G’Day. Who’s who in the AbbottHanson zoo? Antony Loewenstein has agreed to keep an eye on who emerges from where and on whose side as the Honest Politics Trust slowly opens up to public scrutiny and comment. His first report features Peter Garrett (Abbott fund supporter), Trevor Kennedy (fund donor) and Cedric Hampson QC (Hanson’s defender on appeal).

Mutual appreciation society

by Antony Loewenstein

The platitudes and and the recriminations are laced with an air of insincerity. Since the sentencing of Hanson and Ettridge and their failure to gain bail, the individuals behind the original court case are still mired in the shadows.

Weblogger and former Webdiarist Tim Dunlop had PETER GARRETT in his sights last week, after the former Oils frontman supported the actions of Abbott in 1998. So much for the left’s supposed desire for representative democracy. When a hero of the left like Garrett can come out and support a fundamentally antidemocratic movement, spearheaded by Abbott and secretive backers calling themselves Australians for Honest Politics, some serious questions have to be asked about the real motives and desires of those aiming for political office. As for those already in politics, Dunlop writes:

“Fact is, Garrett just sounds like another one of those who pretend to want wide participation in the political process but actually want to limit it to the like-minded. If he wants to rid the world of Hansonite policies, he should try and win the arguments, not endorse what looks like conservative party dirty tricks.”(Abbott’s Garrett)

Let’s examine some of the people so keen to derail the democratic process in the name of avoiding Big Party losses at the ballot box, along with the main players in the Hanson game.

TREVOR KENNEDY

Trevor Kennedy has outed himself as agreeing to “throw in” $10,000 for the fund to take on Hanson. On August 29, The Age revealed that Kennedy had no qualms about the three year jail term for Hanson and Ettridge:

“It took me about three seconds to make up my mind that I would support itv (the HPT),” Mr Kennedy said. “I certainly subscribed to the notion that getting up and denouncing Hanson as a Nazi was not necessarily going to be as effective as exposing the financial shenanigans and the lack of democracy in her organisation.” (Abbott donor: I gave gladly)

Kennedy is a former editor of Kerry Packer’s The Bulletin and head of Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings.

In a column in Junen this year, Robert Manne detailed the backroom dealings at the ABC to replace Jonathan Shier with Kennedy:

“For the right, the most important move to “reform” the ABC came with the appointment of the hapless and hopeless Jonathan Shier as general manager. Shier must be regarded as one of the right’s more spectacular recent own goals. Following his removal there was an attempt to recover lost ground by the imposition as general manager of Trevor Kennedy of Packer media. The attempt misfired. The chairman of the ABC board, Donald MacDonald, a true conservative and thus a genuine believer in due process and the independence of the ABC, turned down Kennedy’s belated job application. An internal candidate, Russell Balding, was appointed. For the right this represented a considerable defeat.” (McCarthy’s Ghost in ABC attack)

Annabel Crabb of The Age noted in late May:

“Last year, McDonald steadfastly refused to interview ex-Nine executive Trevor Kennedy for the managing director’s job, ignoring helpful public suggestions from the Prime Minister, Treasurer Peter Costello and Alston. ‘”He’s gone native!'” was the cry.”

Clearly the Liberal Government is fond of Kennedy, despite his many years of supporting the Labor Party.

Why was Kennedy a port of call for Abbott in 1998 when passing around the collection tin to help bring down One Nation? And was Kennedy hoping to get out of his ‘donation’? Abbott and Howard claim the slush fund was completely separate from the Liberal Party, but the public support for Kennedy by members of the Howard Government earlier this year raises questions about its transparency, accountability and favours system.

Abbott suggested on the Sunday Sunrise program on August 31 that Trevor Kennedy was a long-time supporter of the Labor Party, without explaining why members of his own cabinet were so strong in advocating Kennedy’s appointment to the ABC board a few months ago:

“Trevor Kennedy is a long-time supporter of the Labor Party. One of the points that I really should make is that there are certain sections of the media and certain sections of the Labor Party who really would like to create, or to recreate, the Hanson phenomenon because for these people something like Hanson is necessary to validate their view of Australia and to validate their view of conservative politics. You see, they have this view of Australia as some kind of dark, disreputable, racist kind of country. If they can point to Hanson and say, “Look, she’s alive,” that validates them. It’s almost as if Hanson has become a sacred monster for sections of the left.”

There’s also a close association between Kennedy and MALCOLM TURNBULL, darling of the Liberal Party, former party treasurer, past head of the Republican movement and potential Liberal MP. In 1998, theSydney Morning Herald reported on the astounding success of the Ozemail computer company, launched by Sean Howard (no relation). The company caught the eye of Kennedy, then boss of Packer’s ACP in 1995. The SMH reported in early April 1998:

“OzEmail will list on the Australian Stock Exchange sometime this year. Not only has Howard got rich on the deal – on paper anyway because he hasn’t sold any shares – but so have Trevor Kennedy and merchant banker Malcolm Turnbull. Both decided to back Howard’s Internet adventure back in 1995 by spending less than $1 million each to grab a little over 15 per cent each. Those stakes are now worth on paper $55 million each. Kennedy became an investor in OzEmail after Howard ran into Kennedy’s secretary at a party. Howard mentioned he was looking for investors and was told Kennedy might be interested. Kennedy then recommended that Howard ask Turnbull to join as chairman.”

These connections prove little and they may all be interesting coincidences. But questions are invariably raised. Was Turnbull involved in any way with forming a relationship between Kennedy and Abbott? When Abbott called Kennedy in 1998 asking for money for his slush fund, was he calling as a private individual or as a member of the Liberal Party? The answer to this question is essential, as the politics and allegiances of Kennedy at the time would surely have determined whether he would have donated $10,000 to the fund. There is no suggestion to date that Turnbull has any role in the Trust.

It seems there are a number of questions that key donors, once revealed, need to answer.

1) When Abbott rang for money, was he ringing as an individual or as a member of the Liberal Party?

2) What did you see as the purpose of the slush fund?

3) Were you a member of any political party when you donated money?

4) What did think would be the effect of legal action against One Nation?

5) What did you think would be the benefits to the two major parties with the (possible) eradication of One Nation?

CEDRIC HAMPSON QC

The Queensland based Cedric Hampson QC leads the Hanson appeal team. In 1991, he worked for the Queensland’s Criminal Justice Commission, taking on Christopher Skase for alleged payments to candidates in the Gold Coast City Council elections.

He rose to national prominence with his involvement in the Fitzgerald Inquiry in the late 1990s. In February 1998, the SMH reported that Hampson was “totally free to concentrate on helping Fitzgerald get to the truth of his inquiries”.

