is more lush and verdant, beer-guts seem to bulge out further – and the stench of political corruption, when encountered, has a richer, more tropical odour.

Yet Queensland has actually shown remarkable political stability over long periods of time, with only a few big mood swings in the political landscape since Federation. For decades around the middle of the 20th Century Labor ruled the roost. Then power shifted to the right, especially the National Party. By the 1980s it seemed the era of populist National Party leader Bjelke-Petersen would never end. But end it did – and in 1989 Queenslanders were ready to vote the Australian Labor Party back into power with a big majority. With only a brief hiccup in the mid-1990s, Labor has held government ever since.

The right-wing of Queensland politics has always been a multi-party phenomenon and disunity among the ALP’s conservative opponents has been a factor that’s helped Labor retain government. On the left, only two significant parties vied for votes since the 1990s: the ALP and The Greens. The latter have yet to make a breakthrough and win a seat in Parliament, while Labor has often benefited from Greens preferences under the State’s “optional preferential system”. At the last election, which was fairly close, Green preferences were crucial to the re-election of Anna Bligh’s Labor Government.

Now – less than three days before the State election on March 24th, – it seems Queensland is about to undergo one of its rare seismic mood swings. Unless all the polls are way off, there’s about to be a change of Government. The Liberal National Party – a relatively new amalgam, so far limited to Queensland, formed by the merger of what were previously separate Liberal and National parties, is set to win in a landslide. On some polls, Labor’s team in Parliament may be reduced to fewer than football team size. Queenslanders, it seems, have had enough of the ALP.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh; her leadership during the 2011 Flood Crisis was widely recognized as outstanding

Interestingly, while Labor’s vote base has hit rock bottom, polls indicate the Greens share of the vote is also down. What’s happening is more dramatic than a loss of faith in one party and its leader. If the polls are correct, there’s a broader loss of electoral support for what may loosely be called the “progressive” side of politics.

Does this reflect real attitudinal changes among the mass of voters?

I rather doubt that. I think the values of Queenslanders – taken as one huge, diverse whole – have changed much less than the dramatic poll shift would suggest. That’s social research I’d like to see done. Perhaps when the electoral dust has settled, someone may try to assess any deeper changes in underlying values.

Right now, the only story in town is polls, polls, polls – all of them shocking for Labor state-wide – along with a general sentiment that “Labor has Failed” which merges seamlessly with the “Time for a Change” meme.

The result is akin to an infectious itch for voting Labor out. Nothing seems to alleviate the itch. On Saturday, Queenslanders go to the polls where they can have a good scratch.

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I’m utterly out of sympathy with The Big Scratch.

On Saturday, I shall vote Green 1 (swallowing my contempt for the national Green Party’s pro-imperialist foreign policies). Then I shall vote Labor 2.

For the first time in many elections – I won’t assist at electron stations by handing out Greens “How to Vote” cards, because I cannot bring myself on this occasion to hand out HTVs that don’t recommend a second preference vote to Labor.

Now I’m someone who’s been needling for “change” for years, dissatisfied with state government policies that seem to me grossly unsustainable in the long-term. Yet I’m not keen at all about this massive wave for “Change”. Why not?

For one thing, I appreciate the social, health and educational services provided by the State. I’d like them expanded, not reduced. Labor has done a reasonable job in these basic areas of government service. I think we live in a fairly civilised State in which help is given to the poor, the needy and the unwell. I like it that way. Other levels of government are involved too – especially the Commonwealth – but Queensland has, I think, been run with attention to social justice.

A unique double act visiting Cairns: LNP Leader-in-waiting Campbell Newman (right) with "Interim" Parliamentary Leader Jeff Seeney

Yet even in those policy areas the electorate is in negative mood. There are the usual complaints – too few hospital beds, hospital waiting lists that annoy. What’s missing, it seems to me, is a positive accounting for the real achievements. These are many and usually go unrecorded and un-trumpeted.

I have a personal tale to tell. A few years ago, I contracted an unusual tropical disease and got very sick indeed. I relied on the public health system. It wasn’t perfect; diagnosis was a little slow and I ended up in hospital under intensive care. From that moment I have nothing but the highest praise for the treatment I received, the wonderful multi-ethnic staff who cared for me – and for the governance that made it all possible so I could walk out of hospital soon after, healthy again and without incurring a massive debt for the first class treatment I’d received.

My survival made no news headlines. It was a headline in my life – but if the newspapers, TV channels and radio shock jocks were talking about health-care at all at the time, they were grizzling about alleged malpractice in a handful of hospitals, waiting lists or other negative stories.

