Why I’m voting for Scott Ludlam, Green 1 on Saturday.
by k8inbush
Having been a staunch Wikileaks supporter for the past four years, I never imagined I’d find myself in a position where I’d be telling people to NOT vote for a Wikileaks political party. I’ve been a huge promoter of all things Wikileaks, so I feel I have a responsibility to my friends and followers on social media to explain in more depth why I am urging them to Vote Green 1 in Western Australia (WA).
If it ain’t broke why mess with it?
From the outset I questioned the wisdom of the Wikileaks Party even considering fielding candidates in opposition to Senator Scott Ludlam in WA.
Scott is the only Australian politician who has been prepared to put his arse on the line for Julian Assange and who has tirelessly ‘walked the talk’ all of the core values and issues Wikileaks represents. Scott’s track record in supporting Wikileaks speaks for itself. The short summary to which I’ve linked represents countless hours of Scott’s time devoted to the Wikileaks cause, not to mention trips to London and Sweden attempting to sort out Julian’s issues there.
In fact, you’d be hard pressed to find any man in Australia who has done more to provide tangible support to Assange and Wikileaks than Scott Ludlam.
Throughout his term as a Senator, Scott has conducted himself with intelligence, grace and diplomacy befitting an esteemed statesman representing our country
When I expressed my concerns about WLP competing against Scott Ludlam in WA, I was assured by those ‘in the know’ that all due care would be exercised in allocating preferences to ensure his position would never be endangered.
But it still didn’t make much sense to me why they would even bother. To warrant dividing the WA support base at the polls, I figured the Wikileaks Party would need to find someone who not only matches all the qualities Scott exemplifies, but also exceeds them.
So I nearly fell of my chair when I read the announcement that the Wikileaks Party had endorsed two Senate contestants in WA and Gerry Georgatos had been endorsed as the ‘lead’ candidate.
Gerry Georgatos? WTF does he have to do with Wikileaks?
Before I got ill, I was an active participant in the Wikileaks online community, so I’m fairly familiar with the ‘who’s who’ of the Wikileaks Twitterverse. As far as I know, until June, Gerry Georgatos had never figured in it!!!
Closer to home, I was also acquainted with Gerry as a freelance journalist. I knew he’d written stories for local newspapers about the southwest forest protests and he was the proprietor of a fledgling online news service, in which he focused on Indigenous and asylum seeker issues. Fair enough, all admirable causes.
I knew, too, that he and his wife had very recently stood for the local Council elections and both missed out on a seat. No shame in having a go at that. They wouldn’t be the first ‘tree-changers’ who, in moving to a small country town, find they have to patchwork together a survival income from assorted sources. And let’s face it, with Council sitting fees and allowances heading toward $10K, that kind of cash can come in handy while becoming a ‘mover and shaker’ in small pond politics.
But hot off the tail of that Local Government defeat, to find Georgatos now standing for the Wikileaks Party in the Australian Senate? WTF? WTF? WTF? You’ve got to be joking!
I must admit, my WTFs were seriously compounded by an alarming recollection of a conversation I’d had with Gerry’s wife just a few months earlier. When I mentioned Wikileaks, she screwed up her face in distaste and went on to say Julian Assange was wanted for sexual assault and should go back to Sweden so the women’s voices could be heard.
I set her straight on the history of the Sweden affair but was rather astonished to discover the wife of a journalist and a young woman in the digital age could be so naive about the facts of the Swedish case or, for that matter, Wikileaks in general.
With this memory now juxtaposed against the announcement of Georgatos’ candidacy, there was something that just didn’t gel! Why the sudden interest in Wikileaks? Also, if his wife’s naiveté was any indication of his own depth of understanding, I shuddered to think what kind of liability a ‘Senator Georgatos’ might represent to Wikileaks were he ever to be put on the spot.
To be fair, and recognising marital partners do not necessarily define one another’s political views, I set off in search of Gerry’s own historical record in relation to Assange and Wikileaks.
Late to the party?
