From the Oz:

Libs dump right-winger from ticket
Rick Wallace and Ewin Hannan
March 23, 2007

DISCREDITED former MP Ken Aldred was last night dumped as a Liberal candidate in the federal election over his links to far-right groups and his attacks on a prominent Jewish lawyer.
Mr Aldred appeared before a specially convened meeting of the Liberal Party’s administrative committee in Melbourne after he issued a legal threat to the party demanding the right to attend.

He tried to justify his past conduct in a statement that he read at the meeting, but the committee members - including Peter Costello and state Liberal leader Ted Baillieu - voted unanimously to dump him as the preselected candidate in the seat of Holt.

Liberal Party state director Julian Sheezel confirmed the result last night saying: “The administrative committee considered that he was an unsuitable candidate to receive endorsement.”

John Howard had earlier written to members saying he did not think Mr Aldred - who has been linked to the far-Right US-based LaRouche organisation and its Australian arm, the Citizens Electoral Council - was a suitable person to stand for the Liberal Party.

Prominent Jewish lawyer Mark Leibler, who has led calls for the party to dump Mr Aldred, yesterday described Mr Aldred’s preselection last weekend as an “embarrassment”.

Mr Leibler, who was falsely accused by Mr Aldred in 1995 of being involved in a money-laundering scam run by Israeli spy agency Mossad, said yesterday: “It’s not half the embarrassment it is to me as it is to the Liberal Party.

“This guy is a racist, an anti-Semite, he’s presented fraudulent documents to the parliament. He is not the sort of person who would be supported by the Prime Minister or the Treasurer or any Liberal of standing.”

While the vote at the meeting was unanimous, one committee member, Bev McArthur, effectively abstained by not attending the meeting. The wife of Liberal MP Stewart McArthur, she had earlier refused to join the push to dump Mr Aldred.

Mr Aldred was a federal MP for several years before he was disendorsed in 1995 after his accusations against Mr Leibler.

He has previously admitted meeting delegations of LaRouche and the Citizens Electoral Council, with LaRouche leader Allen Douglas reportedly praising Mr Aldred as a “patriot acting in the best interests of his country”.

Mr Aldred has also falsely claimed former foreign affairs department head Michael Costello had accepted $1 million from Israeli agents with links to South American drug barons and provided documents to a Melbourne newspaper alleging that Mr Howard and former prime ministers Paul Keating and Bob Hawke accepted money from the Indonesian government in return for influencing Australia’s foreign policy. The documents were found to be false.

Mr Aldred did not return calls last night.