Utegate: Hoax email saves Rudd and shames Turnbull

The Punch has now closed a piece it published during the Utegate affair involving Paul Lindwall, a former senior member of Malcom Turnbull’s team.

I also want to apologise to Mr Lindwall for any embarrassment or distress the piece caused him. The background is as follows: on the Monday after Treasury official Godwin Grech gave what is now acknowledged as confected testimony to the Senate hearing on the Utegate affair, there was much speculation as to what the subsequent AFP investigation would unearth.

I was told by several sources that the AFP wanted to establish who in Mr Turnbull’s office had been talking to Godwin Grech, and Mr Lindwall was named as that person.

Continue reading "I was wrong" »

One would think that Brisbane car dealer John Grant would have enough of the bloody ute that he lent Kevin Rudd - apparently not, because he’s trying to hock it off to the National Museum.

The Punch can reveal that Grant has been in discussions with the National Museum of Australia to hand the infamous 1996 Mazda ute to the national institution’s permanent collection.

But it seems that the museum is not as keen on the ute being on display as John Grant because the directors don’t really think it should be there.

Continue reading "Museum says Rudd’s ute is out of the question" »

Politics rarely gets as bizarre as when Eric Abetz gets it right – even if it is in admitting he stuffed it up.

Like the Fonz choking on the word ‘wrong,’ most of our leaders just can’t spit out the magic word even when it’s so obviously in their best interest to ‘fess up and apologise.

Abetz’s effort in apologising to the PM met a majority of the requirements in the Definitive Punch Guide to Saying Sorry After Publicly Disgracing Yourself, which I outline below.

Continue reading "Sorry seems to be the hardest word - the art of the apology" »

Last night the Senate voted in favour of referring Senator Eric Abetz to a special committee over his role in the Utegate affair and things are about to get a bit awkward for all parties involved.

For starters a fellow Liberal Senator George Brandis will be in charge of the inquiry, which is bound to make people wonder whether this is going to be a fair dinkum examination of Abetz’s role in the fake email/Utegate/OzCar affair.

On the other side, Labor Senators on the privileges committee that will be questioning Abetz’s role in the shonky Godwin Grech testimony (specifically his handling of the email and whether it was a manipulation of the Senate committee) will have to be pretty careful about who and what they start demanding from the Liberal Senator - especially if it comes to calling public servants and journalists in front of the committee.

Continue reading "Senator Abetz and his odd date with the star chamber" »

As this fight looks almost inevitable within the Liberal Party anyway it seems logical to have it now: Joe Hockey should be the next Liberal leader over Tony Abbott.

The Punch editor David Penberthy makes the case for Tony Abbott taking the leadership below, pointing to his right wing conviction politics as being more of a strength than they are a weakness.

But it ignores the fact that it is possible to have a leader who is comfortable walking the grounds of conservative Australia and still able to sell a strong moderate message - enter Joe Hockey.

Continue reading "Abbott’s not the answer, it’s time to play Hockey" »

Malcolm Turnbull has just meandered his way through a press conference about the Utegate debacle. You can read about it here. It came amid renewed speculation in Liberal ranks over the leadership question, which The Punch adds to with this piece.

WHETHER you’re a rabid left-winger, a moderate liberal or an arch neo-con who thinks Camp X-Ray should not be shut down but turned into a franchise, you would have to concede the fact that the greatest period of unpopularity in the Liberal Party’s modern history has coincided with having two leaders who are anything but traditional conservatives.

The incessant speculation over Malcolm Turnbull – fuelled by the polls, and given a powerful new shot in the arm by the latest Utegate developments – invites serious talk about whether the Libs might now return to a conviction politician.

Continue reading "Mad Monk? It sounds crazy but it just might work…" »

On the eve of the Auditor-General’s report into the Utegate affair, the senior Treasury official at the centre of the scandal has revealed why he fabricated the email. The exclusive interview with Treasury’s OzCar scheme director Godwin Grech in today’s Australian has the potential to inflict new damage on the fragile leadership of Malcolm Turnbull, as it shows Grech believes he was used by the Liberals for political gain.