To some extent this is simply the media doing its job. One person’s good news isn’t “newsworthy”; rorts and shortcomings do need exposure. But there’s probably a deeper impact on public consciousness. The populace is encouraged to think negatively about the services it does get from government – services that are often of high quality despite budget constraints. This negativity makes it easier for such benefits to be taken away. That, I fear, may be coming soon…

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As an environmentalist, the current Queensland government (along with its predecessors) has disappointed me in a number of policy areas. I could list them. It would be quite a long list.

Yet recent Labor governments have shown real concern for environmental protection. Legislation to protect the State’s remaining Wild Rivers has been a superb initiative – vilified by the mining lobby and its allies and probably about to be undone by an LNP government – but nonetheless a great effort to help save some of what’s left that makes Queensland unique. The National Parks estate has been expanded. Broad-scale native forest logging – an issue that still divides Australians in other states – has been phased out.

Environmentalists’ biggest beef with the Labor Government has been in energy production, notably Coal Seam Gas and most crucial of all to those concerned about climate change, the massive coal export projects that the government has been approving up and down the east coast.

Queensland coal exports: the modern opium trade - making the whole planet sick?

These projects are turning Queensland into something akin to the Saudi Arabia of Coal – at a time when scientists concerned about global warming say we must wind down our use of fossil fuels. It makes the pretence of a climate-wise “smart state” farcical.

Yet this “mining boom” has been what’s pumped much of the recent prosperity into the State. Labor supports it and so do all the parties of the right. The Greens stands alone in their opposition to Big Coal. Most people are persuaded that the mining boom is, on the whole, a good thing. Aster all, it helps pay for the services they like and the infrastructure they want built. No other feasible and better alternative has been sold to the public, so public support isn’t surprising.

I’m on the Greens side in that debate. But I understand why most people are not. Those of us who want a different, greener future for the State have yet to develop an alternative economic program which could deliver prosperity without these vast resource projects. The Greens’ answer to increasing government revenue is largely to increase the imposts on the mining industry. I think that’s a good idea too – the mining industry should pay a lot more of its windfall profits to the community. But this is not a policy for avoiding the big projects Greens find so offensive.

At this election, Green Party anger is being expressed most tangibly in a decision not to recommend a second preference to Labor in all but one of the seats. Individual voters are encouraged to make up their own minds on preferences. It’s a rap over the knuckles for the ALP; in earlier elections there was typically more effort to help Labor get across the line. But most Greens think Labor is about to get thrashed anyway.

My fear is that significant gains environmentalists have won in Queensland in recent decades are about to be wiped out – while there will be no change or things will get worse in those policy areas where environmentalists were already at odds with the Government.

In short, I fear Queensland is about to jump from the environmental frying pan into the fire.

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The State-wide wave of negativity, directed against the government, has been combined with an almost complete failure to scrutinise the LNP team. We know very little about most of the LNP candidates. Mostly they’ve been keeping their heads down and trying to stay out of trouble.

Yes, there has been scrutiny of leader Campbell Newman’s business dealings. Last week he came under a lot of pressure from the media and seemed to be fumbling. But when the Crimes and Misconduct Commission announced it wouldn’t investigate Campbell Newman further at the end of last week, the LNP declared victory. Since then it’s been successful in spinning an impression that Labor ran a dirty campaign throughout, peddling utterly baseless smears. That’s cited as one of the reasons given for Labor’s lack of success in the polls.

To me, whether or not Campbell Newman is corrupt is in some ways a lesser issue than what we already know to be true.

We know the LNP is still withholding its costings three days out from the election (they’ve finally been promised for Thursday – less than 48 hours before polling day!).

We know the LNP has been debate-shy. That seems to be a pattern throughout Queensland and it’s not surprising, either. On the rare occasions the two leaders have squared off, Anna Bligh dominated. She’s a much more substantial politician and a more competent debater. It shows. I suspect the same if often true at local level; it is in my own area.

CanDo Queensland

Brandishing its corny “CanDo” slogan, the LNP has indicated a recklessness about due process that’s deeply alarming. Asked about environmental impact assessment in relation to his proposal to dredge Trinity Inlet in Cairns, Campbell Newman breezily responded “where there is a will, there is a way!” That’s very true, Mr Newman. But what about the Great Barrier Reef? Mr Newman made similar remarks about another proposal to dredge Broadwater on the Gold Coast, so it’s not an aberration.

A lot of LNP candidates fail to impress after a modicum of scrutiny. Mark Boothman is a classic example. Campbell Newman’s defense of Boothman – while he continues to court religious conservatives – is rank opportunism.

