Cossie, media opposition, delusional Ron Walker, hopeless disclosure, Macquarie
July 28, 2008
Here are Stephen Mayne's five stories from the Crikey edition on Wednesday, 7 December, 2005.
2. Didn't Cossie read his sealed sections in 2003?
By Stephen Mayne
Peter Costello's relationship with Crikey has waxed and waned over the years, but what can be said for sure is that his email inbox received the sealed section editions in 2003 about Rob Gerard's Reserve Bank board appointment and his subsequent tax troubles. The Costello forces were certainly big fans of Crikey's editorial line in the early days as Christian Kerr, aka Hillary Bray, hopped into the PM on a regular basis.
I've only met the Treasurer once at the ABC on October 9 during the 2001 election campaign and this is what we wrote at the time:
Crikey has heard regular feedback that Cossie is an avid reader of Crikey who has picked up on some of the nicknames and quotes many of Hillary's columns around the place. But his knowledge and interest was still a revelation when we bumped into each other at the top of the stairs outside Virginia Trioli's studio.
Can't say I disagreed when Cossie described the Kennett government as a "regime" and he then proceeded to pose several questions about Hillary. What was her sex, how did you email her, is this latest suggestion about several people being Hillary correct and could she really be actually working on the Liberal campaign?
Whilst readily acknowledging that Hillary gives the Treasurer a relatively easy time, I fudged on some of the detail but basically acknowledged that Hillary's success in keeping her identity unknown for 20 months reflected her subtlety and rat cunning.
But the secret is no more. The conversation ended with Cossie raising his arms in the air and proclaiming in front of Heather Ewart and his staffers Nicki Savva and Mitch Fifield that "I am Hillary Bray."
Cossie's direct email address wasn't on the Crikey database at that point but we gave him a free subscription under our subs for comment scandal in June 2002 when he told Parliament the following:
Those of you who follow crikey.com as closely as I do will see that the member has been recycling a few things in his electorate recently including tips, in a leaflet mailed out to his electorate in Melbourne, on how to recycle Perth waste, with the phone number of the member for Swan on his leaflet. I recommend crikey.com. It includes very good reading about Delia Delegate this week and the internal machinations of the Victorian ALP.
Such was Cossie's enthusiasm for Crikey, a staffer once called the bunker inquiring where that day's sealed section was because the Treasurer wanted to read it. Nine different sealed sections in 2003 mentioned either Gerard's donations, Reserve Bank appointment or his tax troubles as you can see here, so how does this tally with the following exchange in Parliament yesterday?:
Kim Beazley: Treasurer, isn't it the case that you knew about Mr Gerard's tax problems and cooked up a cover-up so you could reward a million dollar Liberal Party dynamite?
Peter Costello: Mr Speaker, the suggestion that I knew or my office knew or had gone through court records in 2003 is absolutely repudiated. The idea that I knew anything that was in The AFR is absolutely repudiated. The idea that my Chief of Staff knew those matters is absolutely repudiated. The idea that there was any conspiracy is absolutely repudiated. It is absolutely repudiated and, Mr Speaker, it does not have a skerrick of evidence.
Both Michelle Grattan in The Age and Michael Brissenden on The 7.30 Report have picked up on this Crikey angle, but it is much stronger than both alluded to given Costello's publicly stated enthusiasm for Crikey at the time and the fact that the sealed sections were sent directly to his Treasury email address.
Sure, relations are not so good these days as Cossie banned Crikey from this year's budget lock-up and removed his email address from our data base, but the Opposition has more direct evidence that Costello did know about Rob Gerard's tax problems. Unless, of course, he wasn't closely following his sealed sections in 2003.
We had more than 100 Federal Parliament House email addresses on our data base in 2003, so the idea that Gerard's tax problems weren't in the political consciousness two years ago is a complete joke.
3. The power of a media-opposition coalition
By Stephen Mayne
There have been plenty of inappropriate political appointments at all levels of politics over the years, but rarely have we seen a frenzy like the Rob Gerard affair. Given that only Crikey and The Advertiser reported the tax dispute when it hit the courts in 2003, what has changed?
It seems a pretty clear cut case of the power that can be unleashed when the media and the opposition team up and launch a concerted campaign whilst the Federal Parliament is sitting.
The AFR chose to make a huge splash with a five page special investigation last Tuesday which will be a contender for the Gold Walkley next year. However, even more important was the opposition's decision to drop every other issue and devote several days of Question Time to the Gerard affair.
If the Opposition had instead decided to focus on industrial relations, anti-terror laws, welfare-to-work and the various other issues that are far more relevant to millions of Australians, Rob Gerard would probably still be a Reserve Bank director.
The Opposition's frenzied attacks on Gerard send a salutary lesson to major political donors. If you favour one side strongly over the other, don't expect any favours if you ever get into trouble. Rob Gerard gives nothing to Labor so he didn't have an insurance policy and he was afforded no protection by Labor which saw an opportunity to damage Peter Costello.
By way of contrast, Frank Lowy's Westfield group has been a major donor to both sides of politics over the years, which might explain why the numerous controversial business practices inside the world's biggest shopping centre empire are rarely criticised in Parliament.
Frank Lowy's 1999 admission that Westfield funded a bogus community group to stymie a rival shopping centre development was a clear breach of the RBA's code of conduct but it was never raised by Labor because Lowy has traditionally been close to the likes of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating.
The attacks on Gerard have been a fine example of accountability in a democracy, but it is a shame that numerous other dodgy appointments do not receive the same treatment. The opposition should move on from Gerard to John Pascoe, the chief federal magistrate who had a woeful record with the ACCC during his long tenure running bread manufacturer George Weston Foods.
