An ice axe and a ‘gangland identity' spice up public-sector union fight
An anonymous email landed in Victorian prison officers' personal inboxes last month with a cryptic Gmail username: iceaxeforleon.
Only those with a keen interest in 20th century Russian history might have grasped the reference. Communist revolutionary Leon Trotsky died when the assassin Ramon Mercader plunged an ice axe into his head. Just like Mercader's pickaxe, the email was pointed.
Its target was Jiselle Hanna, a Corrections Victoria project officer and socialist activist who has nominated to be secretary of the Victorian branch of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), which has 15,000 members spanning the breadth of the state's public service.
The email, headlined 'A troubling campaign for union leadership' and addressed 'Dear member', raised 'serious concerns' about Hanna's campaign.
It had received 'hostile endorsements', both from the Victorian Socialists' former Senate candidate Jordan Van Den Lamb, who had 'described law enforcement officers as militarised pigs', and to 'known underworld identity' Mick Gatto, claiming her campaign had accepted a $1000 donation from him.
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'Members deserve to know what kind of deal was struck in exchange for his financial support,' the letter said.
Hanna was seeking to portray herself as the head of a grassroots movement, but was in truth part of a calculated hard-left political campaign to infiltrate the public sector union, the email claimed.
Though the email was anonymous, its author left digital tracks. Supporters of Hanna used two-factor authentication to trace the Gmail account back to the staff email account of an employee of the Victorian branch of the CPSU.
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