Has our old friend, ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, completely lost the plot? He’s certainly lost his sense of humour, and maybe his sense of probity, judging by the bizarre media release his office put out yesterday condeming an ACT Liberal for defacing a road sign.

This comes just a couple of weeks after the debacle of his environment adviser, Adrian Bruford, who had to stand down – eventually – for a graffiti attack of his own. He rails: “Chief Minister Jon Stanhope has called on opposition Leader Brendan Smyth to explain how he intends to respond to photographic evidence that Liberal MLA Bill Stefaniak apparently defaced public property during his time as education minister.”

The “defacing” involved Stefaniak changing the name of a road sign to make a political point. It was a ten year old stunt splashed all over the next day’s paper, yet Stanhope seeks to equate it with a secretive graffiti campaign by his enviornment adviser. It seems hubris knows few limits for the controversial leader of the nation’s capital.

The ACT Labor comrades have been too busy building the New Jerusalem to put the offending media release on their website, so check it out here on rowdy Canberra bloggers The RiotACT. And remind yourself of Stanhope’s own graffiti troubles here.