Tanya Plibersek’s husband’s past as a drug addict and 3 years in jail for heroin dealing would have destroyed any chance she had of winning if she had followed through with her planned tilt at the federal Labor Party leadership. His past would have been all over social media for the duration of the time it took the Labor Party to run the ballot between Anthony Albanese, Tanya Plibersek and any other Labor Party challengers.
People are entitled to a second chance but potentially having a Prime Minister whose husband is a convicted heroin dealer is something that the Australian voters wouldn’t stomach. Another issue for voters would have been is if Tanya Plibersek became Prime Minister it would have been embarrassing for the country that her husband couldn’t travel to a lot of countries with her because of his conviction.
When it came to the crunch Tanya Plibersek and her husband Michael Coutts-Trotter would have realised she was never going to win and only cause embarrassment for themselves and the Labor Party.
While many in the Labor Party admit that a major reason they lost the federal election is because Bill Shorten was unpopular some were still pushing for Tanya Plibersek to challenge for the leadership even though they must have known she was going to face the same problems. It is one thing to be popular with voters when you are deputy leader of the opposition in parliament, but it is another ball game when you are leader. A large percentage of voters would not even know who Tanya Plibersek is let alone her husband’s past but that would have changed very fast if she had continued with her nomination to lead the party and even more so if she had of won.
The reason the Labor Party got itself into a position where it went to the election with an unpopular leader is because it failed to understand that it could cost them the election and they were potentially heading down the same path again with Tanya Plibersek.
This is what it says on Wikipedia of Tanya Plibersek’s husband Michael Coutts-Trotter
“Michael Coutts-Trotter is an Australian public servant who is the current Secretary (director-general) of the New South Wales Department of Justice. He was previously the director-general of the Departments of Education and Training and Finance and Services. Coutts-Trotter served almost three years of a nine-year prison sentence after being convicted for the importation and distribution of heroin into Australia in 1986.”
In April 2007, Coutts-Trotter was appointed Director-General of the NSW Department of Education and Training. This appointment was criticised by opposition members of parliament, the NSW Teachers Federation and the Public Principals Forum for his lack of experience in teaching and education and his criminal conviction as a heroin trafficker.
The Teachers Federation also questioned his criminal past and time spent in prison for heroin dealing; with the Federation’s president, Maree O’Halloran, saying that a teacher with his criminal conviction for a serious drug offence would be unable to continue teaching and working with children. (Click here to read more)
In April 2019 Mr Coutts-Trotter was appointed Secretary for the NSW Department of Justice and he sent an email to staff as reported below:
Michael Coutts-Trotter’s first unavoidable task as the new head of Australia’s largest prison system was to tell his staff he had once been a heroin addict and drug supplier who spent almost three years in jail.
In an email sent to the 40,000 men and women who make up the New South Wales Department of Justice, Mr Coutts-Trotter dealt with his criminal past head-on.
‘There’s one thing I want to tell you about myself,’ he wrote in an introductory note. ‘You may know it already. But, if not, I want you to hear it from me first.
‘As a teenager I used and supplied drugs. In 1984 I was imprisoned for conspiracy to import heroin.
‘I spent nearly three years in jail and then around 18 months on parole.’ (Click here to read more)
Tanya Plibersek and her husband’s past is now not the stick dynamite going off it would have been if she continued with the leadership nomination.
The Labor Party still haven’t learnt that appointing unpopular politicians to leadership roles cost votes as there are media reports the failed NSW Premier Kristina Keneally will be the new deputy leader for the opposition in the Senate.
In December 2009 Kristina Keneally took over as NSW Premier with the support of numerous corrupt politicians such as Eddie Obeid. In 2011 NSW had an election: “The Keneally Government went on to suffer a 16.5% swing state-wide at the 2011 state election – the biggest swing in Australian political history.” (Click here to read more)
So why would anyone promote such a failed leader at state level to a leadership position at national level? All it will do is cost the Labor Party votes at the next election as her regular appearances with Bill Shorten this election likely cost Labor votes in NSW. I live in NSW and every time I see Kristina Keneally in the media, I remember the corrupt Labor Party government she led as Premier in NSW and I am sure many other NSW voters think the same. It might help explain why the Labor Party never did as well as they thought they would do in NSW at the federal election.