The Queensland Bar News’ biography of Hampson in 2001 paints an intriguing picture:

“At one time or another, Hampson QC has led many of the State’s current judges and senior counsel. To be his junior is an invaluable educational experience – not only for what one can learn from his profound knowledge of the law, his finely-honed forensic techniques, and his wealth of litigious experience, but also for the courtesy and kindness which he shows to his instructing solicitors, his clients, and (above all) his juniors. Anyone who has the good fortune to work with him, or the intellectual challenge of working against him, cannot fail to benefit from the experience.

It is quite impossible to catalogue the extent and significance of Hampson’s contribution to the development of the law in Queensland and Australia, across the vast range of cases in which he has appeared at every level. A perusal of the Commonwealth Law Reports and the Queensland Reports since the early 1960s readily demonstrates, not only the huge number of cases in which he has appeared, but also the extraordinary diversity of those cases – crime, personal injuries, defamation, commercial and industrial matters, town planning cases, property disputes, and constitutional matters. One might say, as Thomas Moore said of Sheridan, that he has “run through each mode of the lyre, and was master of all.”

Highlights include numerous appearances as counsel for the Criminal Justice Commission or as counsel assisting inquiries conducted by that body – including the Carruthers Inquiry and the Connolly-Ryan Inquiry. He been counsel assisting at numerous Royal Commissions and Commissions of Inquiry, including two major inquiries into the illicit drug trade

Whenever members of either branch of the legal profession have found themselves in professional difficulties, Cedric Hampson has been and continues to be their first choice of representation. Some of the most affluent, influential and powerful members of society – along with many thousands of ordinary Queenslanders – have turned to Cedric Hampson for assistance in their time of need.

Another interesting historical coincidence is Hampson’s appearance before Justice Patricia Wolfe in 1998. Sound familiar? She’s the same judge who sent Hanson and Ettridge away for three years. In June 1998 at the Fitzgerald Inquiry, Wolfe made the following statements that show her contempt for sections of the media. In light of her recent decision against Hanson, it would appear she is not one to give in to media pressure surrounding a controversial subject.

In a biting analysis of the inquiry, SMH journo Evan Whitton wrote in 1998:

“Deputy Commissioner Patricia Wolfe appeared to suggest that certain unnamed elements of the media were the tools of the corrupt. What she said was that ‘some elements of the media’ continue to propagate certain myths. The myths she spoke of were that ‘so-called victimless crimes are little more than harmless escapades’.”

Webdiary Meeja Watch announces the informal establishment of the Australian Alliance for an Honest Fair Go in Politics Public Trust Slush Fund. Citizens wishing to donate funds in accordance with the Trust Fund terms and conditions should contact their nearest main party Elected Representative to make their private pledge. For a fuller amplification of these terms and conditions, and information on the history, guiding principles and philosophies of this informal Public Trust Slush Fund, go to onegreennation.

S.J Robertson, Founding Trustee

* * *

1. Third call for a public donation from Mr John Howard, private citizen

From: Jack Robertson

To: The Honourable Tony Abbott, MP, Leader of the House

Date: 7 September 2003

Subject: A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Part III

Information copies: All Australian Senators and MPs (via email)

The Parliamentary Press Gallery (via Webdiary)

Dear Mr Abbott,

As a proud Citizen of Australia, I write to applaud the Liberal Party of Australia for its civic-minded and selfless defence of our beloved fair go, following recent public revelations that your party welcomes the existence, as part of the Public Polity, of a private Trust Fund called ‘Australians for Honest Politics’, one reportedly designed to protect and nurture the vibrancy of our democracy. I am particularly inspired by the example of the various Private Citizens who, apparently out of nothing but their own well-developed sense of civic duty, contributed large sums of money to make this Trust the magnificent instrument of Public Empowerment that I understand it to be. As I have been unable to establish via the Australian Electoral Commission the precise identity of these fine, upstanding Citizens, I would be grateful if you were to pass on my warmest thanks to each and every one of them on my personal behalf.

Mr Abbott, I would also be grateful if you would advise the ‘Australians for Honest Politics’ Trust Fund benefactors that their shining Citizenly example has inspired me, with an almost religious fervour, to open up my own heart – and my wallet – in similar defence of Australia’s majestic democratic system. Oh, it makes me deeply proud, Mr Abbott, to attach for your consideration below: A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Parts I and II, and re-iterate those challenges now to your leader, Mr Howard, a third time.

Mr Abbott, like Mr Dick Honan and many, many, many other Australian Citizens who have donated money to our major political parties expecting nothing whatsoever in return but the warm inner glow that comes with doing one’s civic duty, I am very, very, very keen to give money to the Liberal Party. To that end, could you personally please ensure that your leader, who is obviously so busy defending our democracy that he has not had time to accept my donation so far, sees this now thrice-reiterated personal challenge with his own eyes this time? And then urge him to take it up, thus showing the nation by personal example – in this rapidly privatising world where all the rest of us have now had our retirement financial security placed, by successive governments, in the hands of Market Forces – that he personally has as much faith in the Free Market revolution he has helped bequeath to the ‘rest of us’ as that which the ‘rest of us’ are now expected to embrace with Citizenly enthusiasm?

Thank you very much, Mr Abbott. And keep up the good fight defending our democracy!

Yours sincerely,

Stephen John ‘Jack’ Robertson

Citizen of the Commonwealth, and consumer of the common wealth, of Australia

2. First call for a public donation from Mr Simon Crean, private citizen

From: Jack Robertson

To: Mr Mark Latham, MP, Leader of Opposition Business in the House

Date: 7 September 2003

Subject: A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Part III

Information copies: All Australian Senators and MPs (via email)

The Parliamentary Press Gallery (via Webdiary)

Dear Mr Latham,

As a proud Citizen of Australia, I write to applaud the Australian Labor Party for its civic-minded and selfless defence of our beloved ‘honesty in politics’, following recent public revelations that your party welcomes the existence, as part of the Public Polity, of a private Trust Fund called the ‘Fair Go Alliance’, one reportedly designed to protect and nurture the vibrancy of our democracy. I am particularly inspired by the example of the various Private Citizens who, apparently out of nothing but their own well-developed sense of civic duty, contributed large sums of money to make this Trust the magnificent instrument of Public Empowerment that I understand it to be. As I have been unable to establish via the Australian Electoral Commission the precise identity of these fine, upstanding Citizens, I would be grateful if you were to pass on my warmest thanks to each and every one of them on my personal behalf.

