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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-02-15 Daily Xml
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LABOR PARTY CANDIDATES

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (15:35): In recent weeks there has been some considerable controversy and publicity about public identity Deborah Hutton on the occasion of her 50th birthday and a photograph of her on the front page of the Women's Weekly which evidently had been airbrushed. I note that in recent weeks, in speaking of airbrushing, the political CVs of the Labor candidates Zoe Bettison and Susan Close had been politically airbrushed.

Like myself and, I presume, thousands of other interested South Australians, when we became aware that Zoe Bettison was to be the Labor candidate in Ramsay, went to the Labor Party website to see who this particular person was. Many of them, I am sure, were a bit like me and hoping that she was not just another factional Labor hack who had been preselected by the Labor Party to follow on from the former premier, Mike Rann.

In going to the Labor Party website for Zoe Bettison we see that they claim that she is a professional working mother, born in Whyalla and grew up in Gawler, etc. Then it refers to her general employment experience and states that she is currently a government relations manager in the tourism industry. Her first job was as a weighbridge clerk for the Kapunda silos. Then there is a brief sentence which states:

Her employment experience includes industrial relations, ALP official [whatever that means] and public affairs.

What are the facts in relation to Zoe Bettison's employment history? The reality is that Zoe Bettison for almost 16 years has been a wholly-owned subsidiary of either the Labor Party or various organisations and unions associated or affiliated with the Labor Party.

She spent between six and seven years with the shoppies union here in South Australia from 1995 to 2001. She then became the secretary of the Australian Labor Party in the Northern Territory for almost two years and then was a ministerial adviser to two ministers in the Northern Territory, Syd Stirling and Kon Vatskalis. She then spent between seven and eight years as a director of the Labor spin doctoring firm Hawker Britton, known throughout Australia because of the infamous activities of Mr Bruce Hawker and others that he employed.

Then for a brief period of six months from June 2011 to December 2011 she became a government relations manager at Great Southern Rail so, indeed, it was correct to say that she was currently a government relations manager in the tourism industry when she went to the election. However, for the 16 years prior to that she had been, as I said, a wholly-owned subsidiary of either the Labor Party or associations and organisations closely affiliated with the Australian Labor Party.

Similarly, I went to see the CV of Susan Close. When one goes to the Labor Party website, again, it states that she is currently a senior manager in the environment department in South Australia and that she had previously worked at Adelaide University running student services. The facts are that, indeed, she did work at the Adelaide University from 1998 to 2002, so that is correct, running student services evidently, and for the last three years from 2008 to 2011 she has been a senior manager in the environment department.

However, what has been airbrushed from the political CV is a period of a couple of years approximately working as a spin doctor or ministerial adviser to the Hon. Gail Gago in that period between working for the university and coming back into the Public Service. The question is: why would these Labor candidates wish to hide a prominent part of their political CVs? Sadly, I think what we have here is that these two candidates have not been straight with the electorate and they have engaged in their own version of political spin. Sadly, in a political sense, Zoe Bettison is Rann-lite and, in a political sense, Susan Close is Foley-lite. They are relying on political spin and not being straight with the electorate in terms of at least fessing up to what their true political histories are, rather than politically airbrushing their CVs as they did.

Time expired.

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