The big question now is whether Gladys Berejiklian should return to Federal politics, because if she did, she would romp it in if she was selected for a North Shore seat in Sydney, with insiders claiming she is the perfect candidate to put up against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a Federal Election. He got the money and the plant stayed in Coburg until 2004 when it was closed, as digital photography took over. Switkowski announced that Kodak was planning to close its local production plant with the loss of at least 900 jobs. It was a brilliant play to get money out of the Federal Government and it worked. In September 1989, Hawke was stunned by one of Coburg’s biggest employers, Kodak (Australasia) Pty Ltd, which at the time was being run by former Telstra CEO Ziggy Switkowski. Local Labor councillors guarded his back against the knives of the Socialist Left, and he returned the favour by showering the electorate with government money, despite not declaring his affair with Blanche d’Alpuget. Hawke’s power base was the old Coburg council. Robert James Lee Hawke was known for his affair with his speech writer Josephine Blanche d’Alpuget, who he later married, but this did not stop him cuddling up to Kodak. Jim Cairns and Junie Morosi’s affair did contribute to the downfall of the Whitlam government. When push comes to shove, as it were, there are some things that the general public know is part and parcel of what takes place in Government.Īnd yes, some of those might involve doing the odd favour during a pillow chat. Let’s face it, love affairs in politics are nothing new, neither is pork barrelling nor using politicians to push a cause. Barnaby Joyce’s affair with his press secretary did not stop him recommending projects in his electorate. The reality is that you don’t need a multi-million-dollar Commission to reveal that politicians look after their favourite and winnable electorates irrelevant of whether it’s local, State or Federal and, for the record, there is a history of politicians having affairs and not revealing the affairs despite “conflict of interest issues”. This basically is a rap over the knuckles and an issue which former Prime Ministers have got away with in the past. The ICAC said this could “objectively have the potential to influence the performance of her public duty.”
The Commission, that spent days in sitting, could only come up with a conclusion that Berejiklian breached public trust in 20 by exercising her official functions in relation to millions of dollars in funding promised and/or awarded to the Australian Clay Target Association (ACTA) in Maguire’s electorate, without disclosing her close personal relationship with Maguire, when she was in a position of a conflict of interest between her public duty and her private interest.
In a nutshell, she is guilty of not revealing that her lover at the time was former MP Daryl Maguire, who is facing charges, while her government handed out grants to his local shooting club. The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) has admitted that despite spending millions, and taking months to investigate, it is “not of the opinion” that Ms Berejiklian should be pursued with criminal charges. Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian, now a senior Optus executive, has basically been found guilty of pork barrelling and not revealing a lover, a favourite past time of both Labor and Liberal Coalition MP’s – but there will be no corruption charges.
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