A search of Twitter postings reveals Gerry’s interest in Wikileaks arrived about the same time as his candidacy for the WL Party. I couldn’t find any of his journalistic offerings on the WL Central site either.
A broader Google search revealed he’d only written a couple of rather dubious Assange-related articles pre-June 2013.
The first of these, in May 2012, was a convoluted and somewhat ambiguous piece dealing with Assange’s Swedish situation. It was the type of opinion piece any half-arsed journalist could have written gleaning information from the Justice for Assange website. The date-stamp of his article, however, indicates Gerry had arrived very late to that party too.
The second article was more entertaining, as well being cause for concern.
Questions of journalistic integrity
One of the factors clearly distinguishing Wikileaks journalism from the mainstream media hacks and a plethora of ‘truther’ websites here online is that you know their publications are based in fact. They go to a lot of trouble to verify that anything they publish can be sourced back to authentic data. They’ve built their reputations on this integrity.
When I originally saw Gerry’s’ June 2012 article about Assange’s Torres Strait Islander heritage, I remember, I laughed.
It was a pleasantly presented genealogical exploration, with appealing historic photos and an interesting titbit about the Chinese origins of the Assange name. But anyone who had ‘dug deep’ on Julian and Wikileaks – or even a kid using Wikipedia – would discover Julian’s biological father was John Shipton and Brett Assange was his mother’s partner when he was a child. So much for researching the heritage of ‘the bloodlines’.
In the context of this Federal election, we’re being asked to support a Wikileaks candidate on the basis of his “multi-award winning investigative journalism” credibility. I have my doubts about whether GG meets the Wikileaks standard when it comes to checking the facts.
Admittedly the bar is set pretty high, with journalists like Glen Greenwald and Alexa O’Brien around; but Gerry would have known that if he’d ever paid any real attention to what was happening with Wikileaks in the last four years.
The other thing that bothered me about the second article was the angle of it. I felt like I was being ‘sold’ something. When I sense I’m being sold something, I don’t like it and I don’t trust it. I asked myself why this reporter was trying to push the idea of Assange having ATSI blood. What was the purpose of this message and whose interests would it best serve?
Questions of focus
Those two articles were all I could find in an extensive search of Google (set pre-May 2013) to represent Georgatos’ journalistic contribution to the Wikileaks historic archive.
By contrast, he is clearly a passionate anti-racist and prolific in his publications about Indigenous and asylum seeker issues and people facing unfair conditions in general. Hat’s off to him on that score, for sure.
That’s Gerry’s ‘thing’, his area of expertise. He lives and breathes that stuff; it’s where his personal identity is fixed, his ‘bread and butter’ and where his sense of community comes from. It’s a shame there wasn’t already another political party lobbying about those issues (Oh wait a sec, there’s actually The Greens.)
But when it comes to GG as a Wikileaks’ Senate representative, it’s like sending in a quiz show contestant whose special interest area is Endangered Australian Marsupials to face a set of questions about Arabian horse racing. Sure, they’re all warm-blooded animals, but the expertise acquired in one area of ‘animal husbandry’ is not always applicable to another, especially when that knowledge takes years to acquire.
The same might be said for Wikileaks’ attempt to transfer from information politics to party politics. A good share of the responsibility for Georgatos being placed outside his field of expertise has to lie with the inexperience and poor judgment of those involved in the candidates’ selection process in the first place.
Questions of allegiance
When Gerry’s passion and expertise clearly lie in another area of human rights, my main concern was – when it came to a crunch – would his priorities be aligned with Wikileaks? Had he simply harnessed his own personal and political agenda to the Wikileaks bandwagon when he noticed the polls showing Wikileaks might pull 26% of the vote?
My fears were not allayed when, in the early days of his candidacy, Gerry continued to pound the drum of his own personal passions rather than Wikileaks messages. His outputs were focused on promoting himself as the heroic crusader and defender of the downtrodden, his own journalistic achievements, his online news site and the political issues closest to his heart. I’m not sure about his history as a whistleblower but he knows how to blow his own trumpet, that’s for sure. (See link to Sue Myc radio interview below to verify this for yourself.)
