Bed made, now to lie in it

The fallout from the dodgy and sleazy dealings in Wollongong, involving developers and council staff seems to be as follows.

Wollongong City Council

The ICAC today recommended that the Wollongong City Council be sacked.

“I am of the opinion that systemic corruption exists,”

ICAC Commissioner Jerrold Cripps, QC, said. The inquiry has revealed a web of sexual and business connections among workers and executives at the council and Wollongong developers.

The counsel assisting the inquiry made interesting submissions today, suggesting that caucusing by councillors was a corrupt activity. He argued that when councillors of one political persuasion decided before council meetings what the decision of council should be “regardless of the debate, that squarely comes within the terms ‘corrupt conduct’.” He went on to say that making decisions before a debate affected the honest exercise of their official function as councillors. In Wollongong, there are seven Labor councillors out of a total of 13 councillors.Therefore, to gain control of the ALP bloc, a developer needed to obtain the sway of only four Labor councillors, which he believed is is what had happened in the Wollongong Council. He named the four as Frank Gigliotti, Zeki Esen, Kiril Jonovski and Val Zanotto.

NSW Premier Morris Iemma said he was waiting on formal advice before acting on the recommendation. Fair enough I suppose, but Morris has shown an itchier trigger finger than that on many occasions, sacking people before trial let alone conviction. Strange that he holds back when the dodgy ones are Labor mates and the council is a Labor stronghold ….I can’t help but think a Liberal or independent dominated council would have been sacked weeks ago.

From what I’ve read, not only the council should be sacked, there was/is obviously a sick culture in the council bureaucracy and it seems like a good cleanout at various levels of management would also be worthwhile. It seems plenty of people knew stuff was going on but chose to turn a blind eye to it. For example, threatening messages from Joe Scimone to Beth Morgan were known by senior management but not acted on, as were rumours that Ms Morgan had holidayed in China with developer Frank Vellar.

The 2 Joes

NSW Ports Minister Joe Tripodi has been cleared of wrongdoing over the appointment of his friend, Joe Scimone, to a senior position in an agency in the Minister’s portfolio. Last week Mr Tripodi said NSW Maritime, which appointed Mr Scimone to the job, had confirmed that he had played no role in the appointment, even though NSW Maritime falls under his portfolio. Mr Tripodi said he had been unaware of the ICAC investigation affecting Mr Scimone at the time he was appointed.

Deputy ICAC Commissioner Theresa Hamilton said in her formal response:

“The ICAC’s Assessment Panel has decided that the ICAC will not be conducting a formal investigation.

“The panel took into account that, based on the information obtained during interviews and an assessment of the files mentioned above, there was nothing to substantiate an allegation that minister Tripodi interfered with merit selection procedures.”

Maybe, but did they actually expect to uncover anything in writing or obviously connected to the Minister? This sort of influence would have been exerted through mates and mates of mates dropping hints, rather than anything like direct approaches.

And how did NSW Maritime actually elect to recruit Joe Scimone given the sexual harassment allegations that led to him resigning from Wollongong Council, let alone the allegations of bribery – eg a $5,000 watch from a developer was just a “gift between friends” …. sure, pull the other one, it plays Jingle Bells. Amazing coincidence that this gift happened at a time when Council was processing a development application.

Developer donations

Supposedly there will be a tightening of rules about poltical donations. I’ll believe it when I see it – I’m sure this has all been said and promised before but when it comes to the crunch the politicians like donations and will water down any reforms as much as they can get away with. The pervasiveness of the donations has been an eye opener for me, and the closeness of the relationships between developers and others and politicians. How someone can take tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars from a developer and then claim it was an act of altruism rather than an attempt to buy influence is beyond belief.

As for the developers involved in the shonky business with the council, I await with interest whether there will be any legal consequences for any of them. In my view, people shown to have engaged in such corrupt conduct should be blackbanned from future business with the council (and others) … ie corrupt business people should be put out of business completely.

Beth Morgan

The town planner who’s made for the most scandalous headlines in this story, which have turned it from a fairly mundane dodgy money episode to a full on titillating sex scandal, is said to be lonely and teary. Wow, what a surprise. She’s basically fucked up her career, marriage, reputation and all for a bunch of sleazebags who didn’t give a rat’s arse about her apart from when they were screwing her or getting favours from council through her. No wonder she’s not exactly feeling on top of the world and surrounded by friends.