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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-06-04 Daily Xml
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St Clair Reserve

The Hon. M.J. ATKINSON (Croydon) (16:39): On 3 December 2009, on the last sitting day before the general election of March 2010, David Winderlich used parliamentary privilege to allege that I was guilty of corruption and 'worse than corruption' in connection with Charles Sturt Council's St Clair land swap.

After making the allegations, David Winderlich walked into the Parliament House bar and announced, 'I've just tipped a bucket of shit on Atko.' It was to be his last day in parliament. I believe that Kirsten Alexander, David Winderlich, Winderlich staffer Sandy Biar and a Ridleyton woman contributed to the speech about me that Mr Winderlich (now the owner of John Davis Records in the city) read into the Hansard and via parliamentary privilege into a full page spread in The Advertiser.

At the March 2010 state election, David Winderlich and Kirsten Alexander ran for the Legislative Council on a ticket called Independent Communities against Corruption. Mrs Alexander adopted the Winderlich speech by partnering him on a ticket bearing that name, although she had already by that time had input into Winderlich's speech.

The Ridleyton woman, whom I will not name for reasons of medical ethics, was on Kirsten Alexander's ticket at the 2010 Charles Sturt election and was pictured alongside her in the principal campaign photo. The woman's character can be judged from her Facebook site and Facebook messages, which I will not quote here for reasons of taste.

Winderlich, Biar and Alexander accused me of offering unlawful benefits to Charles Sturt councillors in return for the St Clair land swap. They allege that two witnesses claimed that one councillor was offered a position as a chair of a council committee if he rejoined the ALP. During the inquiry this turned into just one witness, Councillor Robert Grant. The alleged offer was years before the land swap was ever thought of and he had no direct evidence that the offer had been made. It was conjecture. They went on:

One councillor who had opposed the land swap recently changed his vote late in the piece. Residents assert that this was because he had been promised Mr Atkinson's support for a Labor seat.

It is my assessment, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the St Clair land swap was driven by the council staff, not the state Labor government or the elected members. If the Save St Clair campaign had grasped this, they would have been far more effective in their campaign than they have been, and I note that they have just withdrawn their final court action against the government.

Moreover, had Save St Clair been privy to the debate within the Rann cabinet about the controversy, they would have given the cabinet a means of dignified retreat, rather than resort to criminal defamation. How senior Charles Sturt council staff must have laughed behind their hands as they saw Save St Clair barking up the wrong trees, but they laughed no more when Cyclone Kirsten hit them in November 2010.

The land swap was carried by a big majority in late 2009, and the subsequent change of Councillor Brian Massey's vote from a vote against to a vote for was of no consequence. He is now living with his wife and children in Dernancourt, following his professional vocation, no longer an ALP member; indeed, a Liberal Party member who worked on a Davenport polling booth. We enjoyed reminiscing about these falsehoods, as we did at Woodville Oval on Sunday at the game against Sturt. Oh that preselection for a safe seat could be obtained so cheaply.

Winderlich, Biar, Alexander and the Ridleyton woman said that I and members of my staff had been the subject of four complaints to the police, that the Ridleyton woman had been photographed in a public place by someone whom she recognised as working for the Attorney-General's Department in Port Adelaide. It is odd that someone I hardly knew and whose presence I had not been in for five years and with whom I had not communicated for the five years to 2009, since I declined an unsolicited invitation to her wedding, should say that she feels threatened by me. Winderlich, Alexander, Biar and the Ridleyton woman know that mud sticks.

Winderlich, Alexander, Biar and the Ridleyton woman went on to allege that I or persons associated with me had pulled down the Charles Sturt ratepayers and residents online forum, hacked the site, damaged the administrator's property, and the Ridleyton woman commented in the speech, 'It's just creepy.' Among my other crimes were 'running counter-pamphlets when our pamphlets were just coming out.' Mrs Alexander and Save St Clair characterised anyone who disagreed with them as corrupt and the disagreement as ICAC-able.

From 2009, public debate in South Australia was coarsened by some of those opposed to the Rann government expressing their disagreement in a formulaic accusation of corruption. As a result of the Winderlich, Alexander, Biar speech and the enthusiasm of the Hon. Michelle Lensink and the Hon. David Ridgway for these allegations, an Ombudsman's inquiry was launched that had the powers of a royal commission, lasted two years and cost taxpayers and ratepayers about $750,000. None of the allegations was proved. Worse, no evidence was offered to support any of the allegations. It was the principal finding of the Ombudsman's inquiry that the threshold St Clair land swap vote on 9 November 2009 was taken without any influence from me, let alone improper or undue influence.

At the recent Charles Sturt council election, Councillor Angela Keneally defeated Mayor Kirsten Alexander 13,483 votes to 10,307. Kirsten Alexander demanded a recount, and this was not granted by the Electoral Commissioner. Kirsten Alexander has since made serious allegations of electoral fraud without the slightest substratum of fact and has been appealing on social media in vain for readers to give her examples of it. Her allegations of electoral fraud bear resemblance to those of her political allies, Mark Aldridge and Jim Jacobsen. The technique here is to make the serious allegations first and then wait for evidence to sustain it to emerge.

Angela Keneally's campaign relied on suburb-specific letters, starting with dot points of the local issues residents of those suburbs had raised with her. The letters then shifted to generic paragraphs about her and finished with a paragraph about the future of the suburbs and expressing the wish that she would be a mayor for that suburb. In the ward where I live, Woodville, Oanh Nguyen was re-elected with a convincing 37.4 per cent, or 1,117 votes, in a record eight-candidate field. Her posters were, as we expected, spray-painted, adorned with defamatory slogans and torn down, while those of another candidate, Save St Clair's Lenny Brown of Belmore Terrace, Woodville, were left unharmed on the adjacent pole.

Save St Clair's veteran protester and veteran white supremacist, Robert Brown, has picketed my office and my street corner meetings for the past five years, expressing his opinion that the White Australia policy was an excellent policy, that Labor was allowing the western suburbs to become 'a dumping ground for Africans and Asians and that the government should ban all Indian immigration. Members may have seen him waving his National Action flag and placing placards on the steps of Parliament House.

Councillor Bob Grant, who had been on council for 27 years, saw his vote reduced from 1,097 in 2010 to 591 at this election. Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope to continue my remarks on another occasion.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: It would be normal, sir, to grant you an extension of time if the standing orders allowed it, but they do not.

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