Gerry’s cursory references to Wikileaks’ core issues such as transparency, accountability, surveillance and personal privacy, as well as mentions of whistleblowers like Manning, Assange and Snowden, appeared to be thrown in as little more than shallow political slogans, rallying cries to the faithful. There was very little depth to any of his coverage, except when it came to the anti-racist campaigns of his past.
The WLP preferences debacle
The crunch came and my worst fears were confirmed when I read about the Wikileaks Party’s complete cock-up relating to the allocation of WLP preferences Australia-wide.
For those who haven’t been following the play, I’ll try to keep this explanation brief. With Australia’s preferential voting system, the allocation of preferences become critical in deciding who actually gets a seat. As candidates are eliminated due to a lack of primary votes, the second (and sometimes subsequent) choices of their supporters are then allocated according to how they’re numbered on the ballot paper.
On the Senate ballot paper, where there are often scores of candidates, the voter has the option to tick 1 on a particular party ‘above the line’ and their preferences will be allocated in the order selected for them by their primary vote party. The other choice is to ‘vote below the line’ which means the arduous task of numbering every candidate manually.
It’s not uncommon for deals to be done among the minor parties to allocate their preferences to one another to ensure at least some of them get into Parliament. It’s a way of curbing the unbridled power of the major parties. This is how The Greens and Independents have held ‘the balance of power’ in Federal politics for the last three years.
When it came to the allocation of the Wikileaks Party’s preferences, deals were done in the eastern states that meant preferences were given to extreme right wing parties with values unaligned to Wikileaks. I don’t know who was ultimately responsible for preference allocations, but I gather it wasn’t a democratically-reached decision and many people (including Julian’s running mate in Victoria) were upset enough to resign or withdraw their support from the party.
In WA, however, it appears that the preferences allocation decision was delegated entirely to the discretion of Gerry Georgatos…and he decided to allocate the WA Wikileaks Party preferences to The Nationals over The Greens.
Why? As he explains in this article, Gerry decided to offer his political support ‘as a symbolic gesture’ to his mate, Aboriginal former footballer, David Wirrpanda.
FFS!!!!!!! David Wirrpanda may be a good bloke, but he is standing for The Nationals! Y’know, those guys who love to turn our unique native forests into woodchips. Also the party whose Federal member in O’Connor, when I went to see him about Julian’s incarceration, indicated that he couldn’t give a rats’ about Assange or Wikileaks and that he is perfectly happy with Australia’s relationship with the US.
So with the first important decision left in Gerry’s hands he has already demonstrated his primary allegiance is to his own anti-racist agenda in preference to supporting Scott Ludlam, the one politician in Australia who has been a stalwart supporter promoting Wikileaks’ interests.
There’s been a whole lot of media featuring Gerry’s bombastic defence of his decision (with no apology to Scott, mind you). He claims that he’s ‘done the math’ and his decision won’t affect Scott’s Senate seat, but I’d prefer to trust the expertise of far more experienced political analysts who say otherwise.
The ‘short’ of it is that if you vote Wikileaks 1 on your Senate ballot paper in WA and the Wikileaks Party candidates get less primary votes than The Greens, your vote will go straight to The Nationals.
We’ve already seen the devastation the Barnett state government has created in Western Australia and it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion we’ll see that idiot, Tony Abbott, as our next PM with control of the Lower House. The ONLY hope we have of putting any brakes on the LNP Coalition’s unbridled takeover of this country, is to ensure they don’t get the balance of power in The Senate.
While the WA Nationals are not officially a part of the Federal LNP Coalition, they’ll still align their vote with them when it comes to a numbers crunch. That’s why it’s imperative – not just for Wikileaks and not just for the environment, but for the sake of the country itself – we must return a good man like Scott Ludlam to his Senate seat.
