BRIBERY CHARGE.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 August 1922, Page 5

BRIBERY CHARGE.

CASE IN AUSTRALIA SECRET POLITICAL MOVE. TWO JOURNALISTS ON TRIAL. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. Received Aug. 28, 11.10 p.m. Brisbane, Aug. 28. The case was continued in which two journalists, John Sleeman and Edward Connolly, are charged with having attempted to bribe F. Brennan to vote against hi* party on the censure motion. Brennan arranged for two detectives to meet him at a hotel, and after conversing with Sleeman and Connolly, Brennan called the detectives and told them he had been offered £3200 to vote against the Government. Giving evidence, Brennan said that in the first interview Connolly told- him that the Labor Party was gone and that 18 Labor members were going over with Mr. Theodore (the Premier) and five members of the Country Party were to join him in a new party, giving him a party of 23. Mr. Theodore could get a dissolution, go to the country, and sweep the polls with the. new party. They had a member of the Labor Party who was willing to go over for £2OOO. Brennan said this was not enough, and asked him could he get £3500, to which Connolly agreed. Continuing, Brennan said the two accused went to his house, witness having previously had a hole bored in the floor of a room and a hole cut in the wall, with two detectives and a shorthand writer in hiding. He arranged to meet accused at a hotel next day, when they told him they had £3200 with them. Brennan then had them arrested.