EX-“Canberra Times” writer Myles Peterson has labelled Canberra’s public servants “cocaine-addled” and “corrupt” in Sydney tabloid “The Daily Telegraph.”
The opinion article, published on January 26 with the headline “Coked up in Canberra”, claims cocaine busts in Canberra have been “spiralling upwards.”
“Late last year, kilos of the stuff was discovered within just 1km of Parliament House,” Peterson writes.
“If frequent police and Customs claims that only 1 to 2 per cent of the illicit drug trade is uncovered are to be believed, hundreds of kilos, with a street value gauged in the millions, are potentially wandering the capital’s streets looking for cashed-up buyers.
“Between 2001 and 2011 the number of EL1s grew by more than 100 per cent – an epidemic of highly paid bureaucrats for whom million-dollar homes, a coastal holiday house and the odd cocaine binge are well within their price range.”
Peterson goes on to write that public servants are taking advantage of Canberra’s rising property market to “corrupt levels.”
“Savvy former public servants have taken the exploitation to absurd, some would argue corrupt, levels,” he writes.
“Government-owned land is selectively released to cartels of ex-bureaucrats, who then make out like bandits on-selling postage stamp-sized blocks to Canberra’s housing-desperate underclasses.”
Peterson is also critical of centenary spending; writing “this year, Canberra’s local government will sacrifice a mountain of public cash (both local and federal) on the altar of celebrating itself.
“Hired spinmeisters have already labelled the expenditure a necessary, no, inspired act designed to bring a sense of pride in the nation’s capital to all Australians.”
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