IS VIRGINIA JUDGE FINALLY TO FACE THE HIGH JUMP ??? News that former Eddie Obeid staffer, and now MP for Strathfield, Virginia Judge had referred allegations that she had acted inappropriately in lobbying the Police Minister to approve a police station in a shopping centre to ICAC, is not entirely surprising, but what was surprising was that the ICAC came out publicly and stated that her letter to it did not form the basis for an investigation for it. Accordingly, Judge's attempts to take the high moral ground by saying she wished the matter investigated by NSW's top corrution watch-dog, seems to have fallen flat with the accepted perception now being that her referral letter was nothing but a sleazy attempt to close debate down on the subject, especially bearing in mind that the NSW Parliament resumes next week after a long summer break (NSW is the "Lazy" state, with MP's taking the longest summer break of any around parliament in Australia).
The question on everyone's lips is whether this allegation will bring Virginia Judge down, or will it be one of the myriad of other rumours circulating that does so.
Our informant tells us the sharks (not the ones in Sydney Harbour) are presently circling.
The gifts that keep on giving trouble THE Minister for Fair Trading, Virginia Judge, has devised a new tactic to forestall any claims of undue influence from donations to her campaign funds: she has referred her own action to the Independent Commission Against Corruption. By getting in before the Opposition - eliminating the middleman, so to speak - Ms Judge may shorten the kerfuffle over her actions. But she has not allayed public concern over the wider issue of political donations. Ms Judge lobbied her colleague, the Minister for Police, Tony Kelly, to set up a police station at Strathfield Plaza, owned by Memo Corporation, which has been a generous supporter in the past. Ms Judge says it is a good place for a police station, and it just so happens that the shopping centre is owned by Memo Corporation. That is quite possibly true. Strathfield needs police stations, and shopping centres may well be good places to put them. On the other hand, would this decision have been made without the donations? It benefits Strathfield Plaza to have a police post on the premises, but is it the best place for it? Ms Judge obviously can see that, however public-spirited her motives, it may look as if she has done a favour for a generous backer. Political donations will do that. They do it to all parties. As the Herald reported on Monday, the former Liberal immigration minister Amanda Vanstone overruled a predecessor's decision to deport one Francesco Madafferi, suspected of Mafia connections. A party insider has claimed Madafferi's associates contributed to Liberal campaign funds. Federal police have reopened an investigation of the matter, after an earlier inquiry had failed to find evidence of wrongdoing. However, there is no need to prove wrongdoing on anyone's part in either case to draw one obvious conclusion: the rules on political donations need revising. The former premier Morris Iemma wanted to ban political donations, but his successor, Nathan Rees, has said it is impossible for one state to act alone. The country is awaiting the review of election funding being conducted by the Special Minister of State, John Faulkner, which, let us hope, will balance free political expression in a democracy with greater transparency in party funding In the meantime, our political parties might recognise the public disquiet to which large donations from interested parties give rise. They should just say no more often. Editorial, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 February, 2009.
Imre Salusinszky, The future for NSW Labor looks grim indeed, The Australian, 6 February, 2009:- IF you want to take the measure of the turbulence in Labor politics in NSW, you might consult Shakespeare. The theme that runs through much of what is happening at Macquarie Street surfaces in many of the plays, but is most pronounced in Macbeth: the killing of a king, before the act, seems a minor matter of flesh and steel; from the moment the act is committed, however, the whole world is plunged into chaos and misrule. This may in part explain the rumour mill that is churning around Premier Nathan Rees and his prospects of survival to the next election. NSW Labor resisted the temptations of regicide for more than a century, but having succumbed to those urgings and decapitated former premier Morris Iemma, it cannot underwrite the future of any premier. And, given the use party officials made of poor opinion polling to undermine Iemma, the fact Rees's polls are worse -- with barely a quarter of voters supporting the Government, according to a Newspoll published in The Australian last December -- his position is even more precarious. Before Christmas, senior figures in caucus, and some cabinet ministers, were muttering to each other, and occasionally to journalists, that "the experiment has failed". The experiment was to put a man from the minority Left faction with less than 18 months parliamentary experience in charge of the Government. Last month, stories began appearing about a push gathering behind former planning minister Frank Sartor, dumped from cabinet following Iemma's downfall and then, to add insult to injury, branded a disruptive