Obeid's girl is a perfect replacement for Xi's boy.
Kristina Keneally will take up the Senate seat vacated by Sam Dastyari with her two main contenders, Transport Workers Union boss Tony Sheldon and United Voice union leader Tara Moriarty, today pulling out of the race for the spot ahead of the preselection later this month.
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Article by BRAD NORINGTON
Associate Editor
The Australian, 18 November 2018
Eddie Obeid had big reasons to celebrate at a party he hosted in his Sydney parliamentary office on December 4, 2009.
Earlier in the day the man who relished his ALP “godfather” reputation had used the numbers he controlled — with fellow MP and mate Joe Tripodi — to install Kristina Keneally as the next NSW Labor premier.
Keneally was Obeid’s pick. Elevating her to become the state’s first female premier was a fabulous confirmation of his power and authority in the party.
But Fast Eddie, as he was sometimes known, had achieved much more on this day of reckoning. Obeid had also knifed Keneally’s predecessor, Nathan Rees, for having the temerity a month earlier to axe from his ministry two Obeid mates: Tripodi and Ian Macdonald. He also had blocked the path of the party head office favourite to replace Rees, former Sydney lord mayor Frank Sartor.
And finally, while not back in cabinet as a minister, Obeid had repositioned himself after the fallout with Rees to exert considerable backroom influence over the composition of Keneally’s cabinet, and possibly important government decisions.
It was not a bad day’s work in Obeid’s mind for a Lebanese migrant who’d started his working life as a Sydney taxi driver, earned millions in business despite some awful bad luck with fires, and then embarked on a backdoor takeover of the NSW ALP.
By 8pm, festivities hit high gear for up to 40 Labor MPs and faction loyalists crammed into Obeid’s Macquarie Street office and spilling into the corridor.
No one except Obeid knew the identity of the guest of honour soon to arrive that evening. It was not Keneally, already fending off claims by Rees that she was Obeid’s “puppet” and busy elsewhere. It was Bill Shorten.
“Shorten appeared out of nowhere, and Obeid embraced him like a brother,” one senior Labor reveller from that night recalls. “Eddie had a hearty Middle Eastern handshake that would turn into a hug. It was clear Shorten was the evening’s guest of honour. A lot of us had no idea Obeid had that sort of national profile — that his octopus-like tentacles reached that far.”
When Shorten introduced Keneally to voters in Sydney’s northwest this week as Labor’s surprise star candidate for next month’s by-election in the federal seat of Bennelong, both effused about their friendship and past professional association.
Keneally told how they worked together in 2007 in disability services — she in her first ministerial role in charge of the state portfolio and Shorten in Canberra as one of Kevin Rudd’s parliamentary secretaries.
Shorten lauded Keneally for “providing voters with a real choice” in the by-election against Liberal John Alexander, forced to resign over his dual British citizenship and running again with the constitutional glitch fixed. “It’s a chance to vote for a first-class Labor candidate,” Shorten said. Keneally returned the compliment: “He’s a man who’s comfortable in his own skin, he’s authentic, he stands up and fights for what he believes in, and I’m really pleased to be part of Bill Shorten’s team.”
Neither wanted to revive memories of the other, deeper connection that bound them in time: their past links to Obeid, now serving a minimum three years in jail for misconduct in public office over his ministerial lobbying for lucrative cafe leases in Sydney’s Circular Quay without declaring family interests in them.
The Obeid link is the lead weight that potentially drags down Keneally’s candidacy in Bennelong because any mention is a reminder of corruption among elements of the NSW government she led. Malcolm Turnbull has already signalled how the by-election campaign could get brutal. “Don’t let Kristina Keneally do to Bennelong what she did to NSW,” he said this week. Meanwhile, Keneally and Shorten appear to be suffering sudden amnesia, and are asking voters in Bennelong to do the same.
No one suggests Keneally herself was corrupt but she led Labor to its worst defeat on record as premier after 16 years in government. It was a government plagued by scandal, particularly near the end, when Bennelong’s star candidate was in charge.
Obeid was the most notorious of all but the corruption ran deeper. Macdonald, reinstated briefly as a minister by Keneally before she dumped him for rorting his travel expenses, is now serving a minimum seven years in prison for granting a coal exploration licence without tender to a company chaired by former union boss John Maitland that netted Maitland a multi-million-dollar profit. Tripodi, too, faces possible jail time. The NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption found this year that he had engaged in corrupt conduct between 2007 and 2010. It recommended criminal prosecution for his involvement in a proposal to part-privatise Australian Water Holdings without a tender.
Where does Keneally stand in having led a government that, as my colleague Andrew Clennell put it this week, was “in some parts corrupt”? The essence of her response, when pressed, is she wishes she knew. Keneally told The Australian that people wanting to act contrary to the public interest did so in secrecy. “I don’t think there’s anyone who looks back at that time and doesn’t say, ‘If only I’d known,’ ” she said.
