Nathan Rees

Editor’s note: This is an extract from Rodney Cavalier’s forthcoming book Power Crisis, an explosive account of the self-destruction of the NSW Labor government, which has seen a turnover of four premiers in five years. Former NSW Education Minister Cavalier (once described by a left-wing Teachers Federation official as “the rudest, most pugnacious individual to hold office”), provides a warts and all account of the downfall of Premiers Iemma and Rees as well as the best analysis so far of how NSW Labor’s inexorable decline.

Nathan Rees began the final day of his leadership with a press conference.

He and his staff thought long and hard about what he might say. The line taken came of the instant; wrapping it in words took a while longer. Having decided against a studied silence, the contents of what Rees felt compelled to say will enjoy a long afterlife:

“I will not hand the government of New South Wales over to Obeid, Tripodi or Sartor. Should I not be premier by the end of this day, let there be no doubt in the community’s mind, no doubt, that any challenger will be a puppet of Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi. That is the reality. That is the choice at stake today. The decision now lies in the hands of my Caucus colleagues.”

Continue reading "Execution: How NSW Labor knocked off a Premier" »

There are more former ministers in the NSW Government than there are ministers. Fourteen of them to be exact.

One of them is in Long Bay for plying youths with heroin and having sex with them in his parliamentary office.

The other 13 aren’t bad people. They’re just guilty of a combination of hubris, sloth, incompetence and stupidity, and stand as examples of what can happen when a government has been in power for so long that it can’t remember what it was originally there for.

Continue reading "The nobility of public life, in a sea of squalor" »

UPDATE 7.37pm: Rees gawn. Kristina Keneally won the ballot 47 to 21 and becomes the first female Premier of NSW.

JUST two days after Malcolm Turnbull’s tenacious and gutsy last stand as Liberal Leader, NSW Labor Premier Nathan Rees is turning in the performance of his political life as he doggedly slugs it out with the factions in a seemingly doomed bid to save his leadership.

Rees gave one of the best speeches by any Australian politician today. It may well be his last - when the Party Room meets at 6pm he is expected to lose his job. 17 MPs have signed a petition demanding his resignation. They include the hated factional heavyweights Joe Tripodi and Eddie Obeid, the domestically troubled John Della Bosca and former Police Minister Matt Brown, dumped just a week into the job after it emerged he’d stripped to his green undies at a parliamentary office party, mounted the chest of backbencher Noreen Hay, and shouted at her staffer daughter: “Look, I’m titty-f***ing your Mum!”

Nathan Rees has told these ornaments to public service that they can basically get stuffed. Have a read of what he said:

Continue reading "Rees the new star in festival of heroic losers" »

The least functional and least popular division of the Australian Labor Party is about to tell Kevin Rudd to get stuffed, Julia Gillard to butt out, and embark on a wild spree to install some of the most disliked people in Australia back in a position of power.

Less than one month after Premier Nathan Rees blindsided the factions by declaring that he alone would determine the composition of Cabinet - and using his new presidential-style powers to dump the spectacularly unpopular Joe Tripodi and the disloyal Ian Macdonald from Cabinet - the factions have now regrouped and are moving to roll Rees.

This is a big story in NSW but it’s a bigger story nationally as it involves a very pointed snub to the Prime Minister. When Nathan Rees moved against the factions last month, he did so with the backing of Kevin Rudd. And Julia Gillard even went so far as to attend the NSW Labor conference and deliver a speech in support of Nathan Rees.

Continue reading "Labor’s NSW degenerates ready to embarrass Rudd" »

UPDATE: Nathan Rees has sacked Joe Tripodi and Ian Macdonald from Cabinet.

In political terms the equivalent of a nuclear bomb has just gone off in Sydney. It has immediate ramifications for some of the most hated figures in the deeply unpopular NSW Government.

But it has massive national long-term implications, as it will determine whether Labor leaders have the right to choose their own ministry, rather than have their frontbench foisted upon them by the factions.

In a gutsy gamble, NSW Premier Nathan Rees has gone for the doomsday scenario revealed on The Punch some weeks ago by taking on the factions and winning rank-and-file party approval to form his own Cabinet by dumping unpopular or treacherous ministers. And Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has just strongly backed Rees in her speech to the NSW ALP, and Kevin Rudd has done so in a press conference at APEC.

