WHY LEONIE LIES: Leonie Wood Sails Very Close To The Wind Indeed

Leonie Wood House
Property in Armadale Not For Sale.

The Age's disgraced and discredited "journalist" frumpy Leonie Wood faces serious allegations of conflict of interest and abuse of power following an investigation by the Other Cheek.

Regular readers will recall that The Age's Leonie Wood has written extensively on the subject of IQ Corporation, the first recipient of an online gaming licence in Tasmania.

The OC can reveal - for the first time - that Ms Wood has a close personal friendship with Kate Dempsey, a leftist academic who writes anti-gaming research and peddles consultancies with local government sledging gaming. Basically Dempsey's business is to help local councils prepare research documents to justify their opposition to poker machines in their area.

Usually Councils' anti pokies stance reflects organised community opposition to pokies, although ratepayers presumably think that when they're paying for independent research on a topic that it might actually be independent. Asking Ms Dempsey to prepare an independent paper on gambling has all the legitimacy of asking Bruce Matheson (the Prince of Pubs & Pokies) to prepare one.

Through her company "Kate Dempsey & Associates", the leftist Ms Dempsey prepares research papers for local governments campaigning against poker machines and has a number of clients including the City of Kingston, Macedon Ranges Shire and others.

The local councils use these to lobby the State Government and the Office of Gaming Regulation to fight new poker machines or the placement of poker machines in their municipality.

Kate Dempsey has written such neutral ratepayer financed tomes as "Facts About Poker Machine Harm", "It's a Risky Business: The Impact of Gambling on Families in Victoria", "Problem Gambling in Monash" and "The Creation of Gambling as a Social Problem.

Evidence of the leftwingers' associations with leftist groups is contained in one of her reports where she discloses that instead of using a mainstream market research company, she engaged at ratepayers' expense the "Borderlands Cooperative". The co-operative's website reveals its strong left-wing views.

This "independent" market research organisation, used by Dempsey to provide evidence supporting her views, has on its front page a link to Know the Odds, an anti-gaming group.

The OC understands that Ms Dempsey has received tens of thousands of dollars for her independent research from local government on the subject of gambling.

Ms Wood's failure to reveal her relationship with Ms Dempsey, and the nature of it, represents the most serious conflict of interest and blatant abuse of power as a writer at The Age. Her condemnation of IQ Corporation must be seen in that light, tainted by a personal relationship with an anti-gaming crusader. The Age's failure to disclose conflicts of interest of this nature is gravely serious indeed. If Wood disclosed her involvement with anti-gaming activists to The Age, why did they not inform readers of this. If she did not disclose, when can we expect her to be fired? Or are high standards in public life just something The Age asks of others but not itself.

Leonie Wood failed to respond to the OC's inquiries about the matter although we offer her an unedited right of reply to these gravely serious charges.

Game on.