Complaint against blogger dismissed
Tuesday June 20th 2006, 2:07 pm

Medcraft with self-portrait

Former Sunbury councillor, Stephen/Jack Medcraft

Jack-also-known-as Steve (JAKAS) Medcraft (who uses either given name interchangeably depending upon the day) is identified as the president of ‘People Against Lenient Sentencing‘ (PALS). PALS lobbies government to levy harsher sentences and to compromise civil liberties in the pursuit of prosecuting more people. JAKAS frequently is sought for his hardline law ‘n’ order opinions by Murdoch journos. Up until recently, JAKAS also served on the Sunbury, Victoria council.

The Patrotik Yoof Leauge, a parody website by the illustrious Dr Cam Sexenheimer, is a spoof of the actual ‘Patriotic Youth League,’ an anti-immigration group which has white supremacist and neo-nazi connections, including to the Australia First Party.

Former Sunbury mayor, present Sunbury councillor and author of the blog ‘Guruann‘, Ann Potter, suffered a complaint by JAKAS to the Victorian Electoral Commission when she cracked wise on her blog that Medcraft’s views were ‘so right wing that he should join the Patriotic Yoof Leauge.’

JAKAS alleged in his complaint that Potter’s blog commentary could have caused voters to believe that he in fact is a neo-nazi, in the course of his pursuit of re-election to the Sunbury council.

The VEC on Monday handed down their decision in Potter’s favour, with costs of $2600 awarded against Medcraft (PDF, 15 pages, 468Kb).

The VEC decision is a major victory for bloggers who dabble in political satire, absent a Bill of Rights in Australia which might protect rights to free expression.

JAKAS is none too happy about the decision, claiming a loophole in the Victorian electoral law was exploited regarding the definition of a ‘candidate.’ Medcraft is vowing to have the law amended.

Personally, I can’t see why JAKAS isn’t happy with the letter of the law he loves so much.

-weez


16 Comments so far
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Ha ha ha ha haha, somepeople just never know when to bow out …doing it gracefully is questionable

Comment by Supamum 06.21.06 @ 2:20 pm

Doesn’t know when to quit? That’s only half the problem. Suffice it to say that discretion is the better part of valour.

Supamum, I have the sneaking suspicion that JAKAS hasn’t quite cottoned on to the size nor the formidible nature of the opposition he’s raised against himself. Vast left-wing conspiracy? You betcha… and that refers to just me. 😉

Comment by weez 06.21.06 @ 3:18 pm

political and activist groups seem to be infiltrating local government, or attempting to, rather a lot these days. Go Guru Ann!

Comment by ab 06.21.06 @ 8:47 pm

Gee, yanno, I never thought of Ann as a left-wing deconstructionist infiltrator of the establishment… but then, you could be right.

Ann? Wot say ye? 😀

Comment by weez 06.21.06 @ 8:54 pm

Heh. If Jack/Steve were a prospective immigrant, my bet is he would fail an Aussie language and culture test.

Comment by saint 06.23.06 @ 12:38 am

Saint, too right… JAKAS is in grave danger of decapitation from the singing blades of the Great Australian Tall-Poppy Mower.

Comment by weez 06.23.06 @ 7:28 am

RE: Picture above – which one is the horses arse?

Comment by Not the 6.... 06.23.06 @ 11:43 am

It’s not obvious?

Comment by weez 06.23.06 @ 2:39 pm

on closer inspection – you’re right! My mistake…

Comment by Not the 6.... 06.23.06 @ 6:11 pm

My name doesn’t matter and I ran the two million word blog “Sydney’s Conservative Weasel”

I am a public servant.

A few years ago the bureaucracy wiped their hands of me over an unfair dismissal at a workplace where I lived. As part of the dispute, I asked some bosses about a welfare case who had a peanut allergy. I’d completed a casual shift and made the discovery of the condition from the victim. I asked the two (seperately) if they had advised the staff of the condition. They told me they had ‘taken care of it’ and ‘it was none of my business.’ The next year, the boy died after being challenged by an ignorant staff member to eat a spoonfull of peanut butter.

Two years have passed. I had been advised by a delegated lawyer of the (then) Director General that my unfair dismissal dispute was such that the Dept could not communicate with me. The ICAC said that my case (unfair dismissal) was isolated and not in their provenance, advising me to privately address the issue. I was informed by barrister that I’d been ‘timed out’ and subsequently had no ’cause of action.’ My state local member, Mr Tripodi, promised to ‘use his position in parlaiment to represent me’ but failed to specify how.