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Categories: Tanya Plibersek
If Plibersek became Prime Minister, then basket-case Harlem Globe-Trotter would be able to travel to other countries with her because other countries’ governments would welcome him with open arms and just grant him special consideration with full conviction, and why wouldn’t they?, when NSW has allowed him to artfully attain high office in several of its departments. If the US’s president can order that several convicted murderers be released via ‘presidential pardon’ just before he finishes his term of office then allowing a convicted heroin dealer into your country is but ‘leather and prunella’. It ain’t what you know, it’s who you know, or who can do whatever it pleases them to do…because they can.
Well totally agree with comments posted on this ex convicted drug dealer gaining high rolling positions in government.If thism was i i would have been sacked no matter how many times i said sorry , when i worked in State Rail if you were convicted for virtually any offence your career was over .So one wonders how did this Coutts Character get these positions one wonders who the premier was at the time of his appointments a peddler of poisons to our children a dealer in misery and he Coutts Trotter has these senior positions why is the current Liberal State Govt so quiet on this disgrace.
Proverbs 13:20, Solomon:
“He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.”.
Dan
How is it remotely possible that a person who spent time in jail as a heroin dealer can end up as a senior public servant in Australia.
People do deserve a second chance, but with that type of pedigree, they should never end up in a position working for the tax payer.
To read this makes me sick in the stomach and it typifies just one of the numerous issues we face with second rate Government, both Federal and particularly State and a fat public service full of nepotism.
Can you tell your readers what he earns?
This is sad that this happened but who influenced this appointment
Wisdom has been excommunicated from within the fabric of Australian political parties. The wise are shunned by these entities and even if they were naïve enough to engage they would soon pack their bags as the interminable science of stupid is enshrined into the decision making processes that get people nominated to stand for a parliamentary seat. Labor is at a disadvantage when it comes to the skill set required to create a digestible product , as that knowledge and experience comes from being actively involved in business. The problem for labour lies at the heart of its power base, the union movement, an environment that is not conducive to innovation and imaginative thought, hence another non charismatic unimaginative soul presented to the Australian people as the potential leader. As we all know we ain`t that stupid and those within the labour party should hang their heads in shame as this nation desperately requires a new government that has integrity and the fortitude to clean up the corruption and ineptitude that is flourishing within our legal, judicial system. Corruption and blind arrogance based upon self interest which will eventually drive this country and its people into the abyss.
At last! The rats are being purged from their holes. Great work!
I think you are being a little unfair dumping on Kenneally for the Obeid NSW Labor government after John Robertson excised the Obeid problem that was invited by Labor in about 1987 when the Party was broke and the Commonwealth Bank wanted to foreclose on the Sydney property assets of the party.
Similarly Plibersek personally appears to be a capable presentable person who married a drug dealer who in turn was put into politically sensitive senior public service rolls by “mates”.
The unelected political hacks who control pre-selection in both major parties have a lot to answer for since the first dumping of Rudd which has allowed a Murdoch media blitz to distract Australian voters from the Liarbral Notional$ lack of policies building the worst third world economic disaster in the OECD.
“His past would have been all over social media for the duration of the time it took the Labor Party to run the ballot between Anthony Albanese, Tanya Plibersek and any other Labor Party challengers.”
Why would Plibersek’s husband’s criminal past being all over the Media have necessarily put her out of the running for leadership when Albanese’s own unsavoury past and personal behaviour is covered-up, thereby leaving him a clear unopposed walk-in to the top job?
In 2013, when Albanese was photographed exiting the True Thai Massage Parlour in Dulwich Hill NSW he was challenged by a member of his own Caucus and because of that, agreed to withdraw from the contest for the Deputy Leadership under Rudd.
The obvious conflict of his background as Minister for Local Govt and True Thai’s questionable Development Application for expansion (not as a legal brothel although sexual services were freely offered there), clearly demonstrates Albanese’s poor judgement and, just like Craig Thomson’s brothel-crawling activities, leaves him open to blackmail and coercion on a grand scale.
But Albanese was adamant – he only went there for “a therapeutic massage for a bad back”, thereby earning himself the dubious tag of ‘Therapeutic Albo’ or ‘Sleazy Albanezy’.
Moral of the story? As a Legislator who likes telling everyone else how to live their lives, when you have a bad back, find yourself a legitimate physiotherapist, and don’t engage the services of a diminutive Thai girl (with or without a ‘happy ending’).
Oh dear… talk about ‘equality’. Labor women are equally as corrupt. You left out Kimberley Kitchings… not many worse than her and her husband!
What better way to stop the backstabbing then to put The backstabber in charge.