Mr Latham, I would also be grateful if you would advise the ‘Fair Go Alliance’ Trust Fund benefactors that their shining Citizenly example has inspired me, with an almost religious fervour, to open up my own heart – and my wallet – in similar defence of Australia’s majestic democratic system. Oh, it makes me deeply proud, Mr Latham, to attach for your consideration below: A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Parts I and II, and re-iterate those challenges now to your new leader, Mr Crean, for the first time.

Mr Latham, like Mr Dick Honen and many, many, many other Australian Citizens who have donated money to our major political parties expecting nothing whatsoever in return but the warm inner glow that comes with doing one’s civic duty, I am very, very, very keen to give money to the Labor Party. To that end, could you personally please ensure that your leader, who is obviously so busy defending our democracy that he has not had time to accept my donation so far, sees this now thrice-reiterated personal challenge with his own eyes this time? And then urge him to take it up, thus showing the nation by personal example – in this rapidly privatising world where all the rest of us have now had our retirement financial security placed, by successive governments, in the hands of Market Forces – that he personally has as much faith in the Free Market revolution he has helped bequeath to the ‘rest of us’ as that which the ‘rest of us’ are now expected to embrace with Citizenly enthusiasm?

Thank you very much, Mr Latham. And keep up the good fight defending our democracy!

Yours sincerely,

Stephen John ‘Jack’ Robertson

Citizen of the Commonwealth, and consumer of the common wealth, of Australia

* * *

3. A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Part I

From: Jack Robertson

To: All Federal Senators and MPs, the Parliamentary Press gallery

Date: 24 July 2001

Subject: A Challenge to our Political Leaders

Dear Elected Representatives,

Attached please find a challenge to Mr Howard and Mr Beazley. With thanks for your time

A Citizen

A CHALLENGE TO OUR POLITICAL LEADERS

Dear Mr Howard and Mr Beazley,

Like many Australians, I regard the current state of politics with considerable frustration and despair. With both your political groups apparently intent on tackling the upcoming election campaign with the usual mix of muck-slinging and dissembling, I am finding it increasingly difficult to justify a personal Civic Investment in the future of Australia. I understand the conflicting pressures you are under, and the compromises politicians must make, yet I believe that ultimately, the vibrancy of democracy depends mostly on personal leadership by example. This is especially so right now, in a political climate in which all party groups seem captive to the same dreary, economics-driven agenda. I, for one, don’t want any part in creating a future for our kids in which the Almighty Dollar is the only surviving ‘god’.

To that end, I issue the following challenge. I understand that Peter Andren, MP, has been developing a member’s bill that would radically reform your Superannuation arrangements, in particular offering politicians the choice of voluntarily ‘opting out’ of the more generous (and inequitable) entitlements. As an ex-military officer, I am also entitled to a (largely tax-payer-funded) Super sum, worth about $110,000 – fully-indexed, but locked up until I’m 62.

In the interests of demonstrating by example that none of us are automatically beholden to the so-called ‘forces’ of economic self-interest, I challenge either of you to throw your personal weight very publicly behind Mr Andren’s proposal (and not any watered-down version, either). I promise to donate my lump sum to the party of whichever of you does. It won’t be until 2027 – unless you change the rules so I can get at it earlier (like you guys) – but if there is still at least one real democratic party in existence then to accept it, it will be well worth it.

We’ve got to give our kids something more than easy words to believe in. And the only way to do that is for all us grown-ups to start putting our bloody money where our loud mouths are, in my opinion. Come on, you guys – knock some bloody Oz perspective back into us all.

For your consideration, anyway.

A Citizen

* * *

4. A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Part II

From: Jack Robertson

To: All Federal Senators and MPs, the Parliamentary Press gallery

Date: 8 August 2001

Subject: A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Part II

Dear Elected Representative,

Attached please find my repeated challenge to Mr Howard and Mr Beazley. With thanks for your time.

A Citizen

A CHALLENGE TO OUR POLITICAL LEADERS – PART II

Dear Mr Howard and Mr Beazley,

I note your recent, shared public enthusiasm for the lowering of the tax burden in this country, tactics likely to dominate the upcoming election. I can only assume that you and your advisers share fairly bleak assumptions about the role of voter economic self-interest in winning elections. You guys have smarter pollsters than me, I guess. Don’t you?

However, if your opinion-crunchers have convinced you that our hip pocket nerves do hold the key to the campaign – and given the dismissive snickering now inspired by any politician’s promise on tax – surely a far more successful way to exploit the Australian Public’s grasping base instincts would be for a potential Prime Minister to embrace the challenge on MP Superannuation outlined in my last appeal?

I repeat that challenge – I’ll donate my military superannuation to the party of whichever of you wholeheartedly throws his full support very publicly behind Peter Andren’s bill. All this bill proposes is that current MPs get the option of opting into a fairer set-up, so I’m not even [necessarily] asking anyone else to put their own financial future where their gobs are. It’s about defending the long-term credibility of our Parliament. (Frankly, it’s cretinous to pay yourselves peanut base salaries, attracting far too many monkeys, then compensate with gobsmacking Super so that we all think you’re greedy monkeys, anyway. Do yourselves a few favours, you dills!)

My thanks to those elected Reps who bothered to reply to my last email. Senator [MAIN PARTY] fairly pointed out that an ‘anonymous’ challenge is a bit wussy (although you went a bit quiet when I gave you all my details, Senator!). [Staffer MAIN PARTY], I haven’t heard from Senator [MAIN PARTY] yet, mate, and [staffer MINOR PARTY], likewise re: Senator [MINOR PARTY]. Senator [MINOR PARTY], Senator [MINOR PARTY] hasn’t advised of the [MINOR PARTY] ‘position’ on this issue as yet, so I hope you’ll understand when I place all those nice things I said about how you and Senator [MINOR PARTY] are trying to inject some meaning back into politics ‘on reserve’ for now, OK?

This is a genuine challenge. I know it sounds like high moral ground grandstanding, but consider the powerful ‘trickle down’ effect of leadership by example, in this babble-drenched and economically-cleaving age. One [mainstream] pollie – one – could spark a profound social shift (and, what’s more, win the election with a single soundbite.)

At least think about it, you guys?

A Citizen

* * * * * * *���������������

The Australian ‘honest fair go’ means, in the end, nothing more than this: that we ALL play by the SAME rules. As far as the unknown and unknowable future of the ‘New Economics’ revolution goes, that it turn means this: if the living standards of you and I and the ordinary Australian down the street are now going to ebb and sway, in our future retirement, with the vicissitudes and variations of the global ‘Free Market’, then the individual men and women who have remade our Australian society in this way over the last two decades MUST place themselves personally in exactly that same financial boat.

