NSW Labor boss Kaila Murnain suspended after ICAC evidence

Kaila Murnain has been suspended after today’s evidence at ICAC where she revealed she knew about illegal donations in 2016.

NSW Labor general secretary Kaila Murnain has appeared at the ICAC inquiry. Picture: Adam Taylor

Kaila Murnain has been suspended as NSW Labor boss after today’s evidence at ICAC where she revealed she knew about illegal donations in 2016.

In a statement tonight NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay said:

“Tonight I am taking steps to clean up the mess at ALP head office.

“I am appalled by the evidence of the past three days.

“I have therefore asked the party officers to convene a meeting tonight to suspend Kaila Murnain as General Secretary, as I no longer have confidence in her judgement.

“Pat Garcia will act in the role of General Secretary.”

Ms Murnain is said to have refused to go last night unless she was paid out a year’s salary, worth $300,000.

Ms Murnain today claimed her party’s lawyer told her to tell no one and forget it when she informed him about a “massive f**k-up” over billionaire property developer Huang Xiangmo being the real source of a large donation to the state ALP that had been declared in another person’s name.

Ms Murnain told a corruption hearing today that Ian Robertson, the national managing partner Holding Redlich, said she should stay silent about an alleged serious breach of NSW electoral funding laws when she met him at an urgently called meeting at his office at Sydney’s MLC Centre on September 16, 2016.

Giving evidence under oath to a NSW Indpendent Commission Against Corruption hearing, the ALP secretary said she had just come from meeting with then NSW Labor MP Ernest Wong outside the back of state parliament House at 6.45pm where he first told her “in an upset state” that a person was worried after discovering a donation was falsely alleged to have been made in that person’s name by another.

Ms Murnain said she had a recollection that Mr Wong possibly mentioned a sum of $100,000 and indicated that Mr Huang was the true source of the donation declared in another person’s name. She said she thought it was possibly connected to a Chinese Friends of Labor fundraising event that was held in March the previous year in Sydney’s Chinatown when she was deputy to the then party secretary Jamie Clements.

According to Ms Murnain, she told Mr Wong to urge the worried person to come forward. When the meeting with Mr Wong ended, she said she immediately called Sam Dastyari for advice on what to do because he was a close friend, one of her predecessors in the job she now held, and he knew Mr Huang well.

Mr Dastyari drove straight away from his nearby office to the back of NSW Parliament House to meet Ms Murnain, and allegedly told her in a conversation about Mr Wong’s revelation that she should speak to the party’s governance manager or to lawyers about the issue. Ms Murnain said she was very upset and crying at the time.

Ms Murnain said she then called Mr Robertson and asked to meet him in his office as soon as possible. Still at work on this Friday evening, Mr Robertson allegedly met her at the top of the MLC building escalators and then took her to one of his firm’s meeting rooms.

She said Mr Robertson asked her if she had any evidence from Mr Wong about what had happened on the funding matter, and she replied that she did not. He also asked if she believed Mr Wong, and she said she did.

At the conclusion of a 20-minute conversation, Ms Murnain alleged Mr Robertson then said: “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 with Ernest and I won’t be billing this for you either.

“And that was it — and “Don’t tell anyone about it’. And so I initially didn’t tell anyone about it.”