The OzCar scandal, or utegate if you prefer, involves Australia’s three most senior politicians - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Treasurer Wayne Swan, and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull. Below is a summary of what each is accused of and how it affects them.
A brief word, first, to explain OzCar. This was a scheme set up at the end of last year by the Federal Government after two big financing firms, GE and GMAC, announced they were pulling out of Australia as a result of the global financial crisis. GE and GMAC helped stacks of car dealers manage their money and without them, some would probably have gone under were it not for OzCar. Basically OzCar involved the big Australian banks like Commbank and ANZ pitching in to create a new scheme that would help car dealers pay their bills.
The trouble all started because a very good friend of Kevin Rudd’s was a car dealer. And he wanted help from OzCar.
Rudd’s friend, John Grant, runs a car dealership outside Brisbane. Some weeks ago Turnbull and his colleagues in the opposition started asking whether Rudd had something to hide about his relationship with Grant, who gave the PM a ute many years ago. Rudd uses the ute as a mobile office and has been open about where it came from all along. However, there have been allegations that the PM or one of his close advisers put the hard word on the people running OzCar to look after John Grant when he came looking for money from the scheme.
Now we get to the email (or, as it’s being somewhat amusingly referred to, the “alleged email”). Late last week newspapers published what was understood to be an email from a key Rudd adviser named Andrew Charlton to Godwin Grech, the civil servant who runs the OzCar scheme. Here’s what the email is supposed to have said:
Hi Godwin, The PM has asked if the car dealer financing vehicle is available to assist a Queensland dealership, John Grant Motors, who seems to be having trouble getting finance. If you can follow up on this asap that would be very useful.
On Friday, the day the email appeared was reported in newspapers, Godwin Grech appeared before a Senate hearing and said that while he did not have the email his recollection was that there was a short one from someone in the PM’s office asking specifically about John Grant.
The PM denies he has interfered in any way with Grant’s application. Crucially, he told Parliament: “Neither I, nor my office, have ever made any representations on his behalf.” If this is proved to be untrue it will be clear the Prime Minister misled Parliament. This, in case you’re wondering, is very very bad. How could we trust anything he said in Parliament again?
Probably the most telling thing about the PM’s role in this is the speed at which he moved to try and find the email. He has called in the police to investigate the whole email affair and says that if Turnbull can’t produce it, he should resign.
The Treasurer is in an altogether more difficult position. He not only discussed financing problems with John Grant directly but was also kept updated on the progress of his application as emails were copied to his home fax. (I know, who has a fax at home these days - and why would you have emails sent to it? Whatever.) There is documented evidence that Swan’s staff were involved in Grant’s application for OzCar funding.
It gets sticky because Swan told Parliament that Grant didn’t get any special treatment and that while he knew Grant was looking for OzCar money, he had passed on his request and had “no idea what the outcome of that was.” Again, this exposes him to the accusation of having misled Parliament.
Swan’s defence has been that the updates were just a normal, run-of-the-mill set of communications given that he had been involved at the start of Grant’s application. The government will point out repeatedly that Grant didn’t get anything he wasn’t entitled to, and this is correct. But with Grant being a friend of Rudd and Swan being closely involved in his application for funding, it stinks. The Opposition turned its sights on Swan over the weekend and he will face continued grilling this week. More than anyone, the heat’s really on him.
The case against Malcolm Turnbull is different. On the basis of the reported email last week, he called for the Prime Minister’s head. If the email doesn’t turn up, it will look like he has cried wolf - what credibility will he have the next time he raises questions about the behaviour of government ministers? The Prime Minister says he should produce the email or apologise and resign. But if the Treasurer or the Prime Minister is forced to back down he will have landed a massive blow on the government. Otherwise, Turnbull will walk away carrying the scar of a small lapse of judgment at best and with his credibility damaged at worst.
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