A now defunct Port Macquarie newspaper gets caught out in yet another conflict of interest

The Port Paper shutdown with suspicious alacrity once its connection to The National Party of Australia began to surface.

However, even the quoted paragraph below by The Poll Bludger  on 27 August 2011 and the earlier 
allegations of push polling do not explain why the newspaper’s owner/s folded their tent so quickly or why there appears to be deliberate obfuscation over the company name.

In other poll news, a fortnightly Port Macquarie-based publication called The Port Paper has published results from an automated phone poll conducted by ReachTEL in Rob Oakeshott’s electorate of Lyne showing support for Rob Oakeshott at just 14.8 per cent, against 55.3 per cent for the Coalition and 17 per cent for Labor. This has raised eyebrows on a number of counts. Firstly, the question on voting intention was the last of three put to respondents, after attitudinal questions on carbon tax and pokies reforms (both of which were strongly opposed), which is commonly recognised in the polling caper as the wrong way to get an accurate response. Secondly, the principals behind The Port Paper are very strongly associated with the Nationals. And thirdly, Bernard Keane in Crikey today relates that ReachTEL “proudly announced it was an associate member of Clubs Qld, which has this year been campaigning aggressively against the Andrew Wilkie-led poker machine reform push. The Port Paper story fails to disclose that.”

Perhaps that grave acronym ICAC being publicly coupled with a certain NSW O’Farrell Government Minister (who joined the Solar Bonus Scheme at the then optimum kilowatt hour pricing and whose own electorate abuts Port Macquarie) is what routed this supposedly independent publication - given an associate of the newspaper is also reportedly a policy adviser to this same minister.

The close proximity of yet another Nationals MP (whose electoral office is only approximately four street corners away from the newspaper office and who is a Facebook friend of The Port Paper editor and its website registration contact person aka ministerial policy advisor) probably didn’t smooth the feathers of the publishing company’s handful of unidentified shareholders either.

One has to wonder if they are also connected to the National Party in some manner, as The Port Paper paper often reads like those political campaign leaflets or MP newsletters not uncommonly found in NSW North Coast letter boxes.

At least one of the newspaper's advertisers (also quoted in a prominent anti-Oakeshott article) may possibly be one of these shareholders.