7. Ron Walker's delusions of grandeur
By Stephen Mayne
Did anyone else notice this story about the Commonwealth Games in The Age on Monday? These lines were buried under some athletic guff:
Games chairman Ron Walker insists the event will be bigger than next year's soccer World Cup. "It will be bigger than the World Cup in terms of its volume … the World Cup is a major sporting event, but it hasn't got a chance of attracting the same volume of crowds," he said.
Hello! Bigger than the World Cup, my foot. When is someone going to start taking on Mr Potato Head after 13 years of exaggeration about major events, dating back to the 1993 press conference when Melbourne stole the Grand Prix from Adelaide and Ron declared it would cost $5 million in infrastructure and then run at a profit each year? Last year's loss was a record $13.4 million.
Sure, The Age and the Herald Sun are signed up as sponsors of different aspects of the Commonwealth Games but that doesn't mean Ron can literally make it up as he goes along and not get corrected.
For the record, the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan was attended by 2.72 million people. There are only 1.248 million Commonwealth Games tickets available and only about 800,000 of these have been sold so far.
Clearly, the Commonwealth Games is not in any way comparable with the World Cup and Ron of all people should know this given that his Melbourne Major Events committee made a run at hosting a future World Cup in the 1990s and Ron is on the board of the Football Federation of Australia.
The decision by the Bracks Government to leave Ron as chairman of Melbourne 2006 was at some levels a sensible exercise in political inoculation. If the budgets are blown or the games are beset by stuff-ups, the Liberal opposition might pull a few punches given the power that Ron holds in conservative circles.
Ron was also well placed to extract the $300 million commitment to the Games out of Canberra, although as The Age reports today, even that is now in dispute as the Federal Government insists on some basic detail and accountability before sending down the last $70 million instalment.
It will be interesting to see if anyone ever challenges Ron's drunken sailor impersonation as he strives to produce the "best ever" Commonwealth Games. The state government is claiming its contribution will be $697 million, plus an unspecified amount on security, but that is almost certain to blow out, although the public won't be told until after the state election next November.
Let's hope the Fairfax press manage to campaign hard for the release of all the financial figures relating to the handiwork of their chairman before Victorians go to the polls.
10. Australia's woeful disclosure requirements get even worse
By Stephen Mayne
The Federal Government will this week introduce its amendment to the Commonwealth Electoral Act to increase the disclosure threshold for political donations from $1,500 to $10,000, which will be indexed.
While the Parliament is considering the changes, here are two no-brainer amendments that should also be made:
- The timetable for disclosure of donations in a financial year should be brought forward from February of the following year to November at the very latest. After all, state and federal governments require listed companies and the like to produce annual reports by 30 October. Why on earth should politicians be given seven months to produce a list of donations? Rob Gerard could have donated $5 million in cash to the Liberal Party on 1 July this year and it won't be disclosed until February 2007 – a delay of 19 months.
- Just like listed companies, political parties should be required to publicly release a consolidated balance sheet, which brings together all the state and federal branches. At the moment we only get lists of receipts and outgoings from each state branch or the federal division. The AFR revealed earlier this year that the Queensland ALP has a $100 million asset pile, which is believed to be the largest stash of any political organisation in the country. A consolidated ALP balance sheet, especially if you included affiliated unions, would probably show net assets of more than $500 million. These are big bucks for big organisations with big responsibilities, yet the public is told nothing of the detail.
Secrecy breeds corruption and this will surely increase the incidence of the old developer donation syndrome where a cheque for $9,999 will deliver planning approval for some property spiv. A sad day indeed.
24. Macquarie makes page one of The Wall Street Journal
By Stephen Mayne
They've really made it now. Macquarie Bank has been getting all sorts of publicity in the UK through it's stop-start bid for the London Stock Exchange, but today they have featured on page one of the Wall Street Journal in a story which began as follows:
Last year, the city of Chicago was in a bind. It faced a $220 million budget deficit and its credit rating was under review for a possible downgrade. Voters feared a jump in property taxes.
Then help came from a surprising place: Australia. Macquarie Bank, Australia's biggest homegrown investment bank, organized a deal to take over Chicago's historic Skyway toll road under a 99-year lease for $1.8 billion – hundreds of millions of dollars more than some Chicago officials thought it would fetch.
The Windy City's windfall helped it plug a budget hole and set up a $500 million rainy-day fund. The city even funded a project to upgrade the card-catalogue system for its libraries. The Australians, meanwhile, started collecting commuters' coins – and quickly raised the road's tolls.
So far Australian governments have only commissioned Macquarie to build new tollroads. Why doesn't the Iemma Government sell Macquarie the right to collect tolls on the Sydney Harbour Bridge to save its struggling budget just like Chicago did?
Further on in the piece, Paul Keating would have enjoyed these lines:
Australia, once a marginal player beyond its own borders, is emerging as a major financial centre. Australia can trace its new wealth to a 14-year economic boom underpinned by a 1992 law that required workers to set aside big chunks of their income for retirement. While Australian households, like those in the US, still spend more than they earn, the nation is amassing a huge investment war chest.
The story also points out that tiny Singapore has a $220 billion global investment fund through Temasek Holdings. Hmmm, the Australian Government's negative net value of about $30 billion doesn't compare too favourably with that, despite all of Peter Costello's hot air about the Future Fund, including an additional $2 billion injection detailed in today's papers.
Meanwhile, Macquarie is also getting plenty of attention from The Australian about its Aboriginal land funds. If Bob Carr's government and corporate giants like Foster's and Orica keep getting cleaned up by Macquarie, what chance do the Indigenous Land Councils have? Whatever happens, The Australian will report developments every step of the way for as long as the Millionaire Factory continues to sue the paper over the Allstate Exploration saga in Tasmania.
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