I read with interest the media release in the Coast Community News (September 8) from Labor’s Senator Deborah O’Neill giving her opinion on the recent ICAC report, Operation Spicer, and describing those identified by ICAC as a “grim underbelly of arrogantly out of touch Liberal politicians”.
My how the Senator has swept away her own ALP Party stories of “grim”. Has Senator O’Neill forgotten her own ALP members who were entrenched in illegal funnelling of the (as she calls it) “hard working people of the Central Coast” union membership fees? Shall I remind her of Craig Thompson? But let’s not forget the former Member for Swansea, Milton Orkopoulos, now in goal as a convicted child sex offender. She also conveniently omitted that Operation Spicer found that former NSW Labor Minister, Joe Tripodi, was listed with a serious corrupt conduct recommendation against him.
Would the Senator like to jog her memory of her own staffer, Jamie Clements, who had to resign over charges made by the Electoral Commission, the forced resignation of MP, Karyn Paluzzano, for corruption allegations or the ‘star cadets’ the former Minister, Ian MacDonald, and Eddie Obeid, charged with corruption from ICAC investigations into sex and illegal land dealings. More recently, even her own colleague, Senator Sam Dastyari, with shocking new revelations of receiving money from Chinese companies to pay for his legal bill and travel expenses. There’s a wonderful old saying ‘people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’ and while the recent ICAC revelations are certainly not acceptable, the Premier of NSW, Mike Baird, has publicly apologised for other people’s failures and stated that his new Government has a “zero tolerance level to corruption”. Where is Senator Deborah O’Neill’s’ apology?
Email, Sep 13, 2016 Kathleen Minassian, Woy Woy