For the hypocrisy and bias in Sweetman's comments see this report.
Terry Sweetman, The Courier-Mail, 17th September 1999
Just about the first human being our busload of terrified conscripts came across during our initiation to national service was a tough-as-Tobruk company sergeant-major who told us a funny story and then proceeded to tear us limb from limb.
The funny bit concerned a hungover Colonel who blamed a chance encounter with a drunken ranker for the vomit on his tunic, and promised his batman he would deal harshly with the misrcreant.
"What did you give him," the batman inquired that evening.
"Fourteen days confined to barracks," blustered the blimp.
"You should have given him 28 days, because the filthy bugger dirtied your underpants as well," replied the batman.
Somehow I am reminded of that tired old gag every time I see or read about One Nation member for Ipswich West Jack Paff.
It's not only that the drunken Colonel is a faintly ridiculous figure, it's because neither he nor Paff seems able to accept the consequences of his own actions.
Paff, who so far as his public profile in the Parliament goes, seems to be little more than a waste of space, has again been caught out bending the truth, but again refuses to acknowledge the gravity of his actions.
"I'm not in trouble," he fatuously declared after an all-party ethics committee ruled he had intentionally misled Parliament.
He's in so little trouble that he could be sidelined for 21 days, some of which might be sitting days, meaning, at the very least, he won't be able fully to do the job for which he is so handsomely paid.
Worse, he just doesn't have the wits to realise the seriousness of misleading the House and, by that, demonstrates a lamentable lack of understanding of the democratic institutions through which he and his party pledged to achieve so much.
Strangely, his latest gaffe came in a misleading report he tabled allegedly rebutting another parliamentary report that found he made false allegations about two serving police officers.
He falsely denied claims that former one Nation adviser Geoffrey Moss had written maiden speeches for One Nation MPs.
People's Tribune Paff seems to have a poor opinion of the intellectual process of his fellow citizens.
How else could you explain the well-remembered codswallup he kept serving up in the wake of his infamous fabrication of the senior copper who put the squeeze on a suspect's testicles to force a confession out of him?
Paff's story just got stranger and stranger. First he claimed his macabre make-believe was designed to shock an innocent young officer, then he claimed it was all part of a devious plot to uncover a leak from the Criminal Justice Commission.
Then he came up with a fevered fairytale of how the wicked Channel 10 sat down with its coloured pencils and doctored a video tape so it showed him running a red light to escape from the curious media. He was cleared on a technicality on the minor charge of running a red light, but there was absolutely no evidence of any sort of a plot to entrap him.
Paff's sorry track record indicates we shouldn't be surprised by what he does and what he says, but worrying was the reaction of the party leader, Bill Feldman.
One Nation, he said, was the victim of a conspiracy by the major parties to crucify Paff.
As Feldman dons his conspiratorial crown of thorns and draws ridiculous biblical analogies, he might well remember that not all these who faced crucifixion were martyrs. The Bible records it was also the fate of rogues.
But nothing short of brain surgery will convince One Nation that there is no underhand conspiracy against it.
There is an understandable wish by all parties to rid the parliament of a political movement that promises so much and delivers so little but, similarly, Labor would exult should it run the Coalition out of the House and the Coalition would crack open the champers were it to rout the ALP.
In pursuit of these aims mainstream parties rely on policy and the ability ruthlessly to tear down those who falter in the House or in the execution of their duties.
One Nation, of course, is fatally weakened by its lack of realistic policies and is rendered vulnerable by its own ineptitude, disregard for the truth and now, it seems, lack of regard for the proprieties of the House and the institutions of democracy.
"Nobody wants us here but the general public," said Feldman, perhaps with a wistful backward glance to the triumphal days of 1998 rather than the bleak realities of 1999. "I'm standing by Jack. Of course I would. Why wouldn't I?"
Why wouldn't you? Well for starters, Paff's apparent lack of affection for the facts is one of the reasons that public support for One Nation has so dramatically declined.
After the next election, when all the former One Nation members and the deserters are sitting quietly at home thinking about their brief moment of glory and what might have been, they could all well say, "Thanks heaps Jack".