Subscribe to BrookesNews’ Bulletin
Michael Kroger rigs a candidate’s selection and the cowardly Liberal Party of Victoria caves in to this thug’s corruption
Gerard Jackson
On 6 July Prodos Stefanos Nichaolaou Marinakis gave a 6 minute address to the administrative committee of the Liberal Party of Victoria explaining why he should be the party’s Richmond candidate for the coming state election.
The electoral meeting was a travesty, a vicious sham and an everlasting disgrace to the Liberal Party of Victoria. The arrogant and unaccountable Michael Kroger had given orders that Mr Marinakis was not to be selected under any circumstances. To ensure that his orders were obeyed the South Richmond branch was denied its right to vote because it supported Marinakis. This is what Kroger and his ‘Toorak set’ call democracy.
Of the 17 persons who sat on the committee only two had the moral courage to defy Kroger’s diktat and vote against his stooges. Ted Baillieu, putative leader of the Victorian Liberal Party, was not one of the dissenters. (Moral courage is not one of Baillieu’s strong points — come to think of it, I doubt if this bland excuse for a politician has strong points of any kind).
So what the party got was the shameless spectacle of 15 phony Liberals rigging a selection process on the orders of the despicable Michael Kroger because the favoured candidate (Marinakis) would not submit to the Kroger/Costello line. Even worse, Marinakis actually believes in classical liberal values and free markets while Kroger and his cronies come across as a bunch of sleazy rent-seeking opportunists. (By the way, Mikey, were your gains from the emitch float going to buy that fancy property in South Yarra?)
Marinakis will not be the only victim of Kroger’s brazen political corruption. This political thug has given further orders that in future no one will be accepted as a candidate for the Liberal Party unless they receive this little Caesar’s approval. So what does Kroger consider an ideal candidate?
Let us look no further than Marina Walkely, the woman the crooked Kroger and his toadies foisted on the party? Believe it or not, she was not even a party member when Kroger’s stooges dug her up several weeks ago. Marina ‘The Dip’ Walkley is extremely adept at extracting taxpayers’ money from compliant politicians, money that has been used to promote the Balkanisation of Australia and oppose assimilation. She has also willingly cooperated with Liberal-hating leftwing groups that are deeply hostile to Australian values and who oppose the rule of law. So what does this tell us about Kroger and his stick puppets?
That Walkely was picked even though she was not a member of the party was a barefaced breach of party rules. But Kroger has made it abundantly clear that this is his party and he’ll rig the rules any time and any way he wants to — and stuff the members, including those who are still naïve enough to think Kroger really cares about the Liberal Party.
Others are not so naïve. They still remember how Mikey took over the Liberal Speakers’ Group and turned it into a grubby platform to advance his own seedy ambitions. What was once intended to promote harmony within the party and provide a platform for new ideas and honour party members who have something to say has now become his own political plaything.
Thanks to Kroger and his stooge Julian Sheezel one now has to be — and I’m not kidding — an “important and influential figure” before one can be a member of this exalted group: someone like Andrew Bolt of the Herald Sun, who has now taken to wiping Kroger’s backside, even though he is not a party member.
Kroger is a cowardly and nasty piece of work who uses carnival geeks like Scott Ryan (who performs, for him, the astonishing feat of being able to think and chew gum at the same time) and Russell Hannon to do his dirty work. Kroger is so spineless he does not even have the guts to make his email address known in case party members start telling him what they really think he is — as if we did not already know.
Of course the creep can argue that as a private citizen he does not have to make his email address public because he does not hold an official position in the party. That’s right, folks, this political skunk officially holds no position other than that of an ordinary member. So what gives him the right to act like some swaggering gauleiter? Is it his millions and his social connections? What else can it be? The man is not a genuine entrepreneur or a financial genius, and is as far as can be from being an intellectual giant.
Yep, the right school and address combined with a fat bank account can take you a long way in today’s Liberal Party. In the end, however, it’s the party, meaning the ordinary members, and the country that suffer from this man’s assault on democracy.
Gerard Jackson is Brookes’ economics editor
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 10 July 2006
Micheal Kroger seems to
think he has bought the
Victorian Liberal Party