influence by Rees. Certainly, there is much that Rees could, or should, have done differently. One of the ironies in the world of irony that has enveloped NSW Labor is that last September, it threw up an inexperienced team to run the largest state on the cusp of a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis; a crisis that needs the experience Iemma and his treasurer, Michael Costa, would have brought to it. Eric Roozendaal, Rees's choice as treasurer, is a seasoned machine-man and strategist, but without experience in economic management: he reportedly joked with officials at his first briefing that he was looking forward to learning the difference between fiscal and monetary policy. In response to the credit crunch and collapse in state revenues, Rees and Roozendaal brought down a mini-budget last November that worked against the federal Government's expansionary initiatives. While Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan were pumping billions into the economy, Rees and Roozendaal were cutting spending by $3.3 billion over four years, increasing taxes and charges by about the same amount, and pushing out infrastructure projects in order to protect the state's AAA credit rating, which the ratings agencies had flagged as threatened by the defeat of Iemma's and Costa's $12 billion electricity privatisation bill. There may be legitimate arguments about the economics of the mini-budget, but nobody disputes the marketing of the document was a disaster. Roozendaal did nothing to dispel leaks concerning plans to abolish school travel passes worth $500 million a year, even though a modest co-payment by families was all that was intended. The noise around the issue was so deafening that even the co-payment had to be ditched. At a time when steadiness at the wheel has become more important than ever, NSW is adrift. For example, a plan to build a metro rail system to outer northwest Sydney, announced by Iemma last year, was axed by Rees, only to reappear days later in a curtailed version; that project -- a metro running between the city and the inner west -- has gone from being one of the items proposed by NSW for federal funding to a fully funded state project. Earlier this week, Rees foreshadowed a deviation from the economic settings of the mini-budget, declaring that surpluses and deficits were mere "economic definitions" and committing the Government to "investing in the future of NSW". In other ways, however, Rees is victim rather than culprit. His biggest problem is that he comes from outside the NSW Right, which controls 48 of the 70 votes in his caucus. With the government in decline and an every-man-for-himself mentality taking hold, that is a very big issue indeed. The NSW Right, which former prime minister Paul Keating once described as providing the ballast of the Labor Party -- supporting centrist leadership and moderate policies in NSW and nationally -- is in disarray as a result of the manner of Iemma's undoing: part of the reason the premiership had to be outsourced to Rees's faction, the Left, in the first place. For much of 2008, the Right was seething with discontent over the way Iemma was white-anted by faction leaders in the Sussex Street machine, following his decision to ignore the party conference and press ahead with power privatisation. After Iemma's downfall, much of the heat was deflected on to the faction's parliamentary leaders, in the shape of Ports Minister Joe Tripodi and upper house MP Eddie Obeid. Tripodi and Obeid -- who lead a majority sub-group within the Right known as the Terrigals -- insisted, and continue to insist, they were behind Iemma all the way, but could not rally the numbers for the radical cabinet reshuffle he brought to caucus on September 5, 2007. However, Iemma has made it clear he regards Tripodi and Obeid, with whom he was so long identified, as rats in the ranks. The extent of the anger surrounding Tripodi was reflected in media reports yesterday suggesting he may leave state politics for Canberra. Tripodi denies the move, but the leaking of such a story suggests there are senior party figures who would not be sorry to see him out of Macquarie Street. Another source of toil and trouble within the Right is union boss John Robertson, the key figure in the defeat of the privatisation proposal, who replaced Costa in the upper house. This volatile situation needed just one more element to become the perfect storm, and that element arrived last month when the Right convened to fill two cabinet vacancies. The vacancies arose last year when Rees was forced to sack two cabinet ministers, former police minister Matt Brown and former assistant health Tony Stewart. Brown was revealed to have danced in his underpants at a wild party in Parliament House last June, while the unpredictable Stewart was found to have verbally intimidated a staffer at a public function. While the dismissal of Brown was widely accepted as unavoidable, there was disquiet in the Right, directed at Rees, over Stewart, who denies the allegations against him and is challenging his dismissal in the NSW Supreme Court. Rees was happy to let the Right fill both vacancies but, bizarrely, insisted one of the spots go to Robertson. To Iemma loyalists, this was a red rag, and appeared to confirm suspicions Rees had not been a passive onlooker in the destabilisation of his