There’s no break on a Party with a Parliamentary majority in Queensland – except for the courts and the Federal Government in well-defined policy areas where it has leverage. There’s no Queensland Upper Chamber. If a Government with a solid majority wants to make big changes, there’s not much to stop it.

If these wretched polls are right, evidence-based policy is about to take a back seat to Crash-Through populism.

I, for one, would much prefer this doesn’t happen.

Not in my back yard…

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No article about this election from Far North Queensland would be complete without at least a mention of the LNP’s delightful candidate for Cairns, the ex-NewsCorp personality-hack Gavin King.

Some of Gavin’s more choice remarks have already made national news, but the pithy video displayed below, complied by the local ALP, is worth a look.

It turns out Gavin has a bad word to say about almost everyone. In that sense, he’s perfectly in tune with the current mood of the electorate. No matter Gavin King pours scorn on them too – and even on his own new Party. He’s a petulant man – the man of the moment!

Very high tides have a way of bringing up a range of unusual life-forms and dumping them at high water mark. If Labor loses Cairns for the first time in a century, we’ll know it really is a King Tide.

A few disclaimers to begin…

First, I do not, personally, object to pornography – not at any rate where adults are involved as both “subjects” (viewers) and “objects” (viewed).

I realise some people do have strong moral objections to pornography. I respect their right to hold such opinions. I simply don’t share them myself.

Second, I don’t object to politicians viewing or even making pornography. Politicians are human beings like the rest of us. I don’t wish them to be any different from the rest of us, for better or worse, in their private lives. I respect their right to have a private life. My primary interest in politicians is their politics. If they’re honest, intelligent and work in the public interest, their bedroom or living room kinks are of little interest to me. I believe the sex life of politicians, as they saying goes, is “their business”.

Third, in the unlikely event that aspiring politicians – who also happened to enjoy creating pornography – ever came to me and asked for my advice, I’d probably make a few observations. I’d suggest they might consider using a “domains by proxy” service for their pornographic websites. That should keep their name out of public view. Of course, they might wish to be open about their pornographic activity. For instance, if they intended running as a candidate for the Australian Sex Party, a few naughty websites to their name would probably be de rigeur.

I would advise them against running for a political party that made a big fuss out of “family values” and “moral rectitude” while openly running a pornographic website. That would be courting fate. The long-suffering electorate can put up with many things – and is usually required to do so. But we do detest hypocrisy.

Finally, in the event they ever got caught out running a porn site while standing for a Party with pretensions to “moral purity” – I’d advise them to come clean. I’ve observed enough political stories by this stage in my life – from Watergate onwards – to appreciate the truism that a cover-up is usually worse than the “crime”, especially when the “crime” in question isn’t really criminal at all, just a bit of sleazy stupidity.

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With those disclaimers out of the way, here’s a story from the State of Queensland where I happen to live and which is currently in the throes of an election campaign. It concerns an aspiring politician, a rather “racy” website, an improbable denial and what appears to be a clumsy cover-up that might precipitate a political melt-down.

Here goes…

Whois entry for Darkosiris.com

Yesterday, the story broke in the media that a young mortgage broker called Mark Boothman, a member of the conservative Liberal-National Party (LNP) who is standing for election in the Gold Coast constituency of Albert, is listed as the contact for a website called “DarkOsiris.com”.

The website hasn’t been active for some years, although it is still registered in Mr Boothman’s name. However, in past years it was quite active. For several years (between 2003 and 2006), it appears to have contained rather salacious material. Some of Mr Boothman’s political oponents have accused him or running a pornographic website.

As I said, the website is now devoid of content. But even defunct websites can leave traces. More on that in a moment. First, let’s take a look at media commentary once this tasty tale broke in the media…

Mark Boothman’s reaction seems to have been denial. The Sydney Morning Herald reported yesterday morning:

The site was set up almost 10 years ago as a forum for car enthusiasts, he said.

“But, unfortunately over a period of time, adult content was uploaded to the site,” he said.

“In 2004, the site was continually under attack from hackers and was being hijacked from its original purpose and was getting beyond my control.”

Because of this, it was shut down in 2006, he said.

The same SMH story further reported that LNP Party leader decided to investigate before making a decision on whether to dis-endorse Mr Boothman as an LNP candidate:

The Gold Coast Bulletin on Thursday reported Mr Boothman was the registrant, administrative contact and technical contact for DarkOsiris.com, which promoted “hot sex scenes” and had links such as “Control Your Bitches”, “So much porn” and “hot teen”.

If the party had dumped him, it would have been left without a candidate in the seat because nominations have closed.

