The following email is doing the rounds purporting to be from the former Liberal MLA Steve Pratt to the departing Labor Minister, John Hargreaves. I’m not sure how much of it is true, or even what some of it means. But I do think it warrants public scrutiny. Enjoy:
From: Steve PRATT
To: John.Hargreaves@parliament.act.gov.au
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2009 2:21 PM
Subject: Your Loss of Ministerial Office – Message from Steve PrattDear John,
I will wish you and your very good wife all the best for the future and your new life post ministerial office. However John, I cannot let pass the deep hypocrisy of your attacks blaming the media for all of your troubles.
You are the guy who deliberately encouraged the media to trumpet far and wide that you had warned me and my office before I took [appropriate] action on the disgraceful graffiti work at the entrance to the Woden cemetery – a total and deliberate lie – and you know I have the documentation and the evidence to prove that you [1] made no attempt to contact me or my staff prior to my actions, and [2] you lied to the media about that very issue.
Not satisfied with that you then trumped up charges and encouraged the police to carry out a ‘slow burn’ but meaningless and time wasting investigation of me about the graffiti affair. Wasteful, but very, very stressful for my family and of course when the mud flies, some of it sticks permanently – and the media still refer to the “ mud” – fed, initially, by your BS mate! But that was par for the course wasn’t it John – it is well known that you and your odious media advisers regularly “backgrounded” the gullible media with all sorts of disgraceful misrepresentations about my Opposition colleagues. So Johno, you live and die by the media sword! Enough of the hypocrisy and whingeing…
You bleat about your dignity over those drink driving allegations. But Johno, you are the guy, who often in the most sneering way, would question my integrity and character against the years spent in the Former Yugoslavia – and by extension, defame my actions in other Middle Eastern and African theatres. You would do this whenever you were put by me under pressure about your governing actions [or, more accurately, failures to govern]. Your only pathetic response to divert attention from reasonable debate about your ‘governance’ record was to defame anybody, under the protection of parliament.
And how about that governance record of yours Johno – Gunghalin Drive fiasco; Tharwa Bridge disgrace; Griffith Library farce; 2006 cuts to bus services; very, very slow to move to protect passengers, drivers and staff on buses and at those grotty bus interchanges; failure to reduce urban edge fire fuel loads in the season which saw the Yarralumla bushfire; the farcical ESA HQ and wasted rents at Fairbairn matter; very, very slow to stand up for your constituent Theodore residents against the outrages of neighbourhood public housing tenants and their grossly negligent housing department supporters – over 3 miserable years for those residents!; similar story for the business owners at Red Hill Shops; did not stand up for your constituents against the outrages of the lobbies – public and private sector – pushing the power station at Macarthur; -failure to even clean the graffiti off your own public and sub-contracted services depots responsible for combating graffiti;……. and on and on and on and on – –
Finally, Johno, on behalf of my constituent friends – Thank God those passion fingers will now only be doodling on the back bench.
But, all the best.
Yours Sincerely,
Steve Pratt