A Supreme Court judge has blasted former NSW Labor MP Eddie Obeid and his sons for bringing an “unreasonable” and “irresponsible” lawsuit against the corruption watchdog and ordered the family to pay a multimillion-dollar legal bill.
In a scathing judgment delivered on Monday, Justice David Hammerschlag said there was “every reason why” Obeid and his sons Moses, Paul and Eddie jnr should pay the costs of every person sued in the case.
This included former Independent Commission Against Corruption chief David Ipp, QC, against whom the Obeids had made baseless allegations of misconduct that Justice Hammerschlag described as “of the gravest kind”.
Legal sources said the bill would easily exceed $2 million, on top of the Obeids’ own costs. Read more »
The arrival of 5700 refugees from war-torn Syria and Iraq has police resources stretched to the limit — as they beg for more officers. Picture: Carmela Roche
The Police union in Fairfield, are deciding whether or not to go on strike because of the significant increase in crime in their part of Sydney. They are considering industrial action in the hope that it will force the government to hire more officers. One of the main reasons that they are struggling to cope is because of the significant increase in the number of refugees being placed in their area. They have been given 5700 refugees in Fairfield, double the amount being placed elsewhere. Unions support the Labor party yet, in this case, it is the Labor Party that is responsible for the problem that the Police now face.
POLICE in Sydney’s most deadly suburbs are threatening to go slow on crime because there is too much of it.
Officers at Fairfield will this week decide whether to use a limited form of strike action unless they get at least 10 new officers and another multicultural liaison officer.
Fairfield is the most disadvantaged area in Sydney and has a murder rate almost double the state average. It had 17 shootings in the past year, including three murders.
NSW Premier Mike Baird says Eddie Obeid will be stripped of his lifetime pension, around $120,000 each year, after his jailing over wilful misconduct.
The government has removed a loophole in legislation that only strips parliamentarians of their allowance if they are convicted of a serious offence, but only while they are in office.
Former Labor powerbroker Obeid, 73, was sentenced this morning to a non-parole period of three years in prison, with a maximum term of five years, for wilful misconduct offences in public office.
He retired from parliament retired in 2011.
Under the current rules, any MP convicted of an offence that punishable by imprisonment for more than five years is liable to lose their parliamentary pension, but this does not apply to former MPs convicted after leaving parliament.
“The crimes of Eddie Obeid and his cronies are the most serious instance of official corruption we have seen in our lifetime,” Mr Baird said.
“Regardless of political affiliation, any MP who commits a serious offence while in office should face the consequences, and should not be shielded simply because they resign before being charged.”
Mr Baird said the government will also move to recover taxpayer-funded legal assistance provided to Mr Obeid because of his position as a former minister, a bill which runs to more than $280,000.
However, costs incurred by the state during the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s investigations of Mr Obeid which have not led to convictions cannot be recovered.
Phil Quin looks at the comparison between Labour in NZ and Labor in Australia, and finds the difference isn’t just a ‘u’.
The Australian experience suggests the answer for Labour in New Zealand is not “change the leader”, the knee-jerk response most often preferred. The ALP is within reach, if not exactly favoured, in the coming election despite having a leader with frankly atrocious numbers. Traumatized by the Rudd-Gillard wars, MPs and activists have by and large rallied behind Shorten (albeit a loveless loyalty in many cases), who has in turn worked hard to restore the party to viability.
Compared to Shorten, Phil Goff had it easy in 2008. Helen Clark and Michael Cullen had left Labour in decent shape. And yet, despairingly, Labour’s share of the vote has declined in each subsequent election as the party turned inwards, interpreting each defeat as anything but a repudiation; blaming instead the electorate’s inability to “see through” the diabolical Key, the spectre of “dirty politics” (known in Australia and elsewhere as “politics”), one million dogmatically left-wing voters who habitually forget to vote, David Cunliffe, the mythic ‘Anyone But Cunliffes’, or, at barrel’s bottom, residual fury at the party’s embrace of neoliberalism in the Eighties. That voters might have got it right in their intuition that Labour fails to demonstrate readiness for government is never countenanced.
Labour’s refusenik posture was never more graphically on display than in the review of Cunliffe’s defeat by former UK Labour MP Bryan Gould: the key to Labour’s rejuvenation, Gould insisted, is pretending to get along at all costs – perpetuating the self-serving myth that internal bickering, real and imagined, is all the only thing standing between the party and its destiny. Proponents of this position would point to the Rudd/Gillard experience, but they are confusing an ingredient for the whole recipe: not tearing one another apart is a necessary prerequisite to electoral success, but it is not, on its own, sufficient.