So if you’re considering giving your vote to Gerry Georgatos (or David Wirrpanda) because you think ‘he’s a good bloke’, I’ve got to tell you Scott Ludlam is an even better man and, undoubtedly, a better politician deserving of our respect…and our vote!
FURTHER READING TO INFORM YOUR CHOICE:
Please check this out! Scott Ludlam’s Wikileaks track record. http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/wikileaks
Letters from Senator Ludlam January 24, 2013 http://waca.net.au/letters-from-senator-ludlam/
Wikileaks Background information
Swedish Extradition Facts http://wlcentral.org/node/2486
Justice for Assange site http://justice4assange.com/
Wikileaks Official site: http://wikileaks.org/
Wikileaks candidate talks about…..Gerry Georgatos
Sue Myc in conversation on 2013.08.28 with Gerry Georgatos Wikileaks https://soundcloud.com/suemycon897fm/sue-myc-in-conversation-on-2
Note: 6:30mins before he mentions Wikileaks and then only because the reporter brings him back to topic; 8:30 back to GG and his own whistleblower history; 12:00 mins back to WL; 20 mins explains resignations and preferences; 22:00 mins slags off The Greens; 24:00 back on Indigenous issues.
The preferences cock-up
WikiLeaks candidate Gerry Georgatos defends preferencing Nationals over Greens http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/wikileaks-candidate-gerry-georgatos-defends-preferencing-nationals-over-greens/story-fnhocxo3-1226702078956
Ludlam blasts WikiLeaks over preferences http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/national/ludlam-blasts-wikileaks-over-preferences/story-e6frfku9-1226702948503#ixzz2d1hqPAI2
WikiLeaks Party risks Abbott controlled Senate Simon Butlerhttp://www.greenleft.org.au/node/54812
(Sorry about the weird formatting on the links below. I don’t know how to fix this right now and want to get this thing uploaded before the election.)
Could Western Australia Deliver the Coalition Control of the Senate? By political commentator, Antony Green, March 13, 2013. http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/2013/03/could-western-australia-deliver-the-coalition-control-of-the-senate.html
WikiLeaks Party Assplosion 2 (Sean Bedlam) National WLP social media coordinator explains his resignation and doesn’t mince with his words. 😉 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9_b-cwpHWQ&feature=youtu.be
WA Volunteer resignation statement: Luke Skinner 19 August https://www.facebook.com/troutish/posts/10151684535617605
Politics vs. Wikileaks vs. The Greens (Radio interview with Georgatos and Ludlam – who handles this situation with grace?) http://rtrfm.com.au/story/politics-vs-wikileaks-vs-the-greens/
Julian Assange WikiLeaks Party Fails over Preference Decision http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/500622/20130822/julian-assange-wikileaks-party-leslie-cannold.htm#.Uh_wfz-d-ls
Gerry Georgatos supports Nationals candidate in The Stringer June 17th, 2013 (Note the date on this one.) “David Wirrpanda said that he will speak his mind if elected” http://thestringer.com.au/david-wirrpanda-said-that-he-will-speak-his-mind-if-elected/#.UiL2TT-d-lt
Gerry Georgatos’ contribution to the Wikileaks journalistic record
Justice for all: WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, the rights of the two women by Gerry Georgatos Thu 31 May 2012
http://indymedia.org.au/2012/05/31/justice-for-all-wikileaks-julian-assange-the-rights-of-the-two-women
Julian Assange affirms his Torres Strait Islander heritage by Gerry Georgatos Indymedia 2nd June 2012 http://treatyrepublic.net/node/1050
“Multi-award winning investigative journalism” http://neoskosmos.com/news/en/greek-australian-journo-wins-media-awards-for-aboriginal-newspaper
Georgatos Article Archive on The Stringer http://thestringer.com.au/article-archive/
Examples of the standard of Wikileaks-style journalism
Alexa O’Brien archive of investigative journalism on the Bradley Manning trial http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/archives.html
Glenn Greenwald archive of informed political commentary http://www.thenewsmachine.com/top-stories/2013-08-20/glenn-greenwald/
Wikileaks Central – an endorsed Wikileaks resource (with journalistic contributions from the Wikileaks community) http://wlcentral.org/
k8inbush 
