There are two, quite striking, things about PoAL’s response to the story about them illegally shopping union members’ private information to Cameron Slater.
The first is that port Chair Richard Pearson went to ground. It has clearly been part of their new campaign manager, Brent Impey’s (ex-ceo of mediaworks and good mate of Paul Henry), strategy to swap CEO Tony Gibson for Pearson in the media – presumably because Gibson’s image was consider toxic. However the very limited “no comment” response to the privacy scandal has been attributed to Gibson in every story I’ve seen it. I’d say they’re trying to keep Pearson clean – which tend to confirm to me that Gibson will be the fall-guy for this fiasco.
The second thing that strikes me is that the ports excuse that it can’t comment because it is “investigating” rings hollow. After all privileged information from the port has been turning up on Slater’s blog since last year and the company has also provided Slater with free access to the port as fodder for his smear campaign. All of which points to an ongoing relationship between port management and Slater. Clearly the port didn’t just know what was being published on his blog but were active in enabling him.
Given this it’s a bit rich for them to suddenly claim they’re investigating and can’t comment only after this relationship hit the media.
There are a hell of a lot of questions that need to be asked about the relationship between the port and Slater and the dirty tricks campaign they appear to have been colluding on.
I’d suggest these questions need to be asked of Richard Pearson. He is, after all, the port’s spokesperson and the man that has been making the unsubstantiated claims attacking the union’s behaviour.
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