The Hobart Mercury, 4 September 2010
Honesty and integrity are great things in a politician until it’s your bloke knocking back a billion clam bribe to give the libs the nod after your electorate’s been written off/taken for granted for the past two decades.
But seriously, too much pork is bad for your health and while the Royal Hobart Hospital does need knocking down and starting again, there’s a pretty good chance that Tony was talking about a Barnaby Billion or someone would have nicked his wallet out of his sandshoe while he was going for a bodysurf, or Joe would have blown it on a hundred million takeaway pizzas while preparing the 2011 Budget or it would have gotten lost down the back of Andrew Robb’s couch and subsequently sucked into the black hole created by the implosion of Bob Katter’s head when it turned out that we weren’t really going to Turn Back The Bananas…. anyway, you get my drift.
Far better just to get a half-arsed commitment from the ALP that won’t be nearly as much of a letdown in the long run.
If there’s one person in Parliament I wouldn’t take on in a game of poker, it’d be the ex-army/ONA bloke who casually mentions learning to observe body language in a book published six years ago.