What a load of lies mate, who are you? What a hatchet job! Did you consider contacting me for comment? As a journalist for various and national newspapers and other formats I always contact all parties. Furthermore it’s not you who has been a three times whistleblower in three different domains, nor you who campaigned for children in adult prisons after discovering, nor you who fronts the Supreme Court unrepresented refusing to retract public interest stories he has written who others won’t touch… Secondly, the first every rally in Perth for WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange after he was ‘arrested’ in England was organised by me. I wrote a number of articles. I have been involved in ways you couldn’t even imagine. You know jack about what I have done. How dare you lie about my partner. You disgust me – this is not fair comment but I never chase anyone for the rubbish they wish to put out there, it’s not my way. You ran a number here on me, and more than likely will not publish this. If you have the guts phone me – 0430 657 309 – Gerry Georgatos
Firstly, I’d like to say that I don’t appreciate being publicly called a “gutless coward” and a liar (on Twitter), particularly when I have gone to considerable effort to research before sharing an opinion on a subject. Anyone who knows me well would also question the accuracy of such descriptors because I’m actually quite renowned for my honesty and gutsy courage in speaking out when I see things that trouble me. These are qualities shared by a lot of the Wikileaks community as I know them. You’d be wise to learn to deal with it.
Secondly, I don’t appreciate unsolicited phone calls from people I barely know who only want to shout me down when I’m attempting to answer their questions. As I said before terminating the call, you might as well continue your angry ranting into a mirror if you don’t require my input.
I understand that what I’ve written may have upset you, Gerry, but IMO your subsequent behaviour has been totally inappropriate for someone proposing himself as an Australian Senator and serves only to confirm my original conclusion that you are not well-suited for the job.
That being said, let’s get down to what you’ve posted here.
GG
This blog was set up so I could share a document online with my friends and followers on social media because I was concerned they’d assume my ongoing support for anything Wikileaks would automatically extend to the candidates in this Federal election. The blog clearly states that this is a place for me to share my personal opinion; therefore I am not bound by any code of mainstream journalism to obtain quotes from the parties I am discussing.
I did, however, provide an extensive list of links to act as source data (which contained numerous statements from both you and Scott Ludlam) that readers could research and possibly reach a different conclusion to my own.
As a matter of fact, prior to publishing this piece, I sent you numerous tweets asking you to clarify your Wikileaks ‘track record’, as opposed to your track record in anti-racist activism. Check your tweet stream. That was your chance to comment and, had you done so, I might have formed a different opinion.
You’ve also been asked by various people on Twitter to specify what part of this blog piece is ‘lies’ and to refute them. You failed to respond to any of those questions from me or other Wikileaks supporters who’ve posed them.
In your electoral campaign as a Senate candidate you’ve had ample opportunity to highlight your background as it relates to Wikileaks and yet I can find no evidence of what might constitute a “Wikileaks” Resume. You’ve been trumpeting about your other achievements, so why omit the facts as they pertain to your background with Wikileaks?
You’ve had plenty of opportunity to prove my assertions wrong, Gerry, but you instead invested your energies in outrage and insults because I dared question your suitability as a Senator.
After your candidacy was announced, I spent several weeks, ‘digging deep’, searching online for a record of your history with Wikileaks. It shouldn’t have been that hard with unusual keywords like Georgatos + Assange + Wikileaks. As my blog piece above notes, I could find only two articles prior to your endorsement as a candidate.
Only tonight during your angry phone call and again here in these Comments, did I become aware of your involvement with a Wikileaks rally in support of Julian Assange. I’d hazard a guess that this comes as a surprise to most in the Wikileaks community too. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, Gerry, but even now when I type in those key words plus Perth rally (time-framed 2009-2011) your name does not show up in the digital record.
So if I take your word for it on this event, it makes three entries on your Wikileaks CV.
