Noticing The Speck, Ignoring The Plank

ANTHONY Albanese - recently mentioned on these pages in relation to The Friday Sitting - says Brendan Nelson must remove, weed out and extirpate the cancer within the New South Wales Liberal Party evidenced by the Lindsay leaflet affair. Police will charge five men for distributing false election material in that electorate on the eve of the last Federal election. Those allegedly involved include the spouses of former Member for Lindsay, Jackie Kelly, and her once prospective Liberal successor, Karen Chijoff. Mr Albanese, evidently with nothing better to do on Easter Sunday, has dirtily attempted to besmirch the Opposition Leader by linking him to the men being charged. He says he wants the NSW Liberal Party to rid itself of right wing extremists. The flyers at the centre of the incendiary exercise claimed on behalf of the invented "Islamic Australia Federation" that Labor wanted the Bali bombers freed. The two politicos' husbands named in connection with the affair were forced to resign from the Liberals. Good.

Now onto a far more malignant vilification "cancer" - that within what former ALP minister Barry Cohen regards as "the anti-semitic Labor Party": Tanya Plibersek saying Ariel Sharon was "a war criminal" and Israel a "rogue state"; Janice Crosio accusing the IDF of destroying Bethlehem, Nablus and the Jenin refugee camp; Julia Irwin slandering Israel for "ethnic cleansing," calling Gaza a "concentration camp" and expectorating a brown-shirted tirade against the "Jewish lobby" - "the most implacable, arrogant, cruel and powerful lobby in the country." Earlier this month, Labor-backing unionists also denounced Israel for "ethnic cleansing." And not via some hamfisted letterbox drop but in a nation-wide advertisement in The Australian. How much cash has Mr Albanese's party taken from these hate-mongering unions? And why weren't Mesdames Plibersek, Crosio and Irwin disendorsed by Labor when they maliciously exacerbated ethnic and religious disharmony? Hypocrite and Israeli WMD critic Mr Albanese didn't say.