Saturday, June 14, 2008

Oh What A Tangled Web...

Yesterday morning, NSW Premier Morris Iemma told his embattled Minister, John Della Bosca, his job was safe. Iemma had "accepted" Della Bosca's earlier account of what happened at Iguana Joe's restaurant and Nightclub. Even yesterday morning's news that Della Bosca wrote the "apology" issued by the owner of Iguana's, didn't prompt Morris Iemma. It was Iemma's staff that panicked and forced Iemma's hand.

The politics is:
  • some politicians believe they can lie and "get away with it": to each other, the media, and the people.
  • some politicians believe everything they are told by the media advisers that taxpayers pay for
  • Morris Iemma needs to keep Della Bosca, and those he "influences", on side, so that Iemma can sell the NSW taxpayer-owned electricity assets.
  • Iemma tried, and failed, to media-manage the events involving John Della Bosca. (see previous posts concerning alleged bullying by his wife, Belinda Neal)
  • It was only as a "last resort" to help his own image as being "in control", that Morris Iemma acted on his staff's advice that he sacked John Della Bosca by telling him to step aside as Minister for Education and Minister for Industrial Relations.
  • Already there has been some media speculation about a possible challenge to Morris Iemma's leadership.
Morris Iemma's handling has been to act in the interests of Morris Iemma, and had nothing to do with Parliamentary or Ministerial standards. He has lurched from denial & support for his Minister, to attempted media manipulation ("management"), to crisis-mode action.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!"
(Sir Walter Scott)

John