With today’s A-G’s report set to clear Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan of any wrongdoing over their association with Ipswich car dealer John Grant, the Grech interview will compound Turnbull’s headaches because it goes to suggestions of pressure and manipulation, which Paul Colgan canvasses in the post below over the Opposition Leader’s Australian Story appearance last night.

Speaking from a hospital in Canberra where he is under psychiatric care, Grech tells The Australian he only co-operated with the Opposition over the email because he believed they were set to oppose the OzCar finance bill resulting in 2000 job losses. It’s a claim the Liberals deny, saying they were always going to support the bill, and that it was Grech who pestered them for meetings, not the other way around. But their denials will struggle to be heard above quotes from Grech such as these:

Continue reading "The Godwin Grech interview that could sink Turnbull" »

Australian Story is customarily sympathetic to its subjects. This is natural; they’re its stars. Not with the latest episode on Malcolm Turnbull.

The only problem for Turnbull out of this show is that it doesn’t change anything but underlines, with the mother of all magic markers, the existing public perception that his ruthless drive and ambition will lead him to tread over others in pursuit of his goals.

Bad timing for Malcolm, because tomorrow the Auditor-General will publish a report on whether Kevin Rudd’s office made representations on behalf of Brisbane car dealer John Grant - a friend of Rudd’s - to Treasury and, if so, whether the contact was appropriate. It’s unlikely to contain anything damaging for the Government, and ministers have signalled they intend to try lighting a fire around Turnbull, arguing he has no credibility after calling for the Prime Minister to resign over the matter.

Continue reading "Heat on Turnbull over OzCar" »

First the good burgers of Bundanoon at the Canberra end of the Southern Highlands seem to have caught the Canberra bug.

No further north please.

This bug could be more dangerous than swine flu – it attacks freedom of choice, eats into logic and destroys jobs.

Continue reading "Fair suck of the water bottle" »

While Italian politics is unable to go a week without some 18-year-old girl claiming to have had a sixsome with the Prime Minister, Australian politics has more of an unusual fetish for utility vehicles.

Barely a week after things settled down with the utegate scandal we are now confronted by “Truckasaurus 09” or “The battle of competing political propaganda trucks” (I prefer the former).

This is a new model of what was an old Coalition campaign introduced to draw attention to the Keating Government’s foreign debt in 1996.

It was also the same year that the Coalition took control of Government from Labor after ten years in trucking wilderness. 

Continue reading "“Hey, check out the truck”: our political Summernats" »

I was reading Annabel Crabb’s exquisitely written essay on Malcolm Turnbull this week and was struck by two things.

Firstly, it’s remarkable how much of Turnbull’s personality as described by Crabb was at play in his handling of the so-called Utegate affair. The parallels between Turnbull’s precipitate attack on the Prime Minister and his muscling up to Douglas Meagher QC (the Counsel assisting the Costigan Royal Commission) are telling. I was more provoked, however, by suggestions about what motivates Turnbull to participate in parliamentary politics.

The suspicion, of course, has always been that it’s more about Malcolm himself than about a big policy reform that’s been eating away at him over the years. Not that he’d be the first person to come to politics with Messianic motivations; Bob Hawke had more than a bit of that about him too, but he also had a clearly articulated program of reform he was able to put before the people as icing on the cake of having him as Australia’s PM.

Continue reading "Mal has a dream that one day this nation will rise up…" »

One of the most exciting periods in politics for a long time began on Friday the 19th of June when little-known Treasury official Godwin Grech turned up for a Senate inquiry into the Ozcar affair. His sensational testimony led to him being chased through Parliament House. He was followed into a lift and to his car by a horde of media.

It was the start of a frenzied week in politics, when the news from Parliament House was interesting again, and Question Time became the best show in town. It swung wildly from Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull calling for Kevin Rudd to resign to the Liberal leader being under all the pressure.