It’s NOT good enough to change the Parliamentary Superannuation scheme so that only TOMORROW’s elected officials will join us in that increasingly-rocky retirement vessel. John Howard and Simon Crean – along with most of the senior leadership figures now running both main parties – have been members of successive Executive governments directly responsible for these radical, largely-bipartisan economic changes. It was all a fait accompli? There was no alternative? Fine. But let’s see either, or preferably BOTH, of these publicly-elected and publicly-paid leaders – for I’ll happily split my miserable $110,000 lump sum between both main parties – now PERSONALLY demonstrate their continuing PERSONAL confidence in those radical economic changes they PERSONALLY helped usher in, by PERSONALLY opting out of their own now ludicrously-disparate, anachronistic PUBLIC schemes, and into PRIVATE ones of the kind the rest of us will have to make do with in our dotages.

Through boom and bust, with growth and ‘negative growth’, for Market better or Market worse.

If our Parliament’s main party leaderships want or need to vote our Federal politicians a huge pay rise and/or up their electoral allowances markedly to make this fundamental systemic change financially feasible for those who may have all sorts of commitments predicated on whopping Super, then I will support them to the hilt. Me, I happen to think we pay our pollies contemptibly low basic salaries, anyway. Me, I happen to think that even a lowly backbencher should be pulling in about two or three hundred grand a year as a very minimum. But what is crucial now – as the strategic economic outlook grows less and less readable – is the principle of manifest systemic equality. What is especially crucial, in a new and uncertain private-public economic paradigm that is only now starting to bed in and bite down on the old Australian certitudes, is that those leaders who rammed those paradigmatic changes upon the rest of us must manifestly embrace their long-term consequences right alongside the rest of us. This, in turn, now urgently requires leadership by personal example far beyond platitudinous inanities about ‘free markets’ and yet more requisite ‘future-securing’ reforms.

A fair go, John Howard? Honest politics, Simon Crean? Maintaining Australian trust and belief in stable, mainstream, two-party Parliamentary Democracy? Trust between voter and voted-in, trust between the private benefactors and the public citizens?

Fine words. But in the end, bullshit walks, money talks. Get your wallets out, boys. I haven’t even got a secure, fulltime job, and I’m itching to lob over a hundred grand into your future Main Party democratic fighting coffers – via this somewhat roundabout, dodgy and informal, ‘fringe party’ backroom funding mechanism I’ve called ‘The Australian Alliance for an Honest Fair Go in Politics’ Public Trust Slush Fund, with a labelling nod to you both. (We Citizens can play ironic little word-games just as easily as your grubby spin doctors and smooth marketeers, y’know.) And I bet there’s other Citizens out here who’d chuck a few bucks your main party way, just for the fun of watching a politician do himself out of an unearned quid for a change, too.

But like all natural-born followers, I require a main party leader to lead the way first. John? Simon? Cabinet? Caucus? Party fundraising ball’s in your democratic court, boys and girls.

September 10,2003

Dear Margo,

I’ve just been given your latest on-line piece.

The important facts remain: the Honest Politics Trust did not endorse candidates, support candidates or fund campaigns. I did not tell donors their names would be revealed when seeking donations because I had no reason to think they would be. I did not tell the lawyer whose advice I sought that his name would be revealed. I have always been upfront about my role in Australians for Honest Politics but don’t intend to say anything about other people’s roles except as required by law. To do otherwise would be to break faith with people who supported a good cause at a difficult time for Australia.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Abbott

G’Day. I’ve discovered an intriguing discrepancy between Tony Abbott’s written statements to the Australian Electoral Commission about his Honest Politics Trust Fund (HPT) and what he told me in our interview on Friday.

I’d left a message at Tony Abbott’s office on Thursday asking him to call after the AEC chairman, Justice Morling, took over the AEC’s investigation of the HPT. I also asked his spin doctor, Andrew Simpson, questions on the legal advice Abbott assured the AEC validated his refusal to disclose the donors to HPT, and Andrew said he’d ask the minister. They were:

* Why didn’t Mr Abbott want the Australian people to know the identity of the donors to his honest politics trust?

* Had Mr Abbott received written legal advice that the HPT was exempt from laws requiring disclosure of political donations to the Australian people?

* Why wouldn’t Mr Abbott reveal the name of the lawyer who gave him the legal advice? (See ‘AEC chief intervenes in Abbott slush fund secrets’ at http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/04/1062548956846.html)

Now why would a politician who wanted to hide the truth talk to a journalist who wanted to ask him questions he didn’t want to answer? To his credit, Mr Abbott did call, and we spoke after 6pm on Friday night. (The news story arising out of the interview, also published in abbreviated form on page five of the second edition of The Sydney Morning Herald last Saturday, is ‘Tony Abbott: No such thing as the public’s right to know’ athttp://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/05/1062549026867.html

I asked Mr Abbott whether he had given intending donors to the HPT a guarantee of confidentiality. “No. I did not tell them that their names would be publicised.”

So why didn’t the public have the right to know then, since no undertaking of confidentiality was given? “There are some things the public has no particular right to know,’ he replied.

He said two donors had come forward – businessmen Trevor Kennedy and Harold Clough – and that at the time many people thought the trust was “a good thing”. So why wouldn’t the others come forward, I asked?

“It (APT) was set up to prosecute a legal case, and that’s not a political purpose,” he said.

Here’s where it gets interesting. If the trust is a good thing, why was it designed so that its donors would remain hidden from the Australian people, I asked?

“I didn’t design the trust so that donors weren’t required to disclose. I set up the trust to support legal action.”

“I DIDN’T TAKE LEGAL ADVICE ON DISCLOSURE TILL AFTER I GOT THE AEC’S LETTER. I SOUGHT LEGAL ADVICE AND GOT ORAL ADVICE FROM A SENIOR LAWYER.”

I asked for the name of his lawyer. He refused, saying he had not advised the lawyer that “by the way, in five year’s time I’m going to dob you into Margo Kingston”.

“I just believe private conversations should be private,” he said.

I protested that the conversation was not private because Mr Abbott himself had disclosed it in his letter to the AEC as the basis for his refusal to reveal his donors. And only five days before Mr Abbott had released the letter – and thus the conversation with his lawyer – to the public by giving it to the Australian Financial Review.

He responded with a personal attack on me, which I will report in another entry. He did not answer my question. I then asked if his lawyer had seen the trust deed before offering his or her legal opinion? “I’m not going to disclose that,” he replied. Why not, I asked? He said he’d given me enough time and terminated the call.

