Amanda Vanstone: The raider of the ‘lost’ art

All of this was said within spitting distance of the Canberra Press Gallery. None of it appeared in the mainstream press.

One could have expected the nonsense to end there. Sadly, it didn’t.

The ATSIC Board duly met and did decide to divest its assets, based on legal advice. Not the $7 to $9 million incorrectly cited by Vanstone in her January 28 press release. The ATSIC Board resolved to seek the divestment of $57 million in real property and other assets, including the artwork, to peak Aboriginal organisations around the country.

This was reported around the country as an act of defiance against the Government. The Canberra Times, in one of the most rancid editorials ever printed under its masthead, even described it as an act of sabotage.

Television cameras and press photographers just happened to be on hand after ATSIS decided to assume looting rights and confiscate all the artwork from its Canberra Headquarters and ATSIC offices around the country. The agency and government spin doctors got to work. It was being rescued, we were told, for all Australians.

The Canberra Times then featured its most colourful front page for years. It was festooned with six colour photos of some of the artwork, under the headline: “The art Vanstone wants to keep for all”. It did not seem to occur to the newspaper that the last time it was seen in public was when it was being wheeled out for the “rescued for all Australians” media stunt and placed in a secret location.

It also did not seem to occur to the newspaper that the ATSIC Board is the legal owner of the works. The art has never been available to “all Australians” in the offices of the white bureaucrats who inhabit the security-controlled Lovett Tower in Canberra. If I was a Commissioner, I’d be thinking about probable cause.

Inexplicably, this fantasy knocked off other potential front page stories such as Howard dissembling over committing more troops to Iraq, the toxic aftermath of the tsunami, news that Australians were deeper in debt under the Howard Government and the public plea to Vanstone by 104-year-old Cui Yu Hu not to deport her from Australia.

Surely the headline should have read: “Raiders of the ‘Lost’ Art”. I quickly sought refuge in the World News section which was carrying a story on the death of the good Dr Hunter.

Troy Hooper, associate editor of the Aspen Daily News and a friend of the family, said Hunter had told his son his afterlife ambition was to become cannon fodder... literally. His will stated that he wanted his ashes to be fired from a cannon after his funeral. “That’s Hunter’s style. That’s how he would want it,” he said. “He was a big fan of bonfires and explosions and anything that went bang, and I’m sure he’d like to go bang as well.” Typical. Larger than life, even in death.

In its published appreciation The New York Times said Thompson made politics seem like a low-stakes minstrel show. He’d have found no shortage of material in the ATSIC saga.