Bradley Nathan Coe

Here’s the problem. Opportunity’s policy committee has four members. Qiulae Wong, Jessica Hammond and two unnamed public servants. Wong won’t name them, saying they are public servants and need to remain anonymous, however Hammond is already a named public servant on the same committee. So “they have to stay anonymous” is actually false, the party just doesn’t want them named. And here’s where it potentially gets very messy for the Opportunity Party: When did the two public servants join the policy team? Have they informed their bosses? If so, when? Do their official jobs overlap with tax, welfare, energy, housing? Has their access to documents and data been restricted in anyway, Chinese walls implemented, etc. If they haven’t declared or didn’t declare immediately, they may have had or still have ordinary access to govt advice and data while writing the party’s policies. We don’t know - because Wong and Opportunity won’t even say the process exists. Opportunity could clear the worst of this up in one line, with no names and no departments: Both declared before they started , conflicts are being managed. But they haven’t. The blatant hypocrisy of this, is Opportunity wants a public register of who is influencing whom, yet they hide half the people writing their own policy platform while providing no disclosure, timing and access answers. If sitting on Opportunity’s policy committee is so dangerous that even a non-identifying disclosure line is impossible, then the party is effectively admitting the role is a live conflict with public service work. You would think, after the board being able to overrule caucus saga that media would be all over this - yet nothing but crickets.