I’d been advised that I could write publicly on my matter and did.

Three weeks ago, I was told by a bureaucrat, that a complaint had been made about my website ‘Thief!’ which was where I was constructing my autobiography. He added that he was concerned about ‘Sydneys Conservative Weasel’ and asked me to remove (unspecified) articles concerning the Dept. (specifying workplace).

I explained I would comply to my ability, but the older articles were archived on site and I had no ability to delete those. Mr bureacrat gave seven days to comply. I deleted all I could. Mr bureaucrat gave me a second warning (again unspecified in writing). I was firstly asked to contact a departmental tech (I presume) so the tech might assure Mr bureaucrat that I wasn’t lying about the archiving. The tech did not respond to my departmental email. I did not call the tech. In the second instance I was castigated for not contacting the tech, and offered a direct telephone number. As the tech would have had to say that killing my site was an option, I deleted that site.

Now, two years of work and two million words and images have been erased. I’d documented ALP failure in that time. I’d written on local issues of health, transport and policing as well as education. I had also made contacts overseas on international issues. No one has been raised from the dead over the deletion ..

The new blog has no direct contacts to me

http://conservativeweasel.blogspot.com
====
I’ve just been told that some of my work (I estimate to be 2 million words, including comments and images) have been saved through Google Cache. I have no control over what Google cache .. and probably they don’t either, as those that bombed Bush’s resume into the google search for ‘failure’ know.

This link shows one of the sites that caused the Dept to demand that I kill the entire site. The article is for Tuesday 24th, 2004. Regarding the boy who died, I had told the two bosses of this specific allergy and questioned wether on duty staff had been told. Each assured me they had ‘dealt with the problem’ and that it was none of my concern.

Comment by DDB 06.23.06 @ 10:54 pm

Wow, tough story, DDB. I believe the technical term for being sacked from a job as a result of your blog content is “dooced.”

If indeed ‘D*** D*** B****’ is your real name (which I have redacted to simply your initials), you’re doing yourself no favours by posting commentary with that name on mgk. mgk punches well above its weight in the Google page ranks and also gets some 3,500 unique IP readers per week.

My identity is certainly no state secret, but I do write under a nom de plume if simply to prevent unneccessary phone calls at 3am. Works well enough.

You can make requests of Google to delete cached information from their databases. They’ll comply if you’re insistent.

Regarding the poor boy who died of ingesting peanut butter, whomever it was who gave the child a substance known to cause anaphalaxis in him ought to be hanged. Approaching children as malingerers or fakers when they provide information about allergies should garner the carer a long stay on a desert island.

Comment by weez 06.24.06 @ 7:22 am

hello I am a ex communist and I was wondering. Are youa left winger and what is your point

Comment by Jack Hamick 07.14.06 @ 9:41 pm

“a ex-communist,” eh?

How ex? Did the HUAC rout you out of Hollywood back in the 1950s or did you go ex-com a bit closer to an hour ago? Were you able to give up communism cold-turkey, or are you still waiting for the Komissar to show up asking for bread inventory numbers?

Am I a ‘left-winger?’ Most likely. I’m a little too entrepreneurially-spirited to make a good commie, though. I’m not a member of any political party at the moment, and none seem terribly interested in courting me either. I’m out there somewhere between libertarianism and socialism. I realise that’s a rather broad spread, but party-line politics simply doesn’t appeal to me.

“what is your point”

Could you be a just a tick more vague?

Comment by weez 07.14.06 @ 11:30 pm

Have been reading comments on http://www.sunburyonline.com.au submitted by jack/steve medcraft. He is constantly careless with the truth, is racist against Aborigines in one breath then claims to be one himself in the next, keeps contradicting himself all the time and appears to be only interested in personal publicity and promotion of himself, not the people of Sunbury.

(edit: moved comment to salient post. -weez)

Comment by june johnson 04.13.08 @ 5:05 pm

Note to commenters: mgk is not your link farm. If your comment (especially if loaded with links to your own site) isn’t salient to the post you’re commenting on, it goes in the bit bucket.

Comment by weez 08.11.10 @ 8:27 am

this jakas where did he come from and i bet he drinks good un the person who took him on… these morons get more than their share in publicity for being dead set red-necks….and he most likely drinks too much and thinks he does not take drugs …drunken fools who think they are not into drugs…bah the world is full of them

Comment by Adriaan Reivers 01.21.11 @ 5:48 pm



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