Liberals

MEMO TO INGA: If you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas

Remember when Ken Aldred, a former Liberal MP and raving anti-semite conspiracy theorist linked to the Larouche sect of weirdness was endorsed – with the support of people like Inga Peulich – as the candidate for Holt.

He had an opponent in that election, Emanuele Cicchiello, who was strongly opposed by MP Inga Peulich and her local votes.

She supported an anti-semite.

INGA’S ROLE IN ANTI-SEMITE KEN ALDRED’S PRESELECTION UNMASKED
We reported – in our predecessor publication – on the scandal at the time. Insiders – even sympathetic to her blew the whistle on her involvement here. Peulich wasn’t the only one, federal MP Russell Broadbent gave him a reference too. We revealed nuggets like:

Sources close to 104 have told the OC that they noted with interest that no fewer than six preselectors were “no shows” (only 49 voted of the 55 possible, 26 for Aldred and 23 for Chichello) and that all of these votes were aligned to Baillieu or Inga Binga. One source told the OC that the Cranbourne branch, controlled by an Inga lieutenant the FEC Chair Angelo Georgatsos, had deliberately chosen people unlikely to attend rather than those friendly with 104 who might vote against Aldred. Very crafty.

One source told the OC that Inga had been desperate to make excuses to a scandalised Liberal party organisation for the mess saying that her voters (who included members of her staff) were “confused” when they voted for Aldred.

WHO ELSE REPORTED INGA’S SHAME?
We are source-driven. And naturally our sources within the Liberal party weren’t only talking to us about the scandal. The Australian newspaper reported on the embarrassment too:

“Dissident Liberal Bev McArthur, the wife of federal MP Stewart McArthur, was the only committee member to not attend, effectively carrying out her threat not to join the push against Aldred.

McArthur and her close friend Inga Peulich, a state Upper House MP, have been accused by Liberals of being key supporters of Aldred’s campaign. Aldred this week refused repeated requests for an interview, telling Inquirer that party rules prevented him from making public comment. McArthur and Peulich have refused requests for comment.”

The ABC also extensively reported on Inga Peulich’s involvement in the anti-semite Ken Aldred’s preselection:

MATTHEW STANLEY: All week senior Liberals and others across the party have privately accused one of the electorate’s powerbrokers, upper house member for south eastern metropolitan, Inga Peulich, of orchestrating the Aldred vote, with the help of her two electorate staff who were also on the preselection panel, Michael Shepherdson and Gary Anderton. During last year’s November state election it emerged Mr Anderton had previously posted racist comments on the internet (VEXNEWS: That’s not true actually but is another story). Last night party President, Russell Hannan, was refusing to talk about Mrs Peulich or Mr Anderton.

MATTHEW STANLEY: Others at the preselection meeting say some questions asked of the candidates were written on stationery carrying Mrs Peulich’s office letterhead. Ted Baillieu today denied knowing about the letterhead claims…Inga Peulich didn’t return calls this week either. Yesterday her taxpayer-funded electorate office in Chelsea was locked up. The phone went unanswered.

INGA STILL ANGRY
All very embarrassing for Inga Peulich and for the Victorian Liberal party, whose support for Israel and the Jewish community normally goes unquestioned. It all ended well because the Liberal hierarchy moved swiftly after Aldred had won the preselection contest with Peulich’s backing to strip him of his endorsement.

Peulich’s motivation was not a support of Aldred’s anti-semitic views, it was just her blind support of the Baillieu faction that led her to want to desperately oppose Krogerite operative Emanuele Cicchiello. She hates Cicchiello. So much so she ignored any doubts she must have had about Aldred.

She’s obviously still feeling the pain over her shameful involvement in the debacle because yesterday in state Parliament, she got very excited about it[pdf]:

Mr Lenders — Didn’t you promote Ken Aldred? Wasn’t he your star candidate? That was a democratic solution, wasn’t it?
INGA— Mr Lenders, you are talking absolutely through the top of your hat.
The PRESIDENT — Order! I say to the minister I have just had three conversations with three contributors to this debate on exactly the same subject — that is, interjections which are provocative and do not help the debate to its conclusion. The member, to continue, through the Chair.
INGA — I find Mr Lenders’ comments offensive, and I place that yet again on the record. This is typical of the Labor way: the bullying, the innuendo, the muckraking, the throwing of dirt without substance. If one has any substance, by all means one should put it
on the public record. I would be one of the few people in this Parliament whose mother has been in a children’s concentration camp. I take great offence at Mr Lenders’ attempt to assert that I am an anti-Semite through his fabrication of some preposterous idea that has been bandied about on a Labor mates website — Vexnews, The Other Cheek or whatever it is called.

We’re glad that Peulich is still troubled about it. She should be. It was a huge mistake. She was never accused – by us at any rate – of being an anti-semite. Just a fool blinded by factional games who was willing to lie down with the lowest of the low to settle a factional vendetta.

And while we’re pleased to have mates in all the major political parties, if one of them came out with the anti-semitic filth that Ken Aldred did, we’d turn our back not give them our vote. It’s a shame Inga Peulich doesn’t have the same values-driven approach.

She claims VEXNEWS is a “Labor mates website,” a claim somewhat undermined by the extensive and well-sourced coverage of her previously secret internal activities within the Liberal party. Our sources for that story were obviously people at the highest levels within her own party, not Labor mates. And while we’d like to be mates with all patriots, unlike Peulich we would not never be mates with an anti-semite.

© 2009 VEXNEWS 2010©.