Readers of the flood of Jon Stanhope fan mail published recently in The Canberra Times
could be fooled into thinking that the beleagured Chief Minister still
has plenty of admirers ready to defend him to the death. But it’s worth
doing a quick background
check on the people who penned the tomes before jumping to any
conclusions. Stanhope is already red faced over accusations of interference with the
bushfires inquest after his unsuccessful attempt
to have the coroner disqualified,
so the more cheerleaders the Chief can muster the better – just not if
they’re already on his team. It turns out that at least one letter to
the ed that talked up Stanhope was written by the wife of his chief of
staff.

Stanhope’s not-so-secret admirer,
Liz Clarke, of Kambah, wrote that Saturday’s Times Forum feature on
“Stanhope’s leadership style made a good point: that we in Canberra
look to our political representatives to show some policy leadership.
That’s why Canberra turned against (former Liberal minister) Kate
Carnell – wipe the bluster and hoo-ha aside and there wasn’t any
substance. As Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope is the opposite. You can
agree with him or not, but there is no denying his government is
providing leadership on important issues– human rights,
anti-discrimination, refugees – that others have not.”

Cameron Ross, Opinion Editor of The Canberra Times told
Crikey that most of the letters they’d received recently had “been fairly critical of Stanhope…On
the weekend we published a lengthy piece in our Forum section which
chartered his political fortunes over the last few years since the
fires….we got a
flood of letters from people saying we were being too harsh on Stanhope
and to give him the benefit of the doubt. I thought it was worthwhile
giving them a decent run, seeing as there were so many.”

It soon came to The Times attention that Clarke
is the wife of Greg Friedewald, who has worked for Stanhope as a
political appointment since Stanhope was Opposition Leader. There
was nothing in Clarke’s letter to suggest her links to the ALP, said
Ross, and if Clarke had stated them “we wouldn’t have published. There are
now doubts about the other letters as well.”

A spokeswoman for Jon Stanhope,
Penelope Layland, told Crikey that Stanhope “was
surprised to see the
letter and extremely touched that she (Clarke) felt prompted to rush into
print
to defend him.” Penelope said Stanhope feels very sorry for the
“hammering in the press” that Clarke had got for writing the letter. “She’s
an old friend who obviously felt that she had to leap in and defend him.
She’s a free agent and she’s free to disclose whatever she wants, he is
not her keeper.”

Layland said Stanhope is “not
about to issue some edict to members of the ALP and friends about what
they can and can’t do.”

In other words, keep the fan mail flooding in, folks.