I don’t think this makes me a “gutless coward” and a liar for writing that you’d never figured in the Wikileaks Twitterverse or the Wikileaks ‘who’s who’ or as a journalistic contributor to WL Central because, Gerry, you just weren’t there!
I also don’t think it’s justification to ‘block’ me on Twitter because I asked you to account for your “Wikileaks” background and credentials.
What I’d really like you to understand here is that you and your fellow candidates are standing for public office. That means you move into the realms of being required to provide the transparency and accountability you may previously have demanded of others in a similar position.
It also means that we – the constituents being asked to elect you into office – have every right to thoroughly scrutinize your background, check your integrity and ask you to account for your credentials.
Essentially, we need to know what qualifies you to represent us in Government. Will you have all of the appropriate personal attributes, skills, experience and knowledge to both conduct your duties as a representative and to not bring disrepute onto the Wikileaks community? Will you be able to stand up, give speeches and answer questions on the very diverse range of topics Wikileaks covers? Or could you end up being fodder for comedy show parodies like some of the One Nation candidates and members have been? We, the voters, including those annoying people on Twitter who you like to disrespect because they don’t agree with you, need to know if you’re up for the task.
So rather than acting like you’re attending an award ceremony set up to acknowledge your personal achievements, you’d have been wiser to consider this pre-election process as a job interview for the public service.
If you’re elected to government, it means you’re there to serve your constituents – because the Australian taxpayer will be paying your wages and footing a bill for you for the rest of your life.
The other thing you should probably try to grasp is that in this particular constituency – the Wikileaks voting public – you’ll be expected to meet extremely high standards of integrity, transparency and accountability, as well as modelling the processes of democracy and justice.
As such, your prospective employers are entitled to put you through a rigorous selection process before we give you our vote. We’re also entitled to reject you as our preferred candidate if you don’t meet our selection criteria. Not only that, we’re entitled to freely express our reasons for rejecting or supporting any particular candidate and to share our assessments with others – without being disrespected or subjected to abuse!
So in that regard I have more questions I’d like to ask you on behalf of the Wikileaks community, Gerry.
1. You inferred when you phoned me that you’d been pretty much ‘head-hunted’ for this job and mentioned someone had flown across Australia especially to offer you the position. Can you please tell the rest of the ‘interview panel’ here, who was that person and what was your previous relationship with them?
2. Also please tell us about your previous political party membership(s) and the reasons you’re no longer involved with that party (or parties)?
I realise that tomorrow’s election gives you the perfect opportunity to evade answering these questions, but I’m putting them to you because I believe these are things the constituents had a right to know in order to make informed decisions about this election.
I’m really not trying to give you a hard time here, Gerry, I’ve simply been trying to evaluate whether you’re a suitable candidate for a very important job. I’d probably feel sorry for you for having been placed in an arena where you’re expected to box above your weight, except for the fact that you keep coming back with this combative, competitive and self-promoting attitude that makes hard to maintain my compassion.
Excuse me if I borrow your phrase here, Gerry, but “you know jack about what I have done” and to make such competitive statements and assumptions only makes you look very foolish.
I don’t suppose you considered that your wife might have lied about her conversation with me in order to protect herself from the rage I encountered when you did, in fact, ‘chase after me’ to berate me on the telephone? I wouldn’t blame her if that was the case. I know I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be in the same room with you in that state.
I don’t want to exacerbate a potentially difficult situation in your household, but when you call me a liar you put me in a situation where I’m required to refute that. My recollections of the conversation with your wife to which I referred in the blog piece are quite clear. I have also seen the reinvented version of the incident your wife may have shared with you (via a lengthy SMS she sent me shortly after your phone call).
As this is likely to be the version you will on-share to your Wikileaks Party cronies, I will go on the record and say that the conversation arose when I referenced Wikileaks and Julian Assange in relation to concerns that my digital communications may be monitored because of my contacts with Wikileaks people at the Bradley Manning pre-trial and in other parts of Australia.
