Vizard, Bracks, ebay

3. Neil Mitchell, Steve Vizard and Mike Smith – all the connections

By Stephen Mayne

The rehabilitation of Steve Vizard suffered a setback yesterday when the pesky question of potential perjury charges raised its head after it was leaked that the disgraced funnyman had fronted Victoria police on Wednesday to "tidy up" this matter which has supposedly been "gathering dust" at police HQ for the past 12 months.

Vizard was accompanied by gun Arnold Bloch Leibler partner Leon Zwier, one of the smartest corporate lawyers in Melbourne who got Peter Scanlon and John Elliott off their Elders IXL theft and conspiracy charges in the late 1990s.

Once again, the role of Vizard's spindoctor Mike Smith became part of the story after the 3AW morning program of mutual mate Neil Mitchell was chosen as the vehicle to launch the counter-spin. The Australian's Richard Gluyas had the best summary today, but it is worth going back and looking at the relationships over the years, not just the "pleasant social lunch" that Mitchell says he enjoyed with Vizard earlier this month.

Mitchell told his audience he's been friends with Smith for 35 years dating back to their time together on The Age, but it's a relationship that has worked well for both since the former Age editor took up spin doctoring more than a decade ago.

When Mitchell was President of the Melbourne Press Club in the late 1990s he had no problems with Smith sitting on the committee and building its website despite his reputation for representing dodgy clients such as Brian Quinn, Mexican fugitive Carlos Cabal and Japanese whalers.

Mitchell invited Vizard to be guest speaker at the Quill Awards in March 2000, the same month that the funnyman spent $500,000 buying Sausage Software shares days before the Telstra-driven merger with Solution 6 was announced.

Was Mitchell outraged that he'd been duped by an insider trader? Nope, he penned a sympathetic column in the Herald Sun last year attacking the media for being too tough on Vizard. "Who needs the law when we have a vigilante partnership of media and regulators?" Mitchell wrote.

Before his plea-bargain confession, Smith and Vizard went around privately briefing key media people in Melbourne claiming there was nothing in the ASIC inquiry and the funnyman was completely innocent. Smith himself should have been outraged at Vizard's lies to him because this deceit damaged them both, but Smith stuck by his disgraced client, perhaps because Vizard's business manager Shaun Levin, was last year the registered owner of 48 of the 120 Inside PR shares.

As for the links between Smith and Mitchell, the relationship is presumably just too important commercially and editorially. This is from Crikey Daily on 8 December, 2002:

We have the explanation as to how 3AW's Neil Mitchell finished up with a front page story in the Herald Sun last Thursday plugging his interview that morning with the Wales-King children claiming their murdered parents may have been alive for 6 hours after first being bashed by son Matthew.

Several weeks ago, the not guilty children of Margaret Wales-King went to Mike Smith and David Wilson at Inside PR for some advice on how best to get their story into the market place. We all know that Mike Smith and Mitchell are very good buddies so the story was handed to him on a platter.

It reminds us of the time that Mike Smith gave Mitchell the story on the family of the child who sadly contracted HIV via a blood transfusion, for which Mitchell won a Quill Award from the same Melbourne Press Club that he chairs. Wonder if Mitchell will get a Quill for this Mike Smith special as well?

7. Is Steve Bracks soft on corruption?

By Stephen Mayne

Steve Bracks told the Melbourne Press Club yesterday that industrial relations would be a key part of his re-election campaign this year, so when it came to the Q&A I opened the batting by asking a question that can be paraphrased as follows:

Picking up on your comment that IR will be a key part of your campaign, have you noticed all the evidence in the Primelife case involving Ted Sent and underworld figures and the story in The Age yesterday about the disused power station site involving the CFMEU and various colourful characters? It's becoming pretty clear that organised crime is infiltrating Victorian building sites and the CFMEU is involved. Are you concerned about this and, if so, what are you going to do about it?

In summary, Bracks said that any allegations would always be looked at but this area was the most investigated aspect of public life in Australia over the past 20 years and nothing had even been proven. Hmmm, surely issues such as petrol prices and Indigenous disadvantage have received more scrutiny than alleged underworld influence on Melbourne building sites.

The Age's Michael Bachelard asked the second question which was the best of the afternoon and went along the following lines: "You would have seen the recent reports in The Age about the dodgy activities of Victorian Labor backbencher George Seitz. Premier, how corrupt does someone have to be before you'll take action?"

There were plenty of oohs and ahhs but Bracks stonewalled by simply claiming the allegations were unproven and represented nothing more than the "backwash" that flows after a preselection contest.

The Herald Sun's new chief state political reporter Ellen Whinnett had a good story this morning saying that the left and right factions are looking at a deal to disendorse Seitz, a key member of Bracks' right faction, and left powerbroker Khalil Eideh, Labor's lead upper house candidate in Melbourne's western suburbs, whose fawning letters to the Syrian regime have severely undermined Labor's fundraising prospects with Melbourne's Jewish community.

Steve Bracks's successful 1999 campaign was partly financed by generous donations from wealthy Jewish business figures who decided to have a bet each way, so this attack on Eideh by Andrew Bolt is exactly what Labor fundraisers can do without.

All of this is quite a potent mix, especially when you add today's front page claims in The Age about Mafia infiltration of Melbourne building sites, which is based on the police interview that allegedly corrupt former policeman Kerry Milte gave last year. Milte also alleged that underworld figure Mick Gatto threatened to kill ETU secretary Dean Mighell, sparking Gatto to grant a rare interview to ABC Radio's Josie Taylor this morning on AM this morning denying the charge and pointing out that Mighell is a "good friend" with whom he has dealt for years.

