The ALP really is full of dodgy union connected ratbags:
The son of ALP powerbroker Eddie Obeid has admitted that the former resources minister Ian Macdonald provided him with a list of mining companies which included the name of a company which went on to win six of 11 licences subsequently put to tender by the government.
And Moses Obeid conceded that his father, who was head of the faction which picked the ALP’s last three state premiers, had been kept informed of negotiations to sell a family farm which sat within one of these licence tenements: “We were not going to hide from him that the family farm was going to be sold … He knew about it.”
The Independent Commission Against Corruption is probing a tender of coal licences conducted under Mr Macdonald’s watch in 2008 which has created millions of dollars in windfall gains for the Obeid family, and has alleged that these gains were the result of a corrupt conspiracy.
Early in his evidence, Moses Obeid did accept that information given to him by Mr Macdonald, and decisions later taken by the government, meant his family stood to make more than $75 million.
But Moses Obeid this morning denied knowing at the time that the family was trading on highly-sensitive confidential information. He said it seemed to him that the Department of Primary Industries was “leaking like a sieve”.
After receiving the list of companies and passing it on to a merchant banker, Gardner Brook, evidence previously given at the inquiry has established that the Obeid family held extensive negotiations with Monaro Mining before it bid and won its licences.
In sometimes fiery exchanges with counsel assisting the inquiry, Geoffrey Watson SC, Moses Obeid said he “obviously don’t know the way that business is done”.
Oh we know how business is done in the Labor party and their dodgy union mates…the ICAC and other court cases are revealing all that for us and will continue to do so right up the general election in Australia.
