The Merc wouldn’t publish this comment, so might as well have a go here:

I thought The Mercury was going pretty low yesterday by giving so much prominence to John Gay’s sob story, clearly a propaganda effort designed to further fuel the flames of community division.

But they reach the nadir today by dragging up the story of a remote relative of Sen Abetz. I don’t like Senator Eric Abetz one little bit. He has perpetrated some disgusting things to the disadvantage of this island’s people and its environment. His sneering face appears in some of my worst nightmares. But he still has the right to be treated with politeness in the public media.

Criticising a man for his own actions is one thing, but aiming to influence public opinion by lengthy references to the actions of a relative is gutter politics of the worst kind, which only works when the fourth estate is a willing accomplice. As a short news story - that some Labor senator is making snide references to another senator’s great-uncle - maybe. But providing a lengthy dossier on the life of one Otto Abetz is going too far and does your reputation no good. I notice that in the online version at least there is no byline to the article - too scared to be personally associated with such slimebag activities but ever-so-keen to sell papers?

I thought the Liberal party espoused family values? In this case I must be mistaken…

It is undeniable that Eric was not responsible for Uncle Otto’s sins, or vice versa. Both are innocent so far as that issue goes. 

But Eric, as Forestry Miniser, was eminently responsible for the sins of the Community Forest Agreement funding,  recently blasted by the report from the Auditor General.  If you still maintain, after reading the report’s summary, that these were sins of bureaucratic carelessness, as Eric argues, you must be much closer to him than Uncle Otto ever was.

Eric- watchers must be expecting him to soon unload all blame on his erstwhile CFA collaborator, Bryan Green. But between two such richly deserving candidates, how do you choose?

John Hayward

I agree the Abetz deep background story is unpleasant although I’d dispute whether it simply shouldn’t have appeared in Australian media. He’s evidently made some rather determined enemies in his years in Federal politics. Personally, I’d rather have the choice of knowing rather than not knowing about a Tasmanian senator’s background.
Sadly, in Abetz’ haste to distance himself from his great uncle’s role in the genocide of 6 million Jews, he’s failed to even acknowledge that Jews in Nazi Germany enjoyed no such privileges. At no time can we afford to forget that during Uncle Otto’s ugly epoch, even the most distant Jewish relative was enough to condemn you to the gas chambers.

Agreed, this is the poorest excuse for news that we have been subjected to in a long time. Eric provides plenty of ammunition himself without having to go back to WWII to find a poorly-behaved relative. No doubt many of us have problem relatives in our past. TT shouldn’t have repeated it either. Get a grip everyone! You’re not even playing the man, but making bizarre insinuations based on the behaviour, over 60 years ago, of someone’s long-dead relative. Perhaps someone could enlighten us to exactly what the link is to our political landscape today.

Abetz is not one of my favorite people , however the slime bag responsible for the war time connection needs to dig a large hole and drag the dirt in behind.
            d.d.

Reply to Neil Smith. I guess if your father was a Nazi concentration camp survivor as mine was, and you had made the terrible mistake of spending your inheritance on property in the Rowella area like I did, then you would see the Abetz family tree in another light. Anyway just for your pleasure the Sydney Morning Herald covered the story beautifully.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/uncle-otto-was-a-nazi-war-criminal/2008/03/01/1204402254993.html
Interesting that the story was leaked by the Liberal Party don’t you think Neil?

I couldn’t agree more Neil. Are any of us 100% sure that we have no unpleasant skeletons in our cupboards?

To reply to #7 - My father was not in a concentration camp and I don’t own land at Rowella, so how I might see things is beyond knowing. Your guess might be as good as mine.

I did have a look at the SMH link though. Somewhat better than the local Merc version in that it just pointed out that info re Otto was “available on the internet” rather than delightedly spelling it out in gruesome detail. And someone with a real name confessed to being the author.

If all this was leaked by the Libs is has to be for one of two reasons. Either they wanted their version out there before someone else got in first, or they think Eric stood in dire need of some public sympathy.

I don’t have a hell of a lot of sympathy for him, but I do have considerable revulsion for the way the press behaves sometimes. If they’ll do it to Eric they’ll do it to someone decent, won’t they?

By the way, I did get some “pleasure” out of the SMH article when I saw the bit about “I don’t have any links with national socialism,” he said. “Indeed, anybody who knows … my public record knows it has been one of speaking out against socialism, be it national socialism, or Soviet-style socialism.” That has to take the cake when it comes to the deliberate confusion of invented terminology and political reality. I wonder whether the reverse applies? If the Greens changed their name to the “Liberal Green Party of Tasmania” would Eric stop attacking them?

I wonder how a person like Eric can have so little respect for his fellow human beings, so little respect for the living creatures in the forests he was charged with protecting. Where the hell do attitudes like that come from? Perhaps Herr Tuckey knows - he fitted the job description.

I’m patiently waiting for Dr Bonham to remind us that Otto Abetz was only declared a war criminal by the victorious allies. To the majority of Germans at the time he was a useful functionary and what he was doing perfectly reflected the German ethos as declared by the Nazi party.

I am afraid I have no sympathy for Eric. Was it not he after all that falsely accused a High Court Judge of being gay, (not that I could care less if his Honour was gay); did John Howard’s dirty work in vomiting his vitriolic bile onto any person or organisation that did not share their neo-con, antidemocratic, narrow-minded, ignorant and selfish agendas; stated and demonstrated very clearly that he did not represent the interests of Tasmania but only the interests of his boss; tried to have Malcolm Fraser’s life membership of the liberal party torn-up; stated in the media that the war in Iraq was won; stated that it was OK for him to cosy up to a secretive cult of religious fanatics but that when the Anglican Bishop of Hobart spoke out about the effect of “work choices” on ordinary people publicly told his Holiness to mind his own business?????

I do not see what the fuss is about re his relative, I was told that story some years ago along with other anecdotes directly related to the young Eric during his school life.

Furthermore, Eric made defamatory remarks in the local press about my wife and myself without any substance, or for that matter, without any knowledge of who we are.

By the way, I am still waiting for a reply from the former Minister for State in response to my formal letter to him regarding fridge magnets.

Can anyone remember what we were about to ask Senator Abetz before this blew up? I have a dim memory of something to do with Forestry.