Eddie Obeid

Politicians who wish to run coups should always learn to count. Mark Latham, former ALP leader launches into one big long sledge against Kevin Rudd and his cowardice and inability to count along with his an attack on his supporters.

It really is just one big long rant:

“We go through this every time about the inflated Rudd numbers. Kevin Rudd put his hand up for the Labor leadership six times, and in each case he has dramatically inflated his numbers in leaks to the media.

“You had silly Kieran Gilbert on Sky News today saying: ‘Oh, will it be like last time, when Rudd had the numbers and then they fell apart when the ballot was held – his numbers dissipated.’

“Well, he didn’t have the numbers in the first place; I mean, I just get amazed at the gullible nature of the media where, time after time after time after time, they buy the Rudd BS.

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Eddie Obeid is proving to be a daily embarrassment for Labor in Australia. Now they are threatening to engulf Bob Carr.

The spat between former premiers over who was to blame for the rise of powerbroker Eddie Obeid in NSW Labor has again raised questions about how a succession of leaders failed to check his power.

As the allegations of wide-ranging corruption have emerged at the corruption watchdog, former premier Bob Carr has sought to portray himself as having stood up to Eddie Obeid’s influence. It was his successor, Morris Iemma, who had given him ”special status” within the state government, Carr told ABC1′s Four Corners this week – and, by implication, left Obeid unchecked to exploit his position.

Iemma responded with vigour, pointing out that he did not give Obeid a ministry, Carr did.

The picture of how Obeid accrued so much clout in the ALP is much more complex. Iemma might have been a closer friend to Obeid, but Carr turned a blind eye and at one stage even gave character evidence for the powerbroker in a defamation suit against the Herald.

Obeid, a budding Lebanese businessman and owner of ethnic newspaper El Telegraph, joined the Labor Party at 29 and was elected to the Legislative Council in 1991. A good networker with extensive ethnic contacts, he wielded significant clout in the ALP’s western Sydney branches even before he entered State Parliament.

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Right now in NSW it is death by a 1000 cuts on dodgy ALP ratbags. And the biggest ratbag of all is Eddie Obeid.

Eddie Obeid’s claims to a corruption inquiry that he played no part in his family’s business interests have been contradicted by his private diaries, which list scores of meetings with Sydney’s most influential people, some of whom did deals with companies tied to the former Labor minister’s family.

”I’ve repeated that dozens of times and I’ll repeat it again. I have not been involved in the business for 25 years!” Mr Obeid angrily told the Independent Commission Against Corruption which has been investigating allegations that he and his family made a $30 million profit from an allegedly corrupt government coal tender presided over by the now disgraced resources minister Ian Macdonald.

But contrary to his evidence, Mr Obeid’s diaries, recently tendered at the inquiry, paint an extraordinary picture of business dealings, including with a number of key business associates of the Obeid family.

Property developer Rocco Triulcio is shown to meet Mr Obeid regularly at a ”car wash”, at Latteria, a coffee shop in Darlinghurst, or, on one occasion, at a wharf in Cabarita.

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Things are getting tough for the dodgy Labor ratbags in NSW, even their own party is over them:

Former Labor ministers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald are set to be expelled from the party within days after a call by NSW Opposition Leader John Robertson following evidence at the Independent Commission Against Corruption.

Mr Robertson wrote to NSW Labor Party general secretary Sam Dastyari on Wednesday.

”I write to request that you expel Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald from the Labor Party immediately on the basis that they have brought the party into disrepute,” he wrote.

”Brought the party into disrepute”: Ian Macdonald.

”These are extraordinary circumstances and I request you take action as soon as practicable.”

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The dodgy ALP ratbags at the centre of corruption proceedings in NSW will get a bit of a reprieve as public submissions have finished.

After more than three months of sensational evidence, the NSW anti-corruption watchdog has finished hearing from witnesses in its inquiry into allegedly tainted coalfields deals involving senior NSW Labor figures.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has been probing whether then mines minister Ian Macdonald rigged a 2008 tender process for a coal exploration licence in the NSW upper Hunter and how former Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid may have gained.

