The Refreshingly Out Spoken Nick Minchin
Thursday, 9th March, 2006 The gap between political-speak and the truth has grown so great that there is always surprise when a politician actually says something both unscripted and interesting. There is an immediate assumption that there has been a blunder and the minders start running around suggesting that the uttered words do not really mean what they seem to say and if they do then it was a personal view that counts for nothing. So it was yesterday as Canberra reacted to the unauthorised release of a tape recording of Government Senate Leader and Finance Minister Nick Minchin addressing the HR Nicholls Society at a private meeting on Friday night. The fragments of the speech played on ABC radio that I heard surely were not all that remarkable. Senator Minchin foreshadowed that more changes would be made to industrial relations law if the Coalition Government won again. It would seek a mandate for those changes at the next election. He expressed some nervousness about the