Dennis Jensen claims ‘smear campaign’

WA Liberal MP Dennis Jensen has been dumped by the party as its candidate for the safe seat of Tangney, just days after extracts from a controversial book he had written, containing graphic sex scenes, were leaked to the media.
Local preselectors have opted for the party’s former state director Ben Morton to represent them in Tangney.
A furious Dr Jensen stormed out of Sunday’s preselection meeting when the result was announced, refusing to answer any questions.
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However, Dr Jensen later told the ABC he was the victim of an “absolute smear campaign” by the Morton camp, whom he accuses of leaking his unpublished book to the media.
Dr Jensen said the result meant “dirty tricks had been rewarded” and flagged the possibility he may quit the party in disgust.
“I am not very happy about this sort of behaviour being allowed to fly and get rewarded,” he said.
“To go back to something like that says how clean I am and how deep they have gone to get smut on me or something negative — they have not managed so they fabricated something.”
Dr Jensen said he believed he had done a good job during his time in Parliament.
“I think my electoral results show my constituents think I have been doing an outstanding job,” he said.
“I’ve been the most popular member for Tangney there’s ever been and they’ve stabbed me in the back for that.”
Dr Jensen is set to launch Supreme Court action against The Australian newspaper, claiming a pair of articles it ran about him last week were defamatory.
Dr Jensen wrote to publishers in 2007 using his parliamentary letterhead to seek to have the book, which contained a graphic sex scene, published.
“The vote was on a knife-edge in my view prior to those two articles,” he said.
“What he did was make out that I was a purveyor of smut … it was done in my view to deliberately damage me.”
Mr Jensen said his father, also an author, had advised him that every book needed at least one racy scene to get published.