Too many people with an attitude of apathy follow the dictatorial Pied Piper because their own self-importance takes priority.
The man committed a crime. He was charged, convicted, sentenced and served his time in goal. He has since led an unblemished life. His wife is totally innocent. You’ve lost me on this one.
He may have served a small amount of the nine years he was sentenced, but have you ever thought of how many young or adult lives he may have ruined with overdoses, deaths and family breakups peddling this stuff.
You have no issue with a heroin
Pusher being a senior public servant?……. a man who was a dealt heroin and spent three years in jail. The lord help me! I have three mates who all lost adult kids to heroin, it cannot ever be measured how much damage this grubs dealing did in the community, how many lives he took.
If you are lost on this one, I suggest you have a chat to a family that has lost a loved one to this evil drug. Then you may suddenly not find yourself lost anymore and revisit and contemplate how a “ pusher” ended up a senior public servant being paid by the very people that paid to put and keep him in jail as a dirty drug dealer!
“God Damn the Pusher Man”
I totally agree with Frank Golding this man has turned his life around and his wife should not be punished for his crime. Tanya should be considered for the job as leader of the opposition.
Tanya has a guilty mind and knows she is living with a convicted criminal. That is the reason she has pulled out of the race for leadership.
Coutts-Trotter comes from an elite UK family. His father was a wealthy stockbroker who attended Balliol college Oxford (Boris Johnson, Denis Healey, Edward Heath, Harold MacMillan, Kim Beazley) his grandfather was Sir Victor Murray Coutts-Trotter Chief Justice of the Madras High Court. His fathers fourth marriage was to a daughter of the Meagher family from Cootamundra who owned a chain of country department stores from the gold rush til the 1970’s. His father leslie Coutts-Trotter died in 1976 at the Meagher family pile “Milton” at Cootamundra a palatial and rambling manor.
The fact Michael Coutts-Trotter served 2.5 years out of a nine year sentence is so unlikely that it is highly probable family connections were at play in that regard. However it gets worse. After completing his BA at UTS in 1995 when we had 8.5% unemployment in the dying years of the Keating Government, Coutts-Trotter the new graduate with a heroin importation prison record got his first job – in the office of then deputy PM Brian Howe. Thankfully someone at ASIO was awake and denied Coutts-Trotter a security clearance.
Not a problem, he then walzed straight into the office of the newly elected NSW Carr government Treasurer Michael Egan as Press Secretary! Obviously a position he had zero experience in.
Michael Coutts-Trotter is a poster boy for old UK money, elite family connections and doors that swing open no matter what you’ve done or how little you’ve done to deserve it.
The fact this scumbag trades off the `give me a second chance’ crowd when he’s just another `selected’ globalist bureacrat, destroying our sovereignty piece by piece sickens me to death.
What’s the greater crime? Dealing heroin or jailing children?
Conflating the point of this article with the issue of “jailing children” is a nonsense.
Michael Coutts-Trotter was 21 years old when he went to prison, not a “child” by any measure.
However, when “children” are in the business of destroying their own AND other children’s lives by criminal activity, what’s the greater crime?
Removing them from society to stop their destructive behaviour … or failing to teach them that such choices have consequences?
I thought what Paul Saxby meant by his comment was what is worse: Michael Coutts-Trotter selling heroin or Tanya Plibersek and the Labor Party jailing children in detention on Manus and Naru
If so, that’s still conflating completely different issues.
Children used by their parents as pawns, as leverage against breaking Australian immigration laws, has nothing to do with the damage done to young lives and families by heroin dealers.
Not disagreeing with your sentiments. However, he was 19 years old when he was charged with heroin dealing and as a heroin addict! https://www.alumni.uts.edu.au/connect/luminaries/michael-coutts-trotter-interview.
I suppose it depends on what our sources are, Kat … either way, he was legally an adult.
“In 1986, at the age of 21, he was imprisoned on a nine-year sentence for conspiracy to import narcotics.”
https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmXoypizjW3WknFiJnKLwHCnL72vedxjQkDDP1mXWo6uco/wiki/Michael_Coutts-Trotter.html
Sorry Frank, think of all the desirable skills, qualifications and personal characteristics you might set for such positions as Director General for Education AND THEN Justice, together with all the people who would hold high level PERFORMANCE AND BACKGROUNDS in all of these and WHY, WHY, would you choose such a person.
Looks, sounds and waddles like a duck – good chance it is.