BACKGROUND: Tony Abbott finalised the establishment of his Honest Politics Trust on August 24, 1998, three weeks after he’d fallen out with Terry Sharples, a One Nation dissident. Sharples had just launched legal action against One Nation after Abbott organised two free lawyers for him and gave his personal, written guarantee to cough up Sharples’ out-of-pocket expenses after a still-secret donor promised to stake Abbott.

The AEC read a news story in The Australian about the HPT on September 1, 1998, which stated that Abbott had already raised meanrly$100,000. As a result, the AEC wrote to Abbott on September 18, advising that the HPT looked like an “associated entity” of the Liberal Party and that therefore donations to it should be disclosed to the Australian people.

Abbott replied on October 20. The full text of his letter and the AEC’s reply is in ‘AEC pulls up its socks, starts serving the people’ at http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/04/1062548971030.html. The letter said, in part:

So far, the Trust has raised nearly $100,000 – almost all of which is committed to supporting the action brought by Mrs Barbara Hazelton .

Before seeking donations to the trust I spoke with one of Australia’s leading electoral lawyers who assured me that the Trust would not be covered by disclosure provisions.

See the problem? Abbott told the AEC he had sought legal advice on donor secrecy BEFORE collecting donations. He told me he got his legal advice after the donors had paid up, in response to the AEC’s letter of demand. Has he misled the AEC, or Herald readers?

But there’s another, even more disturbing question. Did Mr Abbott get ‘legal advice’ at all, or just an off-the-cuff first take the lawyer did not intend to be represented as considered advice?

Why won’t Abbott say whether he briefed his lawyer with the HP Trust deed? I am a lawyer by training, and practiced law for a few years. In my experience, no self-respecting lawyer would ever give advice which his or her client intended to be acted upon by the authorities – in this case the AEC – without being briefed with and considering the relevant material.

Did Abbott’s lawyer know that his opinion would be used in this way? Has Abbott misled the commission not only in the timing of his legal advice, but its very status? Remember, the AEC relied on Mr Abbott’s letter to backdown on ordering disclosure. It took his word for it – and did not seek its own legal advice, even though the HPT was a new type of weapon in Australian politics. It was this profound error of judgement – if not breach of its legal obligations to enforce political donation disclosure laws – which the AEC is now scrambling to rectify in its new investigation of the trust. What if the AEC’s decision to trust the word of Tony Abbott was misplaced?

I advised the AEC of this new information yesterday, and AEC spokesman Brian Hallett said he would “send it up the line”. I asked Mr Hallett whether the AEC was now asking Abbott the questions it failed to ask him in 1998.

“I can’t give you a running commentary on what we’re doing,” he said, because the AEC didn’t want to broadcast its strategy. But he assured readers that the AEC was no longer just reading media reports on the HPT, and was now working more actively on the investigation. “We do take our accountability (to voters) very seriously,” he said.

Mr Hallett said the AEC would be happy to consider information on the HPT provided by the public, and their input on what questions they’d like Mr Abbott to answer. The AEC’s Canberra head office number is 02-62714411. Its fax number is 02-62714558

I also asked Mr Hallett what penalties there were for misleading the AEC. He got back to me with the answer that misleading the Commission would come under the Uniform Criminal Code, which makes it a criminal offence to provide false or misleading information to a Commonwealth Government department. “We don’t have a view on whether he has misled,” Mr Hallett said. “We don’t have enough evidence. If you have particular information, you can put that before us.”

Amazing, hey? Apparently it’s an offence for a politician to mislead the public service! I wonder who enforces that law? I’m checking it out – wouldn’t it be wild if Peter Reith could be investigated for misleading the public service over children overboard when he falsely claimed to the public service that a video and photographs proved the allegation? Politicians now get no penalty for misleading the people through the Parliament or the media. Could they be brought to account to the people if they mislead our public service? I’ll get back to you on that one.

I would have telephoned Mr Abbott with my new questions, except that I was advised that after finishing our interview he said he would never take my call again. I’d be happy to take his. In the meantime, I’ll pull together some questions to email to his office. Send me any questions you’d like me to ask on your behalf.

Workplace relations and public service minister Tony Abbott said yesterday he would not reveal the donors to his ‘honest politics’ trust because “there are some things the public has no particular right to know’.

His latest refusal to reveal his donors comes after the Chairman of the Australian Electoral Commission, Justice Trevor Morling, took control of the AEC’s investigations of Mr Abbott’s honest politics slush fund and the AEC commissioned new legal advice on whether to demand disclosure.

Justice Morling criticised aspects of the AEC’s handling of the matter to date, and it is now possible that the AEC will order Mr Abbott to give sworn evidence on the trust.

Asked what things the public had no right to know about, Mr Abbott said: “Where do you start?”

“I don’t propose to nominate a list, I don’t propose to enumerate them. Short of the AEC changing its mind, they are not entitled to know who those donors were unless the donors choose to volunteer that information.”

Mr Abbott also refused to reveal the name of the lawyer he advised the AEC in 1998 had told him no disclosure of donations was required . Asked why, he said: “I just believe private conversations should be private.” Mr Abbott would not comment on why he had detailed this private conversation to the AEC in a letter seeking exemption from disclosing his donors, and this week released the letter to the Australian Financial Review.

The letter also revealed that the honest politics trust, formed in 1998, was not designed only to legally attack One Nation, but also other parties Mr Abbott and the other other trustees saw as a threat. “The object of the Trust is to support legal actions to test the extent to which political entities comply with Australian law,” Mr Abbott told the AEC in 1998.

In 1998 the AEC asked for donor disclosure, but backed down after Mr Abbott told it: “I spoke with one of Australia’s leading electoral lawyers who assured me that the Trust would not be covered by disclosure provisions”. The AEC admitted this week it had taken Mr Abbott’s word for it, and neither asked to see his legal advice or taken its own before backing down.

Mr Abbott conceded to the Herald last night that he had no written legal advice to back his claim that donors should be kept secret from the public, and refused to say whether the lawyer he consulted had seen the Honest Politics Trust document before given his legal opinion.

 

A menagerie of voices. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.davies.art.com

G’Day. Noticed the preposterous split in the media over whether Abbott’s slush fund is a story or not? In this entry, Webdiary’s media commentator Jack Robertson names Mr Abbott’s media defenders and explains why they don’t get it.

I rang Abbott’s office yesterday and left a message asking him to call. I also spoke to his spin doctor Andrew Simpson:

Mr Abbott today maintained his refusal to reveal his donors voluntarily. His spokesman, Mr Andrew Simpson, said “he’s been pretty consistent on that right through.”