The first photo is of Treasury official Godwin Grech under pressure and showing it in the Senate inquiry. When he was giving his evidence there was a crackling in the air – you knew it would be an all-in when he left the room.

I was one of the first into the lift and a bunch of others piled in. Others were much closer to his face, but by reaching up and shoot downwards I was able to capture the swarm of media around him.

Continue reading "Utegate photos: capturing a political crisis on camera" »

There is a national consensus that Malcolm Turnbull had a shocker last week, but dig below the surface and the story is even grimmer.

While a string of opinion polls have chronicled the fall in support for the Opposition leader, Essential Research has conducted detailed character research into the two leaders to find his leadership entering the terminal phase.

In 14 out of 15 categories, we find Kevin Rudd enjoying advantages on the positives and disadvantages on the negatives. And the one category where Turnbull has a better rating - ‘demanding’ - may well be the one that bought him undone last week.

Continue reading "15 Reasons Why Malcolm Turnbull Will Never Be PM" »

Forget Malcolm Turnbull. The biggest casualty of the Utegate debacle might not be the individual but the organisation, with the federal Liberals now looking like the hapless state oppositions in NSW, SA, Victoria and Queensland which dutifully turn up every few years on polling day for some ritualised humiliation.

Turnbull has pulled off an unprecedented and unenviable hat-trick in the polls this morning. He’s copped it in the neck in Newspoll, his approval rating falling an unprecedented 19 per cent, the biggest single drop in Newspoll’s 25-year history, with the party vote dropping three points to give Labor a thumping 56 to 44 lead, two-party preferred. He’s been flogged by Nielsen, his disapproval rocketing up 13 points to a whopping 60 per cent. And he’s been caned by Galaxy, with more than half the voters saying he was at best deceitful over the Utegate affair.

Whether Turnbull is safe or not may no longer be the question. The bigger questions is whether the party itself can survive the horrors of the past seven days.

Continue reading "Liberals teetering on the brink of irrelevance" »

Kevin Rudd was last night upstaged by an 18 inch plastic bum wiping stick he later said he would consider using in the right circumstances.

In an awkward, but mostly disaster-free appearance on Rove Live, the Prime Minister made it excruciatingly clear he was after some opinion poll love, and Rove happily obliged with the opening question about Utegate: “Dude, what’s goin’ on?”

But Mr Rudd’s segment on the show, which opened in spectacular fashion with an appearance by Bruno (aka Sacha Baron Cohen), was just - well - weird.

Continue reading "Please no sequel to the Rudd on Rove show" »

THE final week of Federal Parliament before winter recess proved to be more intriguing than a plot from the popular board game Cluedo.

And comments to online news forums were closely following the action as each new card was drawn in what many thought was a concocted blame game.

The hunt for the culprit in the Utegate case saw each of the suspects come under scrutiny and ticked off one by one by bloggers (and voters) as they assessed the veracity of the key characters.

Continue reading "No winners in cyberspace over Utegate games" »

In the latest explosive turn in the ute-gate saga, comedians Mathew Kenneally and Toby Halligan have received a copy of an e-mail sent to Malcolm Turnbull’s shedding new light on the events.

From: Andrew_Charlton_4Eva@hotmail.com

To: Malcolm.Turnbull@gmail.com

Dear Mr Turnbull,

I’ve been feeling guilty since we spoke at the mid-winter ball, thanks by the way for the friendly advice. They taught me many things at Oxford but the value of not lying wasn’t one of them. 

Watching the debate and coverage of Ute-gate it’s become harder and harder for me to stay silent when I know the truth.

I faked the fake email.

I snuck into Treasury and sent an email from my personal account to Mr Grech’s home email.

It was all part of a plan for you to believe the fake fake email was a real email and be embarrassed when it was revealed to be a fake email.

Continue reading "Explosive twist: deep throat Charlton comes clean" »

Grammar narcs and fans of convoluted construction should do themselves a favour, as Molly would say, and log on to the terrific little blog site http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/.

