Campaign apparatchik Henri Vickers poses wistfully with a hammer and a sickle.

Is ACT Labor a secret front for the Communist Party? Probably not, but there are a couple of its young comrades with hammers and sickles in their eyes. It’s “Seven Days” with IAN MEIKLE.

ONE of the inescapable election themes is that the Canberra Liberals are being pasted by their opponents as being lip-curling conservatives. 

What makes them so, muses the Labor member for Fenner Andrew Leigh, in a mischievously timed forensic op-ed piece we publish on Page 12.

And the Liberals-as-conservatives call was jarringly helped by this past week’s short, sharp candidacy of Peter McKay in Kurrajong. Announced one day, he was quickly bundled under the campaign bus the next by leader Alistair Coe. The ex-army parachutist was ousted over controversial comments from a couple of years ago when he condemned the “Welcome to Country” ceremony and alleged the ACT’s “homosexual chief minister” influenced a police investigation.

But if conservatism is the ugly face of the right it must follow that Communism sits on the far left.

And it would seem Communism might be beating deep in some of the young hearts fighting for the Labor Party’s re-election in the ACT. 

There’s nothing that says Communism like the hammer and sickle, symbols of the industrial worker and the peasant used as the emblem of the former Soviet Union and of international Communism.

And lo, while Labor’s red army kicks the blue shins of the Canberra Libs, here’s a glimpse of the other side.  

In a Facebook post, Maddy Northam, Labor candidate for Kurrajong is pictured at her campaign HQ saying her team made hundreds of calls into the electorate and inviting others to join her. But what’s that on the wall above her smiling face? A hammer and sickle. 

Elsewhere on Facebook, comrade Henri Vickers, who is running the campaign for Labor’s Tim Dobson in Murrumbidgee, poses wistfully with a hammer and a sickle captioned “Ironically unironic gardening mood”, whatever that means. 

IN a press conference tra-la-ing Labor’s never-ending Canberra Hospital expansion promises, a journalist asked Chief Minister Andrew Barr: “The government’s been facing ongoing criticism from a former chief minister, he says you’ve underspent on health and that this project will be underdone and won’t cope with the city’s needs in the future.”

A former chief minister? Hmmm. Let me think. Gary Humphries? Naw. Jon Stanhope maybe, through the columns of “CityNews” perhaps? 

Mr Barr then took the bait: “Former chief ministers obviously have contributed a lot to our city, but I don’t think there’s a great deal of value entering into those sorts of discussions and debates with heroes of the past. 

“What I would say is that in the development of this project we’re very cognisant of our city’s health needs but also of our future population growth. 

“I would note that at this point in time our rate of population growth is going to be but a fraction of what it was for obvious reasons of the shut down of international migration and severe limitations in relation to movement within this country. 

“So I think some of what the former chief minister has written about, and his assumptions about future population growth, are just not correct and certainly not based on current circumstances and might reflect a world view from about 2000.” 

But no matter the ageist backhander, Jon wants to know: “What are the population forecasts you’re relying on?” 

RESIDENTS around Watson and Downer aren’t holding their breath, but the PM’s comments that border restrictions may not be over by summer holidays has raised hopes of no Summernats in January. 

My inner-north snout says residents are pondering the perverse outcome of COVID-19 being clean air, quieter days and nights, being able to walk around without being harassed and sleeping at night with windows open.

NINE out of 10 Canberrans believe that the territory should have laws that enforce truthful political advertising, according to unsurprising new research from the Australia Institute. What worries me is the 10 per cent who don’t. 

On the Labor side, 91 per cent chose truth; 94 per cent of Greens voters, but only 84 per cent of Liberal voters. According to the research, the ACT Electoral Commission is the preferred adjudicator of truth in political advertising laws (37 per cent), followed by the legal system (31 per cent). Only 9 per cent select an industry body as their preferred adjudicator, 8 per cent select a special panel of former politicians.

UNTRUTHS in political advertising caught the eye of Leon Arundell, of Downer. He reckons the ACT government is spending money on a misinformation campaign that coincides with Labor’s announcement of its election policy on food waste. 

“Sponsored Facebook advertisements link to an ACT government web page that includes false claims such as ‘ACT households waste up to $3800 every year by throwing away food that could have been eaten,'” he says. 

That figure comes from the 2017 National Food Waste Strategy and includes non-edible food waste such as bones and coffee grounds. It also includes waste from primary production, processing and manufacturing, distribution, retail, and hospitality and food services. 

Ian Meikle is the “CityNews” editor and can be heard on 2CC’s “CityNews Sunday Roast”, 10am-noon.