Asked why Mr Abbott did not want the Australian people to know who donated to the honest politics trust, he said he would ask Mr Abbott.

The Herald asked Mr Simpson if Mr Abbott had received written legal advice that the trust structure successfully avoided laws requiring transparency of political donations. Mr Simpson said he did not know.

The Herald also asked why Mr Abbott would not name the lawyer who verbally advised him that he was in the clear. Mr Simpson said he would refer this question to Mr Abbott. (AEC chief intervenes in Abbott slush fund secrets)

Mr Abbott left this message on my answering machine today:

Margo, it’s Tony Abbott here, the object of your derision and ridicule. I’m returning the call that you put into Andrew Simpson yesterday.

I returned the call and left a message. I’ve just spoken to him and will report to you later tonight.

The United States Supreme Court has just blocked George Bush’s plan to deliver more media power to Rupert Murdoch. The Bush plan would have delivered Murdoch less dominance of America’s media than he ALREADY HAS in Australia’s media. Howard and Alston plan to deliver a media stranglehold to Murdoch and Packer by forcing their cross media laws through the Senate next month. The New York Times report is published at the end of this entry. (See Webdiary’s cross media archive.)

Over to Jack.

Hi Margo. I can’t believe how wilfully blinkered much of the mainstream print coverage of the Abbott matter has been. Most supposedly responsible commentators STILL seem to think that Hansonism was all about Pauline Hanson and One Nation, and that now that she herself is history, everything in Australian politics can get back to ‘mainstream normal’ if only we ‘hysterical conspiracists’ would stop giving her oxygen. They just don’t get it, do they?

Apart from ignoring completely the fact that Howard’s government has adopted so many of Hanson’s specific policies and general stances on social issues that it is now effectively Hanson Lite – and the attempts, by the way, to pretend that Abbott was being a good ‘respectable conservative’ all along in this are laughable – what is more dangerous is that these pundits don’t grasp that the underhand, Big Party business-as-usual way Abbott & Co went about ‘doing’ her is part of the long-term PROBLEM, not the solution, when it comes to the rise of populist-protest movements like hers.

The fact that Howard has taken popularity hits over this, even AFTER so many policy shifts designed to appease her supporters on symptomatic gripes (refugees, land rights, the elites), ought to demonstrate to the press that the REAL Hanson-driving factors lie elsewhere, and are bipartisanly created: by the excluding, bipartisan main party economics; by the excluding, bipartisan main party suffocating of true democratic franchise; by the excluding focus of the press on the main parties alone, and by the excluding arrogance of the Canberra ‘main money-main party-main media’ triumvirate.

Sure, Abbott-ungate might have some standard beat-up elements and ALP hypocrisies, but beyond this, it’s a supreme example of how these three Mainstreamism factors, NOT we supposed ‘flame-fanners on the fringe’, gave birth to Hansonism, and will CONTINUE to do likewise in the future, in whatever other guises may eventuate. Big bucks. Big Party backroom machinations. Big media absolution when they’re caught by the (ABC) public. (And we can’t even find out from OUR AEC who was truly involved.)

They just don’t get it, but they’d better soon, because Hanson may be gone, but the impulses behind Hansonism – and sundry Greens, Independents, global democracy movements, grass-roots groups, non-mainstream ‘antis’ of all stripes – most definitely have not.

Permission to lie from the print press quislings

by Jack Robertson

ABC 7.30 Report, August 27

TONY JONES: So there was never any question of any party funds –

TONY ABBOTT: Absolutely not.

TONY JONES: Or other funds from any other source –

TONY ABBOTT: Absolutely not.

TONY JONES: Being offered to Terry Sharples?

TONY ABBOTT: Absolutely not.

KERRY O’BRIEN: And you’re saying now that wasn’t a lie – not just Liberal Party funds but any other funds?

TONY ABBOTT: I had promised that he wouldn’t be out of pocket, but there’s a difference between telling someone he won’t be out of pocket and telling someone that you’re going to have to pay him money.

***

‘Crying foul at Minister makes ALP look chicken”, Matt Price in the Murdoch-owned Australian, August 28

On September 1, 1998, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail newspaper carried a story about Abbott “admitting having actively raised funds to support two separate legal attempts to shut down the One Nation party”. Abbott declared it his duty “to do everything I can to stop One Nation”. He conceded not everyone supported his new trust fund, Australians For Honest Politics, and that some Liberals had advised him to “pull my head in”. There is no record at the time of Opposition outrage over Abbott’s actions. There are a couple of reasons to be wary about Abbott. The normally pugnacious and assertive minister has these past few days seemed coy about his anti-One Nation crusade. But for Labor to now hack into the minister for nailing One Nation beggars belief. Abbott is accused of “shedding crocodile tears” over Hanson’s jailing. Yet it’s not inconsistent to lambast One Nation as an undemocratic shambles while sympathising with Hanson’s tough three-year sentence…

***

‘With steel in his eye and fire in his belly’, Piers Akerman in the Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph, August 28

Arsonists are part and parcel of Australian life today, and no less so in the political sphere. Mr Abbott has had opponents trying to light flames under him since he was elected to represent Warringah at a by-election in 1994The Queensland Electoral Commission and Premier Beattie – who now seems to be obscenely and hypocritically trailing his coat in the hope of collecting preference votes from befuddled One Nation supporters – have a lot of questions to answer. Those attempting to demonise Mr Abbott however would be better employed arguing for an overhaul of the nation’s electoral laws to ensure that all political parties are forced to operate with greater transparency.

***

‘Fanning the Flames of Hatred’, Dennis Shanahan in the Murdoch-owned Australian, August 29

The ‘story’ of Abbott plotting against One Nation has taken on a life of its own. And despite the flimsy base upon which it rests the Workplace Relations Minister and the Prime Minister must take it seriously. After all, within this confected whirlwind of opportunism, there could be a bitter harvest of sympathy and support for the rich but defunct One Nation Party… For various reasons, some of the most vociferous critics of One Nation in the past – Queensland Labor Premier Peter Beattie, Simon Crean, Queensland Labor frontbencher Craig Emerson, Hanson’s love-hate biographer and journalist Margot Kingston, and a wounded ABC – are putting Abbott in the dock and fuelling One Nation sympathies

***

‘Protective Custody: coda to a hysterical hate campaign’, Frank Devine in the Murdoch-owned Australian, 29 August

Hanson’s situation is a logical culmination of a near-hysterical hate campaign, reaching its peak between 1996 and 1998, that was mounted against her. The mob (which doubtless contained some mean sheilas) was activated by a nod from patio crusaders in the leafy suburbs of Australia (not entirely free of mean sheilas), and was further inflamed, I regret to say, by the support of media ideologues and opportunists.

