One moment Alexander Downer is ringing newspapers suggesting that Santo Santoro is suicidal. The next moment Santoro is proving that whilst he is “cidal” it is not “sui” but rather “Fleggi”, judging by this article inThe Courier Mail.
Bruce Flegg, with the willing connivance of Brisbane’s only daily newspaper, is portrayed as being at war with his own party for honouring a promise to his own electorate, which is in accord with Liberal and National Party policy, just because the Prime Minister has come to a different position! A more honest headline would have been “Howard at war with Queensland”, and the article would have described a federal government determined to throwaway political advantage for an unpopular policy which is supported by just about no-one. This issue is surely a sign of the decline and fall of the Howard Government, not of the Flegg leadership.
Who is the master of the Matrix? Who has the ability to bend reality in such a way that reputable and intelligent media organs miss the real import of what is going on? The answer is obvious. Santoro might not be the source of the leaks, but someone with associations with him is likely to be the perpretrator. He is the only obvious beneficiary. Highlighting the disagreement doesn’t help Howard, and while there is no heir apparent to Flegg, it doesn’t hurt Flegg within the parliamentary Liberal party, although it hurts him in the public .
There must be more to the Santoro story that such desperate efforts are being made to create diversions. It says something about the investigative reporters in the state that they have yet to come up with anything. Perhaps they are looking in the wrong place.
It says something abour his career that the mainstream press can go careering off in the wrong direction on such an obvious red-herring when he, or an acolyte, put the burley in the water in the first place. Santoro might have filled in his declarations incorrectly, but others have been letting him off the hook for decades and share the responsibility because they have not carried out their work diligently enough. This current affair is our opportunity to rectify the situation.