predecessor. A rag-tag group of non-Terrigals within the Right insisted on having dibs on the second vacancy. As with everything in the Macbeth-like world of NSW Labor, there are as many versions of what happened next as there are caucus MPs. Tripodi and Obeid argue they were willing to compromise with the non-Terrigals and blame that group for failing to agree on a candidate. In the end, the warlords held firm, and a ballot delivered the second spot to the Terrigals' candidate, Monaro MP Steve Whan. But this is a case where victory could prove more expensive than defeat, with the anger of the non-Terrigals drawing them ever closer to becoming a co- ordinated sub-faction that, in concert with the Left, could wreak havoc on Tripodi, Obeid, and Rees. And on the Prime Minister. Another appropriate Shakespearean theme is the impossibility of containing anarchy and madness once they have been set loose. The challenges posed for Kevin Rudd by the Macquarie Street meltdown are twofold. First, he will likely face electors in NSW three or four months before Rees goes to the polls on March26, 2011. Recent Newspolls indicate that, while Rudd's primary support in NSW is softer than in the other states, at 41 per cent it is still tracking 15 points above that of Rees. Federal Labor figures are confident voters will restrain their baseball bats until state Labor sticks up its head: but with a third of federal Labor's 15 most marginal seats in NSW, Rudd cannot afford any association with the troubled state party. Second, and more worrying for Rudd perhaps, is the breakdown within the NSW Right, the factional home of no fewer than 19 of his own caucus MPs. Before federal Labor gets to the polls, it faces a redistribution that will cut NSW's federal allotment from 49 to 48 seats, and the preselections to follow. That could prove messy enough, even with tight factional leadership and discipline, never mind the opposite. Following the internal shenanigans and public brawling over the Robertson appointment, there was a sense at Macquarie Street this week of Labor taking a deep breath before even thinking of stumbling, for the second time in months, towards the brink. It is safe, however, to assume Sartor will make a move on Rees if the next couple of Newspolls are as dire as the last. Even if his challenge falters, it could provide the avenue for another candidate to come though the middle. Possibilities include Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt, Planning Minister Kristina Keneally, or even -- in what would venture into wet-dream territory for Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell -- Robertson himself. According to Rodney Smith, a NSW politics expert at the University of Sydney, Labor's disarray bears comparison with what occurred in the dying days of the governments led by Neville Wran and Barrie Unsworth between 1978 and 1988. "The pressures for the factions to divide are strongest when the party is in trouble," says Smith. "People who are in the ministry now are going to be in the ministry for two years, but after that Labor's going to be waiting for a while." Smith says Rees has six months or so to "establish some kind of credibility and direction," but suspects the Right knowingly parachuted him into the premiership early, leaving itself with time for a subsequent switch. This analysis suggests it is unlikely the forces unleashed last year will be contained during the present NSW political cycle: "Foul whisperings are abroad: unnatural deeds / Do breed unnatural troubles."
MORE GRAVY ON THE TRAINS NSW's "class act" Premier, Nathan Rees make a big song and dance when he brought down his November 2008 "austerity" mini-budget of MP's sharing the pain with other NSW community members by taking away the gold pass which entitled MP's to free travel on government run public transport.
However, the Parliament has ensured the gravy train keeps rolling along by encouraging MPs to claim travel expenses on their parliamentary Logistical Support Allowance (LSA). The LSA claim forms were amended to include a specific section where MPs could claim public transport travel. So what Nathan Rees took away with one hand, has been reinstated simply by being transferred onto another account. No matter on which account the travel is paid for, either the gold travel pass account or the LSA account, the simple fact is the taxpayers of NSW are paying for it.
Speaker Richard Torbay MP, is calling on the government to re-instate the Gold Pass for MPs - to keep them on the gravy train.
REES IS AN EMBARRASSMENT Our "class act" Premier, Nathan Rees is an embarrassment. To tackle unemployment, after bringing down a contractionary "austerity" budget in November 2008, Rees held a talk-fest, the centrepiece of which was a re-announcement of a policy first announced in March 2008 and formalised in November 2008. One seriously has to question whether Nathan Rees would be capable of managing a brothel. Certainly, he hasn't got the faintest idea of how to manage NSW. He is a lame duck leader, who does not even command the respect of his own political party. He is in the top job by virtue of a series of fortuitous circumstances and remains there by virtue of a support base cobbled together for disparate reasons. The rug will be pulled from under his feet eventually. He truly is the "Emperor without any clothes".
