Scandal

Denials do not get any more categorical or absolute than this - and as of his press conference an hour ago, Mike Rann is being hailed as Adelaide’s own Bill Clinton after looking straight into the camera and declaring that he did not have sexual relations with that woman.

But unlike Clinton’s twitchy and unconvincing handling of the Monica Lewinsky allegations, Rann came out all guns blazing, specifically denying key aspects of the bombshell interview by his former friend and parliamentary barmaid Michelle Chantelois, hammering the fact that she was paid bucketloads of cash to sell her story, and declaring that he will sue both Channel Seven and New Idea for peddling allegations which he says are categorically false.

Rann also seized on the fact that Channel Seven got a key part of its story wrong, in falsely asserting that Chantelois’s estranged husband Rick Phillips had not been charged with assault after he punched the Premier in the face with a rolled-up magazine in a chance encounter at the Adelaide Wine Centre last month.

Continue reading "Rann’s emphatic sex denial might not end this affair" »

Update 1.20pm AEDT: Rann is due to speak to the media at 2.30pm AEDT today. Passing waiting journalists heading into a cabinet meeting earlier he refused to deny outright having sex with Chantelois.

Today could decide the career of Australia’s most popular premier and Punch contributor Mike Rann. “It is disappointing and distressing that a friendship I had with Michelle Chantelois more than four years ago has become the subject of such sensationalised publicity,” the SA Premier said this morning. There’s more from his statement over the jump.

The publicity, which you may have caught, was the airing last night of a detailed account of an affair that former parliamentary barmaid Michelle Chantelois claims to have had with Rann. She claims it involved sex on the premier’s desk and clandestine trips to a golf course for romps in the dark. The trouble for Rann is that he has been insisting there was never any sex.

As one senior Labor figure said: “At the end of the day, she has either made the whole thing up or he’s lying.”

Continue reading "The Mike Rann sex scandal: is it a sacking offence?" »