Labor’s rot goes to the party’s core
When huge sums of money are being covertly exchanged in plastic shopping bags in a bid to buy political power, you know something is deeply rotten with the political party on the receiving end, writes Peta Credlin.
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Anyone seen $100,000 in an Aldi bag?
You only have to pose the question to know that something is rotten with a political party whose first instinct is just to take the money.
Everyone in the NSW Labor Party is running for cover as ICAC probes a $100,000 cash donation from Mr Huang Xiangmo, a Chinese national now banned from re-entering Australia.
There’s the sweaty, nervous former Labor MLC Ernest Wong who first fessed up that the illegal donation had come, not from multiple donors at an event but from one banned donor only.
RELATED: Developer delivers $100k cash from Chinese fundraiser to ALP in shopping bag
There’s the now suspended, soon to be sacked, Labor Party General Secretary, Kaila Murnain who knew the donation was dodgy enough to be worried but rather than immediately pick up the phone to Electoral Commission and keep her integrity, she telephoned that paragon of virtue, sacked former Labor Senator ‘Shanghai’ Sam Dastyari, and in doing so, signed the death warrant on her once rising political career.
The fact that Murnain and Dastyari met in his parked car, soviet-spy style, to avoid eavesdroppers and the risks of electronic surveillance tells you everything you need to know about how deep the rot is inside NSW Labor.
RELATED: NSW Labor: Could it possibly get any worse?
He told her to “cover her arse”, so she took his advice and called Labor’s lawyer fixer who, according to Murnain, allegedly told her: “there is no need to do anything from here. Don’t record this meeting. Don’t put it in your diary. Forget the conversation happened … and I won’t be billing you for this either”.
It’s all very well for the current NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay to tut-tut about what’s happened, along with the party’s former leader, “I’m not Eddie Obeid’s girl”, Senator Kristina Keneally, who said on Friday that the answer is just to move Labor’s headquarters out of Sussex Street to fix the rot.
Is Keneally forgetting that Murnain was once her staffer and protégé?