***

‘Five years on Labor finally decides to utter a weak boo’, Alan Ramsey in the Fairfax-owned Sydney Morning Herald, August 30

As Wilkinson wrote in her story: “Abbott is supporting Pauline Hanson’s former personal secretary in a new legal move to deregister One Nation in Queensland. If successful the move will block almost $500,000 in public funding from … going into One Nation’s coffers. A new trust, which Abbott has helped establish, called Australians for Honest Politics, will totally indemnify costs in the action. Two other prominent political figures will sit with Abbott on the trust. Abbott told the Herald he was acting as ‘a citizen and a democrat because One Nation is a fraud on taxpayers and must be exposed’.” Abbott was right. Labor thought so, too, at the time. Five years later, in a slow news week, he is still right, despite Labor’s noisy hypocrisy.

***

‘Flawed crusade for good’, by Paul Kelly, the Murdoch-owned Weekend Australian, 30-31 August

How should one judge Abbott? He made some blunders along the way, but his strategic judgment was correct and validated. From what is known of Hanson’s demise, Abbott is more hero than villain. As for much of the media, its recent performance recalls its ignominious efforts over 1996-98 that gave Hanson such a boost, at home and abroad.

***

‘Libs losing their security blanket’, Glenn Milne, the Murdoch-owned Australian, 1 September

…And finally Abbott. The Workplace Relations Minister has been the most forthright player in this episode. He disagreed with Hanson and her policies and went after her. His methods were legal. His guidingprinciple, the maintenance of the integrity of the electoral system, sound. Where Abbott got himself into trouble was some historical economy with the truth about exactly when he set up his trust to bring Hanson down through the courts. And some opportunistic reporting by The Sydney Morning Herald that led to the impression Abbott had hushed up his efforts…

***

‘Pilloried for an act of decency’, Greg Sheridan in the Murdoch-owned Australian, 4 September

Just as Tony Abbott buries the One Nation demon, Labor and much of the press try to resuscitate Hansonism… In this unpleasant but enlightening episode, while he has been viciously attacked by almost every progressive with access to a word processor or a cartoonist’s brush, Abbott has shown the kind of grit, determination, equanimity and, above all, concern for a purpose larger than himself, that marks out a future Prime Minister. The rest of them look decidedly dusty.

***

IN OTHER NEWS, JESUS CHRIST, MP, HAS RETURNED

CANBERRA, ALL MAINSTREAM PUNDITS, AD NAUSEUM: GLOBAL CHRISTENDOM WAS ROCKED TODAY BY REVELATIONS that Jesus Christ Almighty had returned to earth over five years ago, and had since been preaching feverishly in Canberra in a desperate bid to quell the rise and rise of Pauline Hanson’s diabolical One Nation juggernaut.

The presence of the Son of God in the national capital, only now revealed after an exhaustive rewriting of the historical record, has rocked Australia’s Parliament and is sparking calls for a full and public disclosure of Christ’s other political activities in the intervening period since his Second Coming.

“The Australian people have a right to know exactly what His Moral Perfection has been doing all this time, apart from single-handedly slaying the Hansonite Dragon,” complained Labor front-bencher Craig Emerson.

I mean, it’s all very well for Jesus to focus quietly on Pauline, but surely it’s a question of Him getting His global priorities right? What’s He been doing about cancer all this time? What about world hunger, or global warming, or the Iraq War? If this Son of God bloke is the good Catholic lad he’s being cracked up to be, where was He when His Holiness The Pope was condemning as a ‘threat to Humanity’ the pre-emptive invasion in which Christ’s own adopted government played a leading role?

Another Labor MP, speaking on condition of anonymity, was more blunt about what he called Minister Christ’s ‘abject failure to set Himself more relevant, and indeed more achievable, performance parameters’.

Resurrecting Honesty in Australian Politics? I mean, pull the other one, mate. It’s one thing for Jesus Himself to rise from the dead, but it’ll take a f**k of a lot more than Omnipotent Divinity to pull that kind of miracle off. And there’s a stack of more appropriate and realistic goals he could have been using His Divine Powers to achieve all this time, anyway. Peace in the Middle East, unlocking the key to Human immortality, getting a straight answer from the PM in public, making Creany electable. So what does He pick instead? He wastes five long years nobbling Hanson silently and quietly via the courts! Hell, why didn’t He just zap her with a bolt of lightning right at the start and then get on with explaining the meaning of life, or saving the Murray, or something else with a slightly higher degree of civic difficulty? Better still, why not just argue her out of existence in healthy public debate, like those Lib mere mortals Costello and Kennett wanted to do from the start? Seems to me like Jesus went about ‘anti-crucifying’ Pauline in a very convoluted, inefficient and distinctly un-Godly manner.

Supporters of Christ’s tactics argue, however, that Jesus had a ‘higher purpose’ in mind when he set up the Australians for Honest Politics Trust to nobble Hanson: to dramatically and publicly (at least in retrospective description) highlight the ‘pro-immigration, pro-refugee, pro-reconciliation, multicultural, small-l, bleeding-heart image of the Federal Liberal Party and respectable conservatives everywhere, in the wake of the unsettling One Nation triumph in Queensland. Not to mention defending the integrity and health of Australian democracy and civic life as a whole!’

It was such noble aims, according to His financial backers, that inspired them to lob money at the Sharples slush fund, not grubby corporate self-interest or the desire for continued Liberal government access and patronage. Swore one anonymous millionaire donor who refused to be identified in the public interest:

We were absolutely sure that the anti-Hanson Trust had only the most honourable of public interest purposes. And why wouldn’t we? When Jesus Christ Himself comes banging on your door rattling His Liberal Party tin cup while agreeing you’d best keep your name out of the papers, why, one doesn’t need to stop and ponder whether there might be anything cynical, hypocritical, strategically self-defeating or fishy about his preferred mode of taking Pauline on. If sliding the old legal stiletto into Hanson’s back in private, while kissing her policy arse in public was Christian enough for the Son of God, then by golly, it was Christian enough for a son-of-a-bitch like me. Do others before they do you – that’s how the Politics of God goes, right?

A Divine Spokesman said late today that neither the AEC nor Jesus Christ Himself would be commenting further on His lately-revealed key role in Australia’s seven year battle with the Pagan Forces of One Nation, since – despite recent opinion poll evidence to the contrary – Jesus firmly believed that thanks to His good works, Hansonism ‘is now as thoroughly-banished from the Australian political realm as superstitious polytheist worship’.

