On Rodney Adler and Gerard Henderson

Stephen Mayne writes: Re. “On being photographed with jailbirds” (Monday)

Lovely as always to hear from Gerard Henderson in yesterday’s Crikey but his regrettable penchant for errors was on display again, as Mark Latham has noted on many occasions.

I’ve never lived in Doncaster. Indeed there is a great rivalry between Doncaster and Templestowe in the local footy league and as someone who has lived circa 35 years in Templestowe, to suggest I’m in that rival Doncaster post code of 3108 is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

It was pleasing to hear from Gerard that Rodney Adler didn’t continue to fund his Sydney Institute after his criminal convictions and jail sentence, which as he no doubt remembers, was for the following:

14 April 2005 – Rodney Stephen Adler: 4 years and 6 months with non-parole of two years and six months, for four criminal charges including 2 counts of disseminating information knowing it was false, one count of obtaining money by false or misleading statements, and one count of being intentionally dishonest and failing to discharge his duties as a director of HIH. 

ASIC has jailed about 450 people since 1991 and perhaps Gerard should adopt a social practice of discouraging them from attending his fundraising dinners.

With Rodney not writing any more big cheques for the Sydney Institute, it would be useful to know how much Telstra paid to sponsor last Thursday’s dinner.

Telstra proudly declares that it does not make political donations, but sponsoring a dinner hosted by a former political staffer with well-known political affiliations and the Prime Minister as guest speaker is somewhat grey.

Gerard may claim to be pluralist but his constant rantings about the ABC’s left wing bias means that any corporate who is funding his operation knows they are propping up a warrior of the right. Telstra should desist from doing this again.

Finally, I should correct the tip from last Friday about Bruce McWilliam’s wife who is Nicky, not Kristy, as we reported. However, it was correct to say that Bruce and Nicky met at Rodney Adler’s wedding, which happened before he went to jail.

On Peter Dutton and LNP leadership

Lee Tinson writes: Re. “Is Peter Dutton making a play, or did he just screw up (again)?” (Monday)

If LNP let Dutton lead them, they are truly doomed. It would be the a spectacular failure of survival instinct. No ideas of his own, can’t construct a coherent three-word sentence, interested only in personal political power.

So we should urge LNP to make him their leader. It’s a win-win. It would put his face in front of the whole of Australia to judge him for what he is, and possibly lose him his seat.