These were the WL topics being discussed in my home at the time of my conversation with your wife in April this year. I had no reason to reference events in Sweden because, for me, they were past history and had been superseded by more current affairs.
It was your wife who brought up Sweden when I mentioned the Assange name. It was also your wife’s facial expression and statements that necessitated me providing her with a detailed explanation of the facts of the case. So there was no mention of Swedish women until after she’d shown her distaste when I mentioned Assange. That’s how the conversation began and the sequence it followed, I can assure you.
I spent more than a year poring over every leaked police statement and piece of information available online in relation to the Swedish situation. You could say that was my area of special interest and numerous people on Twitter can verify this.
The FACTS of the Swedish situation don’t always reflect the two women in the most favourable light, so what I shared with your wife may have challenged her former beliefs about their roles in the situation. But for your wife to now claim that she screwed up her nose in distaste, not at the mention of Assange’s name, but because she was disgusted when she heard me “trash talking” about the Swedish women is a fabrication.
Not only has she got the sequencing of the conversation and her reactions to it out of order but, should she ever wish to test this in a court of law, I could produce scores of witnesses and hundreds of digital communiqués to attest to the fact that ‘trash talking about the Swedish women’ would be inconsistent with my modus operandi.
As to your wife’s claims that I have mounted a ‘dual character assassination’ here, cut the dramatics please! Since when is referring to a young woman as ‘naive’ (about a particular subject) a character assassination?
The reason I mentioned the incident involving your wife was because it served as the trigger for me to investigate your own history of involvement and to gauge your depth of knowledge covering a range of complex issues with which a Wikileaks Senator would have to be familiar.
So let’s not fall into Mr Barnes’ distraction tactics of attempting to trivialise my posting by contextualising it as a bitchy and petty catfight.
It was read by enough intelligent people whose opinions I respect who thought the issues I’d raised worthy of their consideration. I’m happy with that.
I think most Australians, young and old, prefer to see their Federal politicians conduct themselves with good manners and grace, even under pressure. If nothing else, your own response to what I wrote has allowed voters to mark their cards in terms of how the ‘job applicant’ deals with rejection and opposition.
May the best man win!
Your claims and the journalism of your blog are without various common courtesies let alone investigative journalism. You knew how to contact me to ask me anything, or to find out more. You never did, instead you went out and posted a huge blog on me without ever asking me a single question. You have cast a net of aspersions without response from me which have now been misused by others who seek to discredit me for their own skewed sense of political advantage or otherwise, despite a life by me dedicated to myriad causes.
I wish you well, however despite my horror when I read your blog and to see it misused by the Greens, by Mary Kostakidis, by Christine Assange, by so many others, the utter defamation of it all despite it not being my way to chase people down about such malicious commentary, inadvertent or otherwise, there is no excuse in my book for not contacting me and instead you presupposing that you have the right to write about me without contacting me. I answer all my phone calls, I answer all my emails. I am easily contactable.
Best to you nevertheless, Gerry
[Edited by k8inbush: Only to remove references to my name and geographical location, information which I do not disclose online for reasons of personal safety.]
Great post, I’m a wikileaks supporter (still) but like most didn’t agree with the preference decision in WA but more so in NSW. Would be good to get some real answers from Greg and the team after the election on the NSW issue. In WA hopefully Scott will romp it in and Gerry will resign from the party and go back to what he does best.
Side note is that the online analysis shows that the nationals have virtually no chance of taking Scott’s seat, with Palmer United being a much better chance.
Thanks, AJ. I do hope Gerry gets to go back doing what he does best too. As I said in the other Comments, I sometimes feel sorry for him because he’s been put in a position where he just doesn’t fit and that’s not all his fault.
Not surprised Palmer United are picked as contenders. They must’ve spent a dumptruck of dollars on those flash leaflets and CDs in every letterbox. At least it’ll give The Hamster boys something to send up.
[…] Manager Greg Barnes, who went on to appoint a journalist and disaffected former Greens member, Gerry Georgatis), as the WikiLeaks Party candidate. While the Greens ranked him as their first preference, he took […]
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