Another Howard lie
Last Friday, John Howard had this to say about setting the election date:
But obviously, I have to keep saying that I haven’t decided because that is the case, and until I have decided I can’t say anymore and people can parse and analyse everything I’m saying and look into my eyes and try and get some kind of nuance, some kind of inflection or intonation in the voice, I wish them well.
There are quite a few Liberals who must have been gazing deeply into Howard’s eyes, then. Today’s West Australian reports that Julie Bishop and Judi Moylan’s direct mail had arrived in letterboxes by 9:00 on Monday morning. Crikey reckons the South Australian Libs were just as fast.
Gary Adshead wrote:
The synchronicity is positively scary, but the real question is how did the Libs get out of the blocks so early when John Howard was saying on Friday and Saturday he still hadn’t decided when he’d be firing the starter’s gun?
[Inside Cover] has received telephone calls from cynical readers (never knew we had any) suggesting Honest John wasn’t being completely honest and the letters prove it.
But that may be going a little overboard because it could easily be argued the party’s political machine had the letters ready to go once the PM announced the race was on and slipped them into a direct mailing system Sunday night.
The problem with that explanation is Labor also prepares its direct mail early, and would have been no less keen to get their letters into the post. Yet there have been no reports of Labor mail arriving early on Monday morning.
Adshead rang Judi Moylan’s office to ask them how they did it. He even prompted them with the possible explanation he had come up with, but they wouldn’t bite:
“She’s not commenting on that issue, I’m afraid,” the staffer said.
IC: Not just to say the letters were pre-prepared?
Staffer: No.
The only possible explanation is that Liberal MPs were told last week that the election would be called on Sunday.
And Howard is a liar.
Hang on. It’s not just the libs.
I am not sure how Stephen Smith did it, but his first election letter was in my mailbox at 10am Monday morning. I imagine it was there at 9 as well before I was. I think this just proves he is an robot. I can’t help but vote for such replicant efficiency.
We haven’t received anything from Smithy yet, but I’m assuming that he’s already confident that he has our vote, and thus has redirected the funds that would have been used to letter-drop our house to instead focus on pushing the message to a swinging, small ‘l’ liberal.
Go Smithy!!
More information, please, Pho: did the letter bear a postmark (it might have been hand delivered)? Did it say, “Now that the election has been called…” or was it more generic?
I’ll be happy to change my conclusion if you can show that the Smith letter is equivalent to the Moylan/Bishop letters.
A firm decision wasn’t made till the Sunday.