Mighell, of course, was the left powerbroker who ratted on his old mate Bob Sercombe to get Bill Shorten a dream run into Parliament. And where did Milte claim Mighell complained about Gatto's alleged kill threat? None other than the electorate office of Bob Sercombe.

The leaking of Milte's police interview is an apparent attempt to undermine Christine Nixon because Victoria's police commissioner recruited him from NSW to help investigate the underworld killings. Coincidentally, Nixon's officers are currently investigating alleged bullying inside the Police Association and presumably are taking an interest in all these reports about connections between the underworld and Victoria's tough construction unions.

Oh what a tangled we weave in the countdown to the 25 November state election.




15. eBay struts its stuff at the Midwinter Ball

By Stephen Mayne

eBay attracted some negative attention last week for refusing to regulate scalpers trying to flog Ashes tickets, but the world's biggest online auction house is hoping to win some political and media plaudits by pioneering the first ever Press Gallery charity auction at the Midwinter Ball.

Anyone familiar with politics would be aware of those interminable fundraisers where businesspeople pay vast sums for the privilege of talking to some thoroughly bored minister for a few minutes.

The Press Gallery certainly is not stooping to that at the Midwinter Ball, where tickets cost $90 for members and $110 for politicians and staffers. And there will be no Max Markson auctioneer pushing prints of some long gone Miss World with promises that only 90% of the proceeds will go to the political party but some worthy charity will get the other 10%.

The eBay proposition is quite attractive because the whole gig happens online, 100% of the proceeds will go to charity and the politicians have dug deep for some alluring prizes.

The PM has offered two tickets to the Australia-England Prime Minister's 11 cricket match, including attending the pre-match function at the Lodge. Even better – or worse, depending on your politics – six people are being offered a private dinner with Kim Beazley. The eBay spruiker points out that Crikey voted Julia Gillard "Australia's s*xiest politician", so "dinner for two" with the wannabe PM might attract a few leering blokes and Kim Beazley will be hoping the bidding is weak.

If you want to learn more the Iraqi wheat market, why not bid for you and two mates to have a round of golf at Royal Canberra with Mark Vaile. There could be some embarrassment for the political heavies if this offering ends up pulling in the largest sum:

Join former rocker come politician, Peter Garrett, for dinner and show at the Basement in Sydney on 5 July. On offer are two seats for a special reunion concert featuring Aussie rockers Dragon, The Badloves, Jenny Morris and the Choirboys. This show doesn't end with the encore – 2 AAA passes are also included to backstage after the show.

And one can't imagine Wilson Tuckey or Ross Lightfoot bidding aggressively for the "VIP escort for two by Senator Bob Brown to the 'Mark Latham' tree in the Styx Valley, Tasmania."

Proving that rival pollies don't hate each other, we have dinner for four with Simon Crean, Alexander Downer, John Anderson and Natasha Stott Despoja. Essendon's nine straight losses take the gloss off the prospect of spending an afternoon in the NAB corporate box with Peter Costello but the lowest yielding prize will almost certainly be the press gallery tour and lunch which includes a special performance by the House Howlers choir.

The auction closes at midday on 21 June and we'll keep you posted on how it progresses. Some are tipping an overall collect of almost $100,000 and we'll try and work out a way to get up there for the biggest Canberra social function of the year. Free Crikey subs are on offer in exchange for invites!





17. The sneaky statistics of Steve Bracks

By Stephen Mayne

Steve Bracks was on his feet for almost an hour at a Melbourne Press Club lunch yesterday, delivering a 25-minute speech and then dealing with 11 questions from a range of journalists and interest groups. It was quite a polished performance from an accomplished political performer but the nice guy Premier really has mastered the dark art of lies, damn lies and statistics. Try these for size:

Bracks gloated that Victoria has the lowest number of taxes of any state. Surely the only figure that matters is the overall taxation effort and in this regard Victoria is marginally above the national average.

Bracks also said Victoria has the second lowest rate of public sector wage increases. Surely the overall wage levels are what matters and Victoria is above the national average.

When confronted with statistics from retired journalist and spinner Noel Tennyson pointing out how much higher the stamp duty is in Victoria on a $300,000 house, Bracks elicited plenty of groans when he argued that Melbourne housing is more affordable than Sydney or Brisbane. This was utterly disingenuous because the question was about a taxation rate, not asset values.

Asked about Victoria's heavy reliance on poker machine revenue, Bracks said that Victoria has fewer machines per capita than every state bar Western Australian and the freeze at 30,000 machines for the entire seven years of his government also represented a reduction in per capita terms. Yes, but players lose more money on Victorian machines than any other state, so the real issue is player losses not machine numbers.

The ABC's Ben Worsley asked if Bracks lamented reforming the upper house and prospectively handing the balance of power to the Greens, but the Premier seemed genuinely proud of introducing proportional representation and pointed out that he governed perfectly well in his first term without a majority in either house of parliament.

When the media questions quickly ran out, one Country Fire Authority chap was on his feet to prosecute his group's wage claim through the press club. Similarly, the RACV's David Cumming predictably asked about the broken promise of tolls on the $2.2 billion Eastlink project, which Bracks defended on the grounds of budget blowouts and the fact that it is a brand new road and would not involve any existing roads being closed.

Allowing punters into the Press Club does allow some strange questions. One bloke wanted Bracks to spend $2 billion buying NSW and the Commonwealth out of the Snowy and another woman lamented that with one third of new migrants coming to Victoria, how would the Premier stop existing citizens from eventually having to drink recycled sewerage?

Then again, given that the Melbourne Press Club still tolerates gaming giant Tattersalls as its major sponsor, it can hardly try to exercise any quality control over those attending its Premier lunch in an election year.

Copyright © 2022 The Mayne Report. All rights reserved

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