WELL, it didn’t take Ian Le Marquand long to set the cat among the pigeons, that’s for sure, and it will be interesting indeed to see if whoever takes the boy Walker’s place as head lad has the bottle to give him the Home Affairs hot seat.

If he gets it, my money is on him rattling a few cages even before he gets his feet under the table.
Just in case Senator-elect Le Marquand has been taking a well-earned break from everything to do with politics after the exertions of the campaign and hasn’t been keeping abreast of what’s going on, I suggest that he looks at the quite extraordinary circumstances in which two members of the States police went to and returned from Australia.

Before I go any further, I’ll make it clear that I have no reason to doubt the necessity of the trip. Nor do I doubt the necessity of sending two officers. But business class one way and first class on the way home? As my old mate down at the pub said, someone is taking the mickey.

There’s little wonder the Prime Minister was foaming at the mouth when he found out — and, not surprisingly, he has asked for this matter to be included in an already ordered review of the child abuse inquiry costs. As Senator Walker said, when he had stated that the former deputy chief officer of the States police would get all the resources necessary to pursue the inquiry, he was ‘not simply handing the force a blank cheque’. Methinks that perhaps he didn’t spell it out in words of one syllable. Not that this should have been necessary.

Of course, the problem with criticising something like this is that there are those who will choose to interpret it as criticism of the inquiry itself. Indeed, I dare say some of those to whom I refer will already be preparing an attack on the Prime Minister for ordering a review of the inquiry’s costs. If I was in his shoes, I’d ignore them. That said, I am a little puzzled by his statement that he intends asking the ‘new’ Home Affairs Minister to carry out a comprehensive review of the use of resources by the States police. Which ‘new’ minister? Is it Andrew Lewis, who will almost certainly be on an ‘essential maintenance only’ programme until he too bangs the door behind him at the end of the year?
If so, and with all due respect to that Deputy, that will be an utter waste of time, simply because a comprehensive review will take a bit longer than he’s got left in the Big House. If it’s the minister to follow him, then perhaps I should remind Senator Walker that unless he astonishes everyone and decides to stand for Deputy, his time in politics will have ended by the time the next Home Affairs Minister is appointed.
I happen to think that it’s just the sort of thing Ian Le Marquand’s inquisitorial skills would excel at.

I SEE that Oscar Puffin’s one-time assassin Guy de Faye has ‘explained’ the Bel Royal roadworks fiasco.
Hoping that Members will accept that ‘the cause (of the shambles) has been identified and new measures put in place to ensure there is no repetition’, the Transport Minister appeared to have forgotten President Harry Truman’s famous desktop reminder — The Buck Stops Here.
Apparently it was the fault of three lots of experts — his own  staff, a local engineering consultancy and an engineering practice from the UK — who together, according to Deputy de Faye, should have demonstrated ‘tighter control and more stringent project management checks’ at an earlier stage. Actually, I’d have thought that to a bloke walking his dog along the promenade adjacent to Victoria Avenue it would have been as plain as a pikestaff that emergency vehicles would have stood a better chance on a dodgem car circuit than trying to negotiate this shambles.
It all sounds like a variation on the Little Britain line — ‘the computer says no’. But in this case the experts appear to have been guided by what was on the drawing board saying yes.
As to the minister’s clear abdication of responsibility, I have to say that if I worked for his department then right now I would be decidedly miffed and probably walking around muttering something along the lines of ‘with friends like this, who needs enemies?’
They must be counting the minutes until someone gives him the elbow.

I WAS delighted to read the homespun analysis of the recent election written by Sir Dick from the Docks, if only because it’s heartening to see that he’s lost nothing of his old enthusiasm for what goes on in the political arena.
Leaving aside the content — Dick Shenton could convince nine-tenths of us that we had a fiver in each pocket even if we were on the bones of our backsides — I liked his parting shot, ‘it makes an old fellow feel good to be heard’. From this old fellow to that one, it makes us feel good to listen.

AND finally . . . I see that the Boss has decided to call it a day. After 36 years of continuous membership of the Big House, I reckon he’s earned his retirement, and I hope that he and those close to him enjoy it.