Proving that every interest, however esoteric or marginal, can find a home online, the site posts images of hand-written signs from small businesses and community notice-boards where rogue quotation marks have dramatically altered the author’s intended meaning.

The consequences are often sinister.

A sign at a ferry wharf in the US reads:  “Parents” do not leave your children unattended at any time on this dock or vessel.

A courtesy note snapped inside a hotel room says: This room was made up especially for you by “The Housekeepers”, who end up sounding less like a couple of nice Mexican ladies and more like something out of a Steven King novel.

Continue reading "How “email” “developed” to engulf Opposition “leader”" »

Following this week’s bizarre events involving fake emails, conspiracies, counter-conspiracies and dead cats I began to ask the question: at what point do we turn into Italy?

After question time today I am of the firm belief we have a long way to go before coming near the Silvio Berlusconi gold standard of political scandal.

The last question time of this crazy sitting threatened to further turn the screws of torture on Malcolm Turnbull with reports that he had seen the fugazi days earlier and was encouraging Godwin Grech to peddle it on the market. 

Then, only half and hour before question time another story emerges that Rudd had accepted $32,000 from John “The Don” Grant for legal fees.

Now we’re talking. This could go anywhere, we can only hope to hookers, drugs and the Mafia.

Question time begins, and Tony “no nose” Abbott asks the question: “So why’d he give you the moolah Kevin?”

Kevin: “Well you see old chap it was money from a fund raising dinner to raise cash for an anti-aircraft noise campaign.”

What kind of lame corruption is that?

Continue reading "Our scandals suck, just ask Silvio Berlusconi" »

The Age is reporting John Grant, the car dealer at the centre of the Utegate affair, was involved in raising $32,000 to cover legal fees for Kevin Rudd. Expect the Opposition to have something to say about it during Question Time.

Today is the last QT for six weeks and both sides will be hoping to land a killer blow, or at least have the final say. Join us here from 2pm.

Continue reading "Question Time live 25/06/09" »

We’re wondering what the odds are that Turnbull rolls over and doesn’t ask one question about utegate today. Find out here and join in the live commentary from 2pm.

Continue reading "Question Time live 24/06/09" »

THE biggest casualty in the Utegate fiasco has not been Malcolm Turnbull or Kevin Rudd or Wayne Swan or the oddly-named Godwin Grech, whose unusual handle meant he was almost pre-ordained to wind up as a bit player in some low-rent antipodean rehash of a John Grisham thriller.

The biggest casualty has been the taxpaying, voting public, which has watched the nation’s political leadership descend into an orgy of ludicrous name-calling, one-upmanship and abuse.

[Note: There’s some proper ute-related action in this YouTube vid.]

The allegations at the centre of the Utegate affair were deeply serious. As such, it’s a bit rich to declare boldly that any discussion of the affair was, of itself, a waste of time. It wasn’t a waste of time at all.

Continue reading "Memo MPs: the public has had a gutful of Utegate" »

Update 10.55pm: On Lateline tonight Joe Hockey did his best to turn the issue back onto Wayne Swan and the media, but confused things further when he refused to acknowledge the smoking gun email was a fake. When Tony Jones asked him if it was fabricated, Hockey said: “I don’t know, I honestly don’t know.” He also said: “We have no greater insight into the source of the alleged email than anyone else.”
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As if Malcolm Turnbull wasn’t copping it enough from across the Chamber on his major Ute-gate fumblings, tonight one of his own picked up the ball and handed it to the other side.

The ABC’s Chris Uhlmann reported the Australian Federal Police intended to question public servant Godwin Grech over a string of leaks from the Treasury Department, other than the now infamous fake email allegedly found on his home computer.

According to Uhlmann, more than one Liberal told him they believed Grech had been supplying information to the Coalition, and Turnbull in particular “off-line” since the time of the Howard Government.

One of them said to the ABC political editor: “He (Grech) has been sympathetic to us for some time.”

