The Brogden Dirt File

Pittwater MP Alex McTaggart's decision to reveal his claims that Howard hard man Bill Heffernan offered him a dirt file on former Pittwater MP John Brogden is very interesting.

If the story is true, what was Heffernan's purpose? It may as easily have been to sour McTaggart's chances as to boost them. It's difficult to find a tactical reason for the Liberals - Brogden was already gone. On the other hand, McTaggart eventually won by running a pretty clean campaign, throwing into relief the internal party chaos that accompanied Brogden's deposal and the parachuting in of a machine candidate for the seat. The suggestion that he, too, was indulging in dirty tactics and reading dirt files would have counted significantly against McTaggart.

However, if it isn't true, McTaggart's motives are equally intriguing. Firstly, the notion of Heffernan stomping in and announcing himself as `the man who does John Howard's dirty work' seems pretty implausible, even though we all know he is - it's like a movie villain announcing `Yes, I'm the baddie'. Secondly, McTaggart won the election based on the same appeal that all independents offer their constituents: a spirit of `us vs them' and an ethos of `you can't trust the parties, you can only trust me'.

As the 2007 election approaches,and given the tendency of seats lost by major parties in by-elections being returned to them in subsequent elections (Cunningham is one such example), keeping alive the feeling that the party that will be McTaggart's main challenger is underhanded and run by machine men would be a good way of shoring up the support of the 20-odd percent of his constituents who swung towards him in the by-election.