Continue reading "Rees’ gutsy gamble rewrites the rules of Labor politics" »

You have to hand it to the Labor spin machine.

While it runs around the Federal press gallery highlighting various views among the Coalition on climate change, it is preparing a desperate bid for re-election in NSW by dividing itself.

According to a weekend news report, the Liberal Party is preparing for a re-election campaign in which local ALP members of Parliament actually turn on the Government.

Continue reading "NSW Labor ready to campaign against itself" »

It sounds impossible, but NSW politics could be about to get a whole lot more interesting.

“More interesting” in the NSW context currently comes with a high degree of difficulty. It’s hard to imagine how you could top the recent combo of the John Della Bosca sex scandal and, three days later, the murky claims that slain property developer Michael McGurk recorded a “tape from the grave” before his execution implicating up to three Labor MPs in a corruption scandal.

But what might be about to happen will be spectacular never the less. It will only happen, however, if Nathan Rees acts with a combination of courage and abandon, in standing up to those elements within the party who are regarded by voters as a permanent stain on the government, doing so in the knowledge that he’s got nothing to lose as he’s doomed anyway.

Continue reading "Hit self-destruct: NSW Labor’s doomsday solution" »

No-one has yet give a credible explanation to why disgraced NSW ex-health minister John Della Bosca was locked out of his office after his affair with a much younger woman was exposed.

His door was locked, an armed guard was positioned outside and all his staff were sacked.

It was an overtly over-the-top response from premier Nathan Rees for something many sympathetic journalists said merely reflected what many in the community get up to behind closed doors.

Continue reading "Why John Della Bosca was locked out: the sad truth" »

October 2009: Exactly one month after the John Della Bosca sex scandal, the NSW Labor Government is plunged intro fresh crisis with revelations that two members of Parliament’s Economic and Finance Committee have been running a “speak-easy” out of their Macquarie St office.

A gin distillery and $100,000 in illegal casino chips are seized, and a dozen 18-year-old girls, wearing the traditional “flapper” garb of the day, and two elderly black men with a banjo and clarinet are frogmarched into police vans in The Domain. “Look, I’m as disappointed as anyone,” Premier Nathan Rees tells reporters. “But I’ve made it clear to my team that it’s back to work. No more gin stills, no more jug bands. We’ve got a state to run.”

November 2009: Due to a shortfall of personnel former Police Minister Matt Brown - dumped last year for dancing in his green underpants and mounting the chest of a female MP - is recalled to the frontbench in the junior portfolio of Regional Development.

Continue reading "Revealed: the next 521 days of the NSW Government" »

Those plotting the demise of the latest NSW Premier - along with those of us simply looking on in resigned bemusement – could do well to tune into the free-to-air premiere of ‘The Wire’ on ABC-2 tonight.

David Simon’s masterpiece, rightly dubbed the ‘greatest TV show ever made’, is ostensibly about the drug trade in Baltimore. While first-time viewers will think they have stumbled upon just another cop show, as they become addicted they will be drawn into the workings of a post-industrial city.

‘The Wire’ is about the connections that bind a city – from the projects to the ports, from politics to education, to the crumbling power of the media. It shows how systems now rule and render good men and women powerless.

Continue reading "We are all Nathan Rees" »

To put it kindly, Nathan Rees’ Premiership has been a rocky ride.

His own inexperience has been exacerbated by a decaying Labor Government, no shortage of scandals and a selfish bunch of incompetent Ministers who were focused on personal gain rather than the public good.

To make matters worse, he is about to fall victim to the very same process of which he was once a beneficiary.

Continue reading "Rees should do the decent thing and call the Governor" »

Have you seen Nathan Rees? He’s been the Premier of NSW for – oh, almost a year now – and he’s vanished. Upped stumps and gone on a week-long holiday to an undisclosed location. Not even his colleagues know where he is.

Some of them are trying to organise a spill. Others are denying that a spill will take place. The only clear thing is that NSW has officially slipped into a state of happy anarchism, where incompetent government has made way for no government at all.

Radio 2GB is currently giving callers the chance to win a romantic dinner for two at Le Sands Pavilion, down at Brighton Le Sands on Botany Bay, if they can call in with a confirmed sighting of the Premier.

Continue reading "Find the Premier and win a romantic dinner for two" »