As the revelations about Mr Grech continue at such a rapid pace, and coming from inside the Coalition no less, Turnbull’s judgement, and position, is looking more and more fragile.

Continue reading "Is Turnbull going “off-line”?" »

It is hard to believe that not one South Australian Federal Liberal wouldn’t have tapped Malcolm Turnbull on the shoulder late last week and uttered two cautionary words – “Remember Marty”.

Where was SA’s Christopher Pyne or Nick Minchin? Where was Turnbull adviser, Adelaide’s Chris Kenny, in the lead up to the fake email affair and Malcolm’s call for the Prime Minister to resign?

Last week’s email attack in Canberra came just days after I read into Hansard an extraordinary apology from South Australian Liberal Leader, Martin Hamilton-Smith.

Continue reading "Dodgy Lib documents are deja vu all over again" »

As Federal Parliament starts to resemble an X-Files episode, the latest mad theory is that Peter Costello is being encouraged to rethink his eight-day-old decision to leave politics.

There are even byzantine claims that the sham email found by the AFP yesterday at treasury official Godwin Grech’s house - which has today been pelted with eggs - was the political equivalent of an exploding cigar aimed at destroying Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership.

The theory has been given extra legs with revelations on The Punch yesterday that the AFP want to have a quiet word to former Costello staffer Paul Lindwall, who until recently was working as Mr Turnbull’s economics advisor, to see what role if any he had in the email affair. There are no suggestions of any wrongdoing on his part but he is a confidante of Mr Grech and the coppers are keen to rule him in or out of the equation.

It’s anything goes stuff in Canberra right now. The wildly speculative Costello talk does indicate one thing - serious Liberal disquiet over Malcolm Turnbull’s judgment on Utegate, and his ability to bounce back from a shocking 24 hours.

Should Peter Costello make a comeback?

The Punch will again provide live coverage of the Question Time mayhem from 2pm.

If you’re sick of reading about Utegate – and a poll currently running on SkyNews suggests 45 per cent of you are – I’d suggest you skip this and go straight to the article below about orgasms.

Our health columnist Roy Eccleston reveals that far from sending you blind, frequent and enthusiastic self-abuse may be the key to longer life, which makes you wonder why David Carradine and Michael Hutchence aren’t still with us today. 

Anyway, I digress. This column isn’t about sex, but it is about somebody who looks totally shagged - Malcolm Turnbull, who, currently, is the Leader of the Opposition.

Continue reading "How a toxic bore destroyed a flamboyant dilettante" »

8.52pm: That’s a wrap. What a day. That was possibly one of the best episodes of the 7.30 Report ever tonight - Rudd’s line about a “garden variety making-things-up” was a classic.

Thanks to all of you who contributed during the day, particularly to the live coverage of a brutal couple of hours in Parliament. There were well over 1000 comments from readers - you can replay it below. A couple of closing comments:

• Confirmation the email was a fake casts last Friday’s Senate hearing in a different light. Liberal Senator Eric Abetz appeared to be quoting the email when he questioned Godwin Grech. It now seems possible one or both of them knew, or suspected, it was a forgery. And we should ask again why Grech’s superior, David Martine, interfered with the questioning of Senators on certain details.
• Wayne Swan shouldn’t be off the hook. There remains a straightforward question over whether he misled Parliament when answering questions about a mate of the Prime Minister. After the extraordinary theatre in Canberra today it’s easy to lose sight of this. I suppose the question is whether the crippling blow landed on the Opposition today will hobble it for the rest of the fight.

Looking forward to the papers in the morning.

7.08pm Evening news roundup, and Kochie in Canberra. On the Nine Network, Laurie Oakes says Malcolm Turnbull has egg on his face. Rudd joined Peter Overton outside Parliament House for a stand-up interview. He said he had “absolute confidence in the Treasurer”, adding that he had helped “many many many” car dealers. At the end he said Liberal Party elders should tell Turnbull to go.

I would call upon the senior people of the Liberal Party, the experienced hands of the Liberal Party - Mr Costello, Brendan Nelson, Senator Minchin - to tap Mr Turnbull on the shoulder and say it is time to go.