It’s claimed Mr Macdonald did the bidding of Obeid family members, who allegedly hid their involvement in the area through complex trust and company structures.

The Obeids stood to make up to $100 million from mining deals in the area from corruption at a level not seen since the days of the Rum Corps, the inquiry was told.

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Looks like this ratbag’s mental health break didn’t work:

It was Saturday morning and classical music was floating through solicitor John Gerathy’s multimillion-dollar waterfront apartment in Woolloomooloo. ”You have got me at an inopportune moment,” said Gerathy when he picked up the phone. ”I have got some guests here at home. They’ve come to visit,” he said.

Only last month, the Herald revealed that Gerathy, 67, had checked himself into a mental health facility, telling corruption investigators he was too ill to give evidence.

However, the Independent Commission Against Corruption, which has all but finished inquiries in Operation Jasper, will be sitting this week to hear two vital witnesses who have previously been unavailable: Gerathy and the Obeids’ accountant, Sid Sassine, who has been overseas.

Gerathy declined to discuss the nature of his illness. When asked if he had recovered, he replied: ”I am not sure about that.” Would he be giving evidence on Tuesday? ”Oh, well, I, ah, I hope so,” he said.  Read more »

Perhaps the most fun in politics right now is watching the dodgy ALP ratbags get their beans in Australia at the moment:

THE words packed all the power of a hunting rifle in the crowded hearing room high above Sydney’s streets.

”Look, Mr Macdonald, what I really want to put to you is that in fact you’re a crook.”

The accusation, from the lips of counsel assisting the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), Geoffrey Watson, SC, seemed to suck all the air out of the commission’s gallery.

Ian Macdonald, the fellow being accused of skulduggery, was a cabinet minister in the New South Wales Parliament until 2010, when, having gained the sobriquet Sir Lunchalot, he resigned after a spot of bother concerning misuse of public funds.

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The dodgy Labor and union ratbags in Australia are being skewered daily by the ICAC. Ian Macdonald appears to have had 14 banka accounts  I suppose he might have worried about misplacing a couple.

The disgraced former resources minister Ian Macdonald had 14 separate bank accounts during his time as a NSW cabinet minister, a corruption inquiry has been told.

Mr Macdonald accepted it might be possible he had that many, but suggested some might be related to several “farm enterprises”, and said he didn’t know whether all of them were “operational”.

The Independent Commission Against Corruption is questioning Mr Macdonald over almost $200,000 in loans he had received from his former best friend, Greg Jones.

Mr Jones was also a secret investor in Cascade Coal, which was awarded a lucrative exploration licence in 2009 over a coal tenement at Mt Penny, near Mudgee, which is the subject of the inquiry.

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The ICAC investigations into the dodgy union and ALP ratbags is fascinating. They even hired a private investigator to follow and dig up dirt on journalists who were exposing their crooked behaviour:

A BARRISTER appearing for an allegedly corrupt player in the current ICAC inquiry asked me this week if I had seen House of Cards, an English political thriller in which conservative politician Francis Urquhart deploys blackmail and other nefarious methods to achieve his political ambitions.

There were two things I recalled about the program, and one of them was that the journalist met with a sticky end, still clutching her tape recorder as she fell to her death.

It was therefore with some disquiet that I learnt one of the central figures who has appeared at the recent Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry approached a private detective to have me followed.

The private eye, who doesn’t want to be named, thought I had better know that in mid-2012 Moses Obeid came to his office wanting his family’s homes and businesses swept for ICAC bugs. The other thing he wanted was ”to have you placed under surveillance”, the investigator said.

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Thieving ALP ratbag Craig Thomson is having a big sook about being treated like every other charged criminal. Not for these union and ALP ratbags it seems…they want to be treated special:

More and more information is coming out about Thomson, the man who props up Julia Gillard’s government.  Read more »