Minties moments during the 2007 Election campaign

Letter to the Editor in The Daily Examiner today.

"Life's little ironies

THE 2007 Federal election campaign is already revealing some of life's little ironies.
In the 2001 Queens Birthday Honours list the Australian Government presented Janelle Saffin, the present Labor candidate for Page, with an award for volunteer work in East Timor. This award was signed by Prime Minister John Howard and the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
In the week the Howard Government launched its 'unionists under the bed' scare campaign, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations Joe Hockey declared unions increasingly irrelevant and Health Minister Tony Abbot admitted he had been an active unionist.
Federal Treasurer Peter Costello, who briefly tried to resurrect the supposed Australian communist menace, was caught out on the internet: "It is a matter of record that in the period 1976-1980 Mr. Costello was a supporter of the Labor Party, compulsory student unionism, and student income support grants set at 120 per cent of the poverty line. He is on record as saying his faction in national student politics was "the democratic Left", expressed left-wing views on many issues when interviewed by student newspapers, and frequently attended self-described "Social Democrat" training programs along with many people who have since gone on to become trade union officials. Furthermore, during 1979 Mr. Costello and his faction were allied, firstly with the pro-Chinese communists to campaign for disaffiliation from the Australian Union of Students, and then with the Communist Party of Australia to push through structural changes to AUS at a Special Council of the organisation. At the same Special Council Mr. Costello stated his strong support for the AUS Women's Department, whose platform stated that it was "part of a continuing revolutionary process, the purpose of which is to attack patriarchy, racism, capitalism and the nature of society as a whole" . [http://larvatusprodeo.net,20.10.07].
Nationals candidate for Page, Chris Gulaptis who is campaigning in part on a need to protect the environment, had a meeting last week with Lismore Climate Action Group at which he demonstrated that he knows next to nothing about global warming [http://au.groups.yahoo.com].
I wonder how many other Minties moments this election will bring?

JUDITH M MELVILLE,
Yamba."