Seven’s news was headed “Turnbull in Turmoil” and had some of the great grabs from today, to wit:

Albanese: “Bring it on”.
Turnbull: “He has lied to this House.”
Hockey: “Have you got something to say Prime Minister? Have you got something to say?”
Rudd: “Be man enough to apologise and resign.”

Seven’s verdict: Swan has explaining to do, but Turnbull’s fighting hardest for his political life.

Something to look forward to tomorrow is Kochie with the utegate latest from Parliament House. As Anthony Albanese might say, bring it on.

5.11pm: Turnbull’s former adviser speaks to the Herald Sun. Excerpts:

A FORMER adviser to Malcolm Turnbull has denied involvement with the email at the centre of the Ute-gate affair…

... There is no suggestion that Mr Lindwall - a former staffer to both Peter Costello and Mr Turnbull -has engaged in any wrongdoing, but it is understood the Australian Federal Police want to speak with him to determine his involvement, if any, in the affair.

Late today Mr Lindwall told heraldsun.com.au he had nothing to do with the fake email.

“I don’t know anything about the email, I can tell you that,” he said.

Mr Lindwall admitted to knowing Mr Grech, adding: “I used to work in Treasury, anyone who worked in Treasury would know Godwin.”

Read the full story here.

5.02pm: Twittermania - Tweeters have been piling in all afternoon with comments on “utegate”. See the stream of utegate comments here.

Continue reading "Live blogging utegate: Showdown in Canberra" »

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.

Continue reading "Utegate explained: This is not just about an email or a ute" »

Highlights from this morning’s newspapers of the coverage of the utegate affair. See how the various titles around the country report and analyse the utegate crisis ahead of today’s showdown in Canberra.

Continue reading "Utegate reading round-up" »

Kevin Rudd might think that momentum has swung back his way in the Utegate scandal with the email implicating him and his office looking almost certainly like a fake.

For the PM to have referred himself and his office to the Auditor-General, and to have gone one further and called in the AFP, are the actions of a man who is confident that the continuing sweeps of his email system will not throw up any nasty surprises.

But the more the ALP goes on about the fake email, the more obvious it becomes that it’s the only email the Government wants to talk about - because the others are so damning of Treasurer Wayne Swan, whose conduct has conveniently not been included in the terms of reference for the Auditor-General’s investigation.

Continue reading "Rudd and Swan in quagmire of their own making" »

Hi Mal and Kev,

Busy weekend, eh? Hey Malcolm, how nuts is it that there are questions over your suitability for the leadership when Peter Costello only said a matter of days ago he wasn’t interested in your job? Man, that must suck.

Anyway, one of you is going to have to blink. We’ve been in the political equivalent of a staring match since Friday.

This is just a short note to let you know where I think we’re up to. Malcolm, you have to produce that email, or you’re going to look very silly. But Kevin, don’t think this lets you off the hook either.

Continue reading "To: Turnbull, Malcolm; Rudd, Kevin. Re: Utegate" »

UPDATE 7.35pm: Kevin Rudd has called an Auditor-General’s inquiry into the affair, but is standing by his denials that neither he nor his office has made any representations on behalf of car dealer John Grant, and is continuing a full email search through the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Follow the news links below for more.

KEVIN Rudd has a whole stack of explaining to do.

His claim that he has done nothing wrong in relation to his car dealer mate John Grant has now officially conked out, and is up on the blocks looking like very much like he sold the Australian people a lemon.

As a result of this afternoon’s estimates hearings it now appears he has seriously misled Parliament over his relationship with his friend and neighbour, who runs a Kia dealership, and who famously lent him a ute as an electorate vehicle. At its worst, it appears the Prime Minister’s office - and possibly even the PM - directly interfered on behalf of the PM’s little car-dealing mate to make sure he got a slice of the federal bailout money for the ailing car industry.

Continue reading "PM’s car trouble more than just a minor bingle" »