LNP leader Campbell Newman earlier said that wouldn’t influence the party’s decision.

“I’m not prejudging what the results of an investigation is going to be,” he said.

“Let’s just make sure that he gets a fair go.”

Later in the day, the story had progressed. At 6.34pm on March 8th the Australian Broadcasting Corporation filed a story entitled Newman backs candidate linked to porn site:

Queensland’s Liberal National Party leader Campbell Newman has defended his decision not to axe an election candidate over his links to a pornographic website.

Mortgage broker Mark Boothman remains the registered administrator of the site, which he says was hacked and had adult content uploaded to it.

The site was shut down in 2006.

Mr Newman says he has been informed that Mr Boothman set up a website for motor enthusiasts which was then “hijacked”.

He says the party has done its due diligence and he is satisfied with Mr Boothman’s explanation.

“He was not, on the information we have, running a porn site – end of story,” he said.

“Any imputation that he was in some way trying to make money out of pornography, that he was actively running a pornography site, is totally and utterly untrue.”

Mr Boothman is free to run against Labor MP Margaret Keech for the northern Gold Coast seat of Albert.

Ms Keech holds the seat with a 6.5 per cent margin.

Had Mr Boothman been stood down, the LNP would not have been able to field another candidate because nominations for the March 24 election are closed.

But Mr Newman says that did not influence the party’s decision.

“That’s immaterial… the case has been investigated, it’s been decided on its merits,” he said.

‘We wouldn’t have been afraid to get rid of somebody if they had been on the ballot paper and they’d done the wrong thing.”

End of story? Well, maybe. But is Mr Boothman really telling the truth? And has his Party leader Cambell Newman – the man who likes to be known as ‘CanDo’ – really done the “due diligence” he claims?

Here’s where those footprints that I mentioned previously come into the story. There’s a well-known facility known as the Internet Archive ‘Wayback Machine’. Doubtless the web-savvy Mr Boothman is aware of this. Campbell Newman may not be, but he is a Party leader who hopes to become Premier; presumably he has competent advisors?

At any rate, viewers at home can try this for themselves if they’re at all interested in making their own assessment about whether or not Mr Boothman is telling porkies – and whether Campbell Newman’s “due diligence” is worth a pinch of the proverbial shit.

Here’s the link to ‘DarkOsiris.com’ on the Wayback Machine.

As you’ll notice, the site was indeed first active in 2003. It ran ‘hot’ until 2006 – then it seems to have run out of steam. There are entries after than, but they seem to contain no data.

So perhaps Mr Boothman is telling the truth when he says the site was started as a site for “motor enthusiasts” – then it was “hacked” – but he then shut it down (presumably after discovering this shocking news) in 2006?

A screenshot from 2004 could be consistent with that narrative (see below). This is the kind of HomePage that could have been hacked without the administrator noticing. It’s possible, I guess…

DarkOsiris.com Homepage Dec 16th 2004

By mid 2006, the Wayback Machine archive entry shows a website that was really humming with activity. By that time, DarkOsiris.com had a forum. It seems to have been rather busy.

Here, for instance, is a screenshot of the forum index dated July 13th 2006:

DarkOsiris.com - Forum Index Page, July 13th 2006

Is it really possible that a complex piece of software could have been installed and attract thousands of posts without the Admin/Tech Contact knowing a thing about it?

Perhaps it is. But is it likely?

I think not – but what do I know? ‘CanDo’ Newman is standing by his man. He seems to know more than I do about this rather tacky subject.

Yesterday Newman stated “Any imputation that (Mr Boothman) was in some way trying to make money out of pornography, that he was actively running a pornography site, is totally and utterly untrue” (emphasis added).

Perhaps it’s time that Mark Boothman tells voters:

• whether he called the police when his website was so seriously “hacked” and if not, why not?
• did he ever find out who “hacked” his website for longer than two years and ran a busy web forum at his expense?
• would he care to swear an affidavit confirming his story?

Journalists might like to ask Mr Newman what he means by terms such as “due diligence” and “totally and utterly untrue”.

Are these the 2012 equivalents of “don’t you worry about that“?

Postscript

Last weekend Suzanne Lappeman of Goldcoast.com.au wrote a corker of a folllow-up story: Porn Candidate has Hoon History

Campbell Newman’s statements regarding “due diligence” over this case now look farcical, as does his claim “the case has been investigated, it’s been decided on its merits“.

Mr Newman’s assertion that “we wouldn’t have been afraid to get rid of somebody if they had been on the ballot paper and they’d done the wrong thing” is laughable.