Christian Kerr writes:


Members of John Brogden’s own party leaked
information to Labor in 2001 to cruel his career, Liverpool MP Paul Lynch told
the New South Wales Parliament.

Really? Or is the NSW ALP is trying to
distract media attention from the Smartpole scandal that poses a real threat to former Sydney lord mayor
turned Labor Minister, Frank Sartor?

In 2002 Brogden was criticised by the Labor
Government for accepting public relations consultancy fees the previous year
while he was opposition planning spokesman.

Lynch told Parliament that documents
relating to Brogden’s consultancy work were identified as having been faxed
from the office of the opposition’s upper house leader Mike Gallacher:

People on that
side of the house were running around giving documents to the Labor Party to
make sure John Brogden could be brought down. That’s the level
to which the internal fractional (sic) blues within the NSW Liberal Party had
descended. That is a clear
example of what the ultra-right of the Liberal Party have been up to.

Nice yarn – except Gallacher isn’t a member
of the ultra right. He’s denied the claims, too.
NSW Liberal sources are being uncharacteristically quiet this morning, but the
real story seems to be something like this.

First, this has nothing to do with the
leaks that brought Brogden down last year.

There were concerns within the party of
Brogden’s involvement with PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Brogden appears to have been
a little economical with the actualite over the finer points. Gallacher and another
MP, Chris Hartcher, supposedly raised these matters with then leader Kerry
Chikarovski. She investigated them, but found no reason to proceed against her
rival.

End of story – until an Opposition attack
on the Labor MP Eddie Obeid over contracts his sons’ firm secured from the City of Sydney when the
Planning Minister, Frank Sartor, was running the Town Hall.