Eddie Obeid: Former NSW Labor minister and party powerbroker will spend Christmas behind bars
LATE in his long slide from infamous political powerbroker to a corruption trial, and now to jail, Eddie Obeid collected the colourful and supremely ironic moniker of “Mr One Per Cent”.
NSW
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LATE in his long slide from infamous political powerbroker to a corruption trial, and now to jail, Eddie Obeid collected the colourful and supremely ironic moniker of “Mr One Per Cent”.
The one-time Labor kingpin who wielded such brutal power he could make and destroy premiers boasted there was just a one per cent chance of him being prosecuted for corruption.
As his family left court in tears and Obeid was taken to the cells to begin a minimum three-year prison term, it signalled the end of one of the most notorious eras in NSW politics.
The child migrant from a northern Lebanese village who worked as a cabbie and on a local Arabic language newspaper received his leg-up into politics by former ALP organiser, federal minister and strongman Graham Richardson.
For much of two decades, through his control of a sub-faction of the Labor Right known as the Terrigals, he became a power unto himself, nobbling opponents and holding colleagues and even governments to ransom.
Labor premiers Morris Iemma, Nathan Rees and Kristina Keneally all fell victim to Obeid’s control.
Baird: “Obeid’s actions make me sick”
Before losing his job Mr Rees left no doubt about the cause of his political demise, saying: “Should I not be premier by the end of the 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.”
Kristina Keneally, who Obeid and fellow powerbroker Joe Tripodi backed into office over Frank Sartor, described Obeid as “a one-in-a-100-year flood of corruption”.
And then there were the small people — ordinary Australians — cruelly damaged and in some cases financially destroyed after crossing his path.
Fortunes were lost by investors in mining companies stripped of their exploration rights after corruption inquiries were held into Obeid.
Former ALP premier Bob Carr was the first to act on the stench around Eddie Obeid 16 years ago when he sacked the disgraced kingmaker from his Cabinet.
Yet as he was finally held to account, Obeid played one last desperate card, claiming he had as little as three years to live and jail should not rob him of precious time with his family.
The corrupt 73-year-old millionaire, bizarrely described as a “champion of the unprivileged”, could expect to live only until he was 76.6 years or 77.7 years, his trial was told. But Crown Prosecutor Peter Neil SC said Obeid was “far from death’s door”.
In 1991, Obeid won election to the NSW Legislative Council and by 1999 he was Minister for Fisheries and Mineral Resources.
Just three years later, Obeid was investigated by a parliamentary inquiry over pecuniary interests, and was ultimately cleared.
In 2011 he resigned from parliament citing his granddaughter’s battle with cancer but two years later Obeid and fellow ex-NSW minister Ian Macdonald were expelled from Labor for bringing the party into disrepute.
Matthew Benns in his book Dirty Money reported Obeid paid $3.65 million for a farm near Mudgee for his retirement from parliament.
The backbencher, who listed his $130,540-a-year salary as his only form of income, included the farm in a family property portfolio that boasted an $8.5 million waterfront mansion in Woolwich with its own private beach, a $6 million family home in Hunters Hill and a $1.125 million apartment at Port Macquarie.
All of them are a far cry from his jail cell, where Mr One Per Cent can ponder how the odds beat him.
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