Al49er
Agreed Alan. But that’s how the Labor Comrades roll.
Just as Gillard excused her un-prosecuted criminal past as a lawyer by saying she was “young and naive” when she got into money-laundering, fraud, forgery and facilitating secret commissions for her Union thug boyfriend, so too do they blame youthful naivety on drug taking and trafficking by Plibersek’s spouse.
Where better to ‘rehabilitate’ a well-connected ex-con than the deeply unionised Marxist/Labor Education Dept? Oh, and a pay cheque of $400+K pa really helps too. A deeply ‘humanitarian’ gesture.
But elevating him to Secretary (director-general) of the New South Wales Department of Justice is nothing short of a middle finger salute to ALL Australians.
As Marxist/Labor proves every day … “Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity.” — Marshall McLuhan
Brilliantly detailed ‘Blackswan’ . This sort of thing used to be not only impossible but beyond the most twisted imagination. Seems standard process today.
So much, so hard to reconcile. Where will it end?
Al49er
Usually, I’m impressed by your posts. But not this time. He was 19 when he was convicted of importing and dealing as a heroin addict – ’19’ years!!!!! Sorry, don’t agree with your slant on this. Look at some of the Bali 9 that were conned into being mules, and without being addicts. He was addicted to heroin at 19, that’s as good as ‘ice’ now. No control as a heroin addict. If he was 35 years I could understand your judgment – but at 19 years; and clean since. You would have found the blemishes if they were there. I’m all for truth – but can’t see the point of this article.
Kat, you’ve missed the whole point of the article which is that the Australian public would not support or vote for Tanya Plibersek as Prime Minister given her husbands past and she knows it and that is why she didn’t stand for the Labor Party leadership.
I did get the point, but commented on the tangent the discussion took – what I find pathetic is that Australians are SO easily swayed on the most remote personality/physical/historical impediment that is not even linked to the person themselves; rather than the actual majority of policies of the Party they represent; and will vote in a clearly corrupt Liberal Govt time and time again (70% of the time) , who has a list of offensive policies and practices as long as a toilet roll cumulative of their time in Govt in Australia; but if Murdoch/Stokes clan throw up any dirt on Labor/Greens – then it’s suddenly “They can’t be good for our country, let’s vote Liberal”. Liberals could be stabbing their children in the back and they would still vote them – oh yeah they actually are – it’s called National Debt/ClimateChange/Deforestation/TaxEvasionForCorporations. Liberals can do no wrong, while a sneeze from Labor/Greens and they’re ‘dirt’.
Ahhh, lots of RATS in this Government 🤣
To get these TOP jobs, I am sure you need a CRIMINAL background 🤓
Nothing further to add, other than he has caused her Career to Cease in this Government and in my view, thats a good thing👍
Is Coutts-Trotter a lawyer too? What other prequalifications would he need to pursue the career path he has? Good on you Bill, you are still pulling the levers behing the scenes. Must be hard choose from with all that leadership talent running around.
Is it true one has to be a trade unionist to be a member of the ALP? wonder what union Rudd the “diplomat” belonged to.
I worked in the Education department for a number of years (I have a Bachelor of Education – double major), I have worked in private practice as a lawyer and within the Attorney General’s Department. I have a Bachelor of Laws with Honours and a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice. I have 13 years experience in federal government, hold the highest security clearance. I have experience in diplomatic postings overseas. I have built six companies from the ground up and employ 60 people. I also work as an adjudicator resolving complex building disputes.I have post graduate qualifications in industrial relations, finance and business. Despite all my experience and qualifications I can tell you with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t get my little toe in the door for an interview for the various positions that Mr Michael Coutts-Trotter has managed to secure. This country / government is corrupt to the core if this bloke even gets an interview for any of his previous positions.
I’ve read a lot of the froth and spray from all the people who clearly aren’t forgiving of a crime committed years ago by a (barely older than) youth. So none of you ever made a mistake? Really? (I lost a relative to drug destruction so I can comment, thanks.) And while you god-botherers are trotting out biblical phrases, let he who has never sinned cast the first stone.
I’d rather have TP and her ex-con husband on board than Scomo, Taylor, Joyce, Dutton, Frydenberg, Cash, and the rest of the current filthy LNP.
At least Coutts-Trotter’s done his time and man enough to deal with it front on. And get on with being a hopefully constructive citizen.
Thank You for sharing some common sense and decency! Wishing you well and kindness! Like All Aussies did! And we can again! 😂