IS TORBAY COMMENCING A RUN FOR FEDERAL PARLIAMENT ???
Richard Torbay MP (Northern Tablelands) promised he would bring in reform to parliamentary procedure and reform to enable the Speaker to speak from the floor of the house "early" in his term of Speaker of the NSW Legislative Assembly. He achieved promptly the right to speak on the floor. However, now that we are half-way through his term as Speaker, nothing has been heard of his stated intention to reform parliamentary procedure. Perhaps he has lost heart - and just given up. Alternatively, his mind might be focused elsewhere - on the big game played out in Canberra. After all Tony Windsor, who holds the federal seat of New England in which Torbay resides, is close to his "use-by-date". Rob Oakeshott has moved into the federal parliament, and it must particularly pain Torbay that Oakeshott is playing with the big boys whereas he, Torbay, is still playing in the 2nd division competition. It is certain that Torbay will not be re-appointed Speaker after the 2011 election. O'Farrell has signalled that in a cleverly crafted speech to the NSW Parliament. O'Farrell will want one of his own as Speaker. With a Liberal government in NSW, Torbay who has close associations with NSW Labor (who are apparently set to take control of the federal government), would be much better off in Canberra, than in NSW under a decaying Labor government and an incoming Liberal government in 2011. However, in politics, timing is crucial. A federal election is due by about March 2011 at the latest (although realistically would not be expected to be held after November 2010), and there have been strong suggestions that Rudd will go to the polls this year (2009) - possibly with a double dissolution election. If Rudd does so, then the next federal election at the earliest would be expected to be 2012. By 2012-2013, the gloss of Rudd will be severely tarnished, and one could expect federal Labor to be in decay. So realistically, for Torbay, the best time to jump ship would be in 2009/2010. That would involve a loss of the Speaker's salary and enormous side benefits provided by the job. On the other hand to wait until 2012, would involve sitting on the back bench in the NSW parliament twiddling thumbs for 1-2 years from 2011, and then moving to Canberra where federal Labor would be on the wane. Leaving aside considerations of personal gain from the largesse of the public purse as Speaker, clearly the best time to jump ship would be 2009/2010. The real question is whether Tony Windsor would be prepared to step aside in 2009/2010 to allow Torbay a clear run. Or maybe Torbay will have to push Windsor to do so. Indications are he is making subtle moves in that direction already. However, one suspects Windsor is not yet prepared to be bullied into taking what he would perceive as "early retirement". Still others have claimed he is already past his "use-by-date".
OBEID & TRIPODI - UP TO THEIR NECKS IN MUCK ??? Kate McClymont.has written an interesting article about donations from unsavoury characters in an article titled Talk about the pot calling the kettle black in the Sydney Morning Herald on 28 February 2009.
IT seems Obeid & Tripodi have hit pay-dirt by installing Kristina Kenneally in the job of Planning Minister, in place of the "non-performing" Frank Sartor MP (Rockdale), with a increase in development approvals since her installation. see: Brian Robins, New minister hastens developer approvals, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 2009.
FACING THE CHOP Linda Simalis in the Sunday Telegraph suggests that Sussex Street are leaning on a number of MPs to quit at the 2011 election (expected to be a scorched earth election for the Rees government) including:-
John Aquilina MP (Riverstone)
Phil Koperburg MP (Blue Mountains)
Marie Andrews MP (Gosford)
Richard Amery MP (Mt Druitt)
Tony Stewart MP (Lakemba)
Grant McBride MP (The Entrance)
Kerry Hickey MP (Cessnock)
Gerard Martin MP (Bathurst)
Dianne Beamer MP (Mulgoa)
Frank Sartor MP (Rockdale)
Interestingly, Joe Tripodi MP (Fairfield) is not included in the list of "dead wood" to be removed. OF course, not included in the list is those who will be removed from the NSW parliament, not by Sussex Street, but the community. At that top of that list of community pruning is expected to be Kristina Keneally MP (Heffron). SOURCE : Linda Simalis, Nathan Rees to axe dead wood Labor MPs, Sunday Telegraph, 1 March, 2009.