In her defence, Keneally has also stressed that her ICAC evidence helped it reach corruption findings against Obeid and Tripodi. The counsel assisting Geoffrey Watson had even called her “an ICAC hero”. Keneally maintains she “always strongly disliked” Obeid. One sign of her hypersensitivity on this question can be found in her reaction to comments by Labor senator Sam Dastyari in Kate McClymont and Lynton Besser’s book, He Who Must be Obeid, about the leadership change from Rees to herself.
“Kristina was so close to Eddie,” Dastyari said. “Unequivocally she wouldn’t have been premier if it wasn’t for Eddie. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t Eddie’s support for her, it was his hatred of Frank (Sartor).”
Dastyari’s account is compelling if only because the voting margin in the contest that handed Keneally the Labor leadership, and premiership, was very close: 25 to 22 votes. But it seems to have rankled Keneally, to the point of wanting Dastyari to clarify his comments publicly that she was ever close to Obeid. According to Keneally, Obeid was just one of the people in politics she had to “suffer” or “humour”.
There is evidence that Keneally as premier, along with Labor treasurer Eric Roozendaal, did push back against Obeid’s influence. But there are curious signs too that Keneally might not have been as independent as she suggests. It seems beyond doubt she relied on Obeid’s vote to get to the top: her dislike did not extend to refusing votes she needed to replace a serving premier in Obeid’s sights. It is also beyond doubt that Keneally was Tripodi’s friend and that he was very close to Obeid. Tripodi helped arrange Keneally’s entry to parliament in 2002, and they stayed close.
Further, it is reasonable to ask, if Keneally did not know that Obeid and Tripodi were corrupt, why did she not appoint them to her ministry? By the time she took over as premier, reports were already published with allegations about the malevolence of both men. There were plenty of rumours inside the ALP, too, that Obeid in particular was a crook. Is it possible Keneally suspected Obeid and Tripodi could damage her government if she allowed them into the ministry, while she figured Macdonald was a lesser risk?
Despite the political baggage, Keneally is seen as a big hope to defeat Alexander next month. The stakes riding on such a result are high as a Labor victory could cost Turnbull his government majority — and possibly his job.
Meanwhile, Shorten suffers his own brand of Eddie Obeid amnesia. When Obeid was sentenced last December, Shorten was unequivocal: “I deplore corruption wherever it occurs, be it in business or be it in politics, in public life. Eddie Obeid is where he belongs — in jail.” Shorten can be excused from intimate knowledge of Obeid’s skulduggery, even if he had heard the rumours years ago, because he is a Victorian. But he certainly felt a need to woo Eddie, and not long ago. First elected to federal parliament in 2007, Shorten was two years into his stint as Rudd’s parliamentary secretary when he arrived at Obeid’s party to celebrate Keneally’s win.
Shorten’s springboard into a safe Labor seat had been his past leadership of the Australian Workers Union. He also used its numbers on the party conference floor to wrest control of the Victorian ALP for himself and his right faction allies.
Getting to know Obeid, a powerbroker in the NSW ALP right, was apparently important to Shorten. Some of the bright young party machine men such as Mark Arbib or Dastyari were important to know, but Obeid possessed another level of cachet and clout. He seemed to be at his zenith.
Some badmouthed Obeid quietly with claims he was really a crook, but the NSW Labor upper house MP pulled strings behind the scenes. He was exactly the man Shorten needed, then, to nurture his own ambitions as he sought NSW votes in the federal Labor caucus. He wanted a shot at the ALP leadership and prime ministership, once Rudd and Julia Gillard were out of the picture.
Now federal Labor leader, Shorten is the closest he has ever been to his goal as Turnbull’s prime ministership sinks into a daily mire of uncertainty about the constitutional eligibility of Coalition MPs and he suffers sniper assaults from Tony Abbott and other party dissidents.
Remembering old glory days in the company of Obeid is not something Shorten would want to revisit right now. Yet he has thrust Obeid’s creation as NSW premier into the spotlight.
Keneally after giving evidence at ICAC.
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Statement Regarding the NSW Senate Vacancy
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Maybe we need to ask ourselves whether Kristina Keneally is really the come hither, squeaky clean, yummy mummy blow-up doll that her controlling (& failing miserably) party apparatchicks would have us believe, or conversely, is she just another painted marrionette doll dropped onto the stage where her shallow appeal to a gullible audience - by means of attached strings - will be controlled by the master puppeteer ? Who knows ? Whether, by this slight of hand we get someone of substance or another clone of 'she who must be Obied' remains to be seen. Under the auspices of Democracy indeed !