Today’s face of the day Dr Imran Syed, has been sacked by Labor in Australia for sharing online material attacking the West’s intervention in Syria and Iraq and criticising Israel.
Australian Labor leader Bill Shorten has been forced to apologise after he was caught on camera using his phone while driving.
The opposition leader was filmed using his phone while driving at 40kmh on Melbourne’s Kings Way in a white 4WD.
The video was taken on August 23 but has only just been made public.
Shorten apologised for the indiscretion on Thursday night.
“Like most drivers, I always try to do the right thing,” he said.
“But there’s no doubt that using your phone while driving is the wrong thing to do. There’s no excuse for it. I shouldn’t have done it and won’t do it again.” …
Police have arrested a former construction union organiser and previous Labor Party sub-branch president after he admitted to accepting tens of thousands of dollars in payments from tradesmen to help them win work.
The former ACT Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union organiser Halafihi ‘Fihi’ Kivalu was arrested after his admission at a Canberra hearing of the royal commission into unions on Thursday.
Mr Kivalu, who was president of the ALP’s Dickson-Morning sub-branch in Canberra at the time he was allegedly involved in corruption, has denied the cash payments constituted a bribe or that he could guarantee contracts and he has contested other allegations against him.
It is understood he was replaced as the ALP Dickson-Morning sub-branch president by another CFMEU official in May after holding the position for at least 12 months. Read more »
Labor MPs are privately acknowledging the Opposition Leader has “lost some bark” during his appearance at the royal commission into union corruption, but they maintain the damage is not serious.
Bill Shorten has spent two days giving evidence at the commission hearing in Sydney, about his time as the Victorian and national secretary of the Australian Workers Union (AWU) before he entered politics.
He may also be recalled to give further evidence before the commission’s final report is due at the end of the year.
The party only made the disclosure this week, eight years on.
It was just resting in the account…channelling Father Ted.
He has also been accused of a potential conflict of interest, because the union accepted $500,000 in payments from a glassworks company for ‘fees’ and ‘training’ while negotiating pay deals for workers.
Government frontbencher Eric Abetz said he thinks most people would be “horrified” by some of the evidence exposed through the royal commission.
But Mr Shorten has strongly rejected the accusation he has acted improperly.
At the end of the marathon hearings he fronted reporters to defend his reputation and declare he had “no conflict of interest whatsoever”.
“There was no evidence demonstrated of any conflict,” Mr Shorten said.
“The truth of the matter is that every day I was a union rep I was standing up for our members.”
Sources within the Labor Party have told the ABC that Mr Shorten has “lost some bark” through the process, and that it is “unhelpful” for the alternative prime minister to be hauled before the inquiry and the cameras.
LABOR leader Bill Shorten’s credibility has come under attack during a second day of grilling at the royal commission into union corruption.
Commissioner Dyson Heydon delivered an extraordinary lecture to Mr Shorten as the MP repeatedly gave long-winded answers to questions.
Mr Heydon told the former Australian Workers Union secretary he was only making himself look bad.
“What I am concerned about more is your credibility as a witness,” he said.
“A witness who answers each question ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘I don’t remember’ or clarifies the question, and so on, gives the cross-examiner very little to work with. It is in your interest to curb these, to some extent, extraneous answers.”
The rebuke came as a former ALP national secretary called on Mr Shorten to resign following allegations a labour hire firm paid his 2007 election campaign manager’s salary.
During his second day in the witness box, the federal Opposition Leader was quizzed about whether he had had a conflict of interest in negotiating pay deals with companies that had paid the AWU more than $800,000, and about $300,000 in “bogus” payments to the union from EastLink builder Thiess John Holland between 2005 and 2008. Read more »
If you thought the Internet Party and their stupid attempts at creating memes for an election was cringe-worthy, wait until you see what NSW Labor are doing for their campaign.
It appears they have hired the crazy cat lady for all their promotion work.
“Want to know what NSW would look like under a Labor government?” asks Piers Akerman. Well, according to the Kitty Litter Party’s latest online election campaign ads, it’ll look like a bunch of cats:
There are one or two issues here – primarily that any adorable prayer kitten detected within a national park would probably be identified as an introduced-species invader and shot.
Prayer kitty is just the start of the KLP’s feline-based election strategy. Labor is loaded with more cats than The Simpsons‘crazy cat lady:
That isn’t a laughing cat. It’s a yawning cat, such as you’d find in any KLP household where tormented pets have to cope with Leunig calendars, yellow dog cartoons and Wil Anderson downloads. Read more »