The spokesman added that the Son of God, who in his current earthly manifestation is also known as Saint Lord King Sir Anthony Abbott, MP, VC, KCMG, and anti-PHON, was resting up in preparation for His next and perhaps most difficult Miraculous Crusade: the struggle to resurrect His own Prime Ministerial prospects. His spokesman said:

Rising from the dead once is a piece of piss, because of course you’ve got the element of surprise. The second time is a little harder, but do-able if you choose a human guise that absolutely no-one is remotely expecting, like a Minister in the Howard government, say. But to come back from the dead a third time? Well, I can assure you that Jesus is praying with all His might that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t ever forsake him. Even the Lord God, after all, can only push a man of clay so far in Australian politics once he’s been publicly-fingered as a rank bloody liar.

***

New York Times, September 4, 2003

U.S. Court Blocks Plan to Ease Rule on Media Owners

By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 – A federal appeals court issued a surprise order today blocking the Federal Communications Commission from imposing new rules that would make it easier for the nation’s largest media conglomerates to add new markets and areas of business.

The decision came a day before the new rules, considered among the most significant efforts at deregulation adopted during the Bush administration, were scheduled to take effect. It followed two hours of oral arguments at an emergency hearing this morning by a three-judge panel in Philadelphia and was a sharp setback for the largest media companies and for the commission’s chairman, Michael K. Powell.

Mr. Powell, the architect of the new rules, has emphasized that the commission was compelled to rewrite the old regulations because of a string of federal court decisions in cases brought in Washington by the media companies. Those decisions ordered the agency to reconsider some of the rules.

But today the appeals court voted unamimously to prevent media companies from moving forward with plans to take advantage of the new rules. The court also raised tough questions for the commission and its industry supporters about their efforts to reshape the regulatory landscape. The new regulations are already facing a challenge in Congress, where legislators have taken steps to repeal some of them.

The new rules have been opposed by a broad coalition of groups, ranging from Consumers Union and the National Organization for Women to the National Rifle Association and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Both the House and the Senate have begun the process to repeal at least one of the new rules, the one that makes it possible for the largest television networks to buy enough stations to reach 45 percent of the nation’s viewers, up from 35 percent.

The court’s order, however, blocks all of the new rules from taking effect, at least until the outcome of the litigation, which could be many months away. The order also raises questions about whether the rules will ever be allowed to take effect.

The rules that were blocked by the court include one that would permit the same company to own newspapers and broadcast stations in the same city and another that would allow a company to own as many as three television stations and eight radio stations in the same market.

In the meantime, the commission must use the older more restrictive rules, even though a different federal appeals court, in Washington, ordered the commission to reconsider those earlier rules after a challenge from the television networks.

Officials at the commission said they were surprised by the order. “While we are disappointed by the decision by the court to stay the new rules, we will continue to vigorously defend them and look forward to a decision by the court on the merits,” said David Fiske, the agency’s top spokesman.

The order also came as a surprise to the critics of the new rules, including the plaintiffs in the case, who said before this morning’s hearing that their motion to stay the rules was a long shot. They said courts typically do not issue such injunctions without a finding that the plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the overall merits of a case.

The chief lawyer for the critics who brought the case said after the order that he hoped Congress would act before the court reached a decision on the merits of the rules.

“This action gives us the opportunity to convince Congress and, if necessary, the courts, that the F.C.C.’s decision is bad for democracy, and bad for broadcast localism,” said the lawyer, Andrew Jay Schwartzman, who persuaded the court to issue the order. “Perhaps it will embolden Congress to overturn the new rules in their entirety. That would save everyone a lot of time and effort fighting it out in the court to obtain the same result.”

The court today hedged on the overall merits of the case but strongly suggested through its actions that the critics had a good chance of succeeding.

“I think this is great news,” said Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, who is helping to lead an effort to repeal the rules in Congress. “It stops the process dead in its tracks for now. I think the court must have understood what we know: the F.C.C. embarked on these dramatic rule changes without the benefit of national hearings and thoughtful analysis.”

In a three-page order, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit initially said that it was legally obliged to consider the likelihood of success by the plaintiffs, a group of small radio stations, journalist organizations and the National Council of Churches. The group filed its lawsuit against the F.C.C. and four television networks joined the case in support of the new rules.

The judges refused to handicap the outcome of the case, but reasoned that preserving the old rules, at least for the time being, would give the judges time to consider the arguments before the industry landscape had been changed. “While it is difficult to predict the likelihood of success on the merits at this stage of the proceedings, these harms could outweigh the effect of a stay on respondent and relevant third parties,” said the panel, which consisted of Chief Judge Anthony J. Scirica, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, and Judges Thomas L. Ambro and Julio M. Fuentes, who were appointed by President Bill Clinton.

“Given the magnitude of this matter and the public’s interest in reaching the proper resolution, a stay is warranted pending thorough and efficient judicial review,” the court concluded in the case, Prometheus Radio Project v. Federal Communications Commission.

The groups that brought the case argued that they were likely to prevail in the end because Congress would probably overturn some of the new rules, and because the rules themselves are “arbitrary and capricious.”

For Mr. Powell, the decision could hardly come at a worse time. On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to approve legislation that Congressional officials said today would include provisions to roll back some of the new rules already stayed by the court. The Senate Commerce Committee has adopted a similar measure.

And six weeks ago the House, by a vote of 400 to 21, approved a spending measure that would block one of the more important new rules that would permit the nation’s largest television networks to own more stations. The White House has threatened to veto that measure, prompting the prospect of a highly unusual showdown between the president and the Republican-controlled Congress.

The new rules were adopted in June by a bitterly divided commission on a party-line vote. The Republican-controlled agency relaxed many of the most significant restrictions on the ability of broadcast and newspaper conglomerates to both expand into new markets and to extend their reach in the cities where they already have a presence.

The rules would have made it easier for the nation’s largest television networks to buy enough stations to reach up to 45 percent of the nation’s viewers. Two networks, Fox, a unit of the News Corporation

The writing of The History Wars (Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clarke) is very important. The book will sit on the shelves of libraries as a sort of code stone to help people understand the motivations of players in today’s contemporary debate. It sheds light on the political battle which is carried on in the pubs and on the footpaths about who we are and what has become of us. For the protagonists and antagonists in academe are now surrogates in a broader political battle about Australia’s future.

We should reflect on this: alone, amongst the peoples of the world, we have possession of a continent, a continent we laid claim to as part of an empire, one we expropriated from another race, but a continent that is no longer an island in a sea of subjugated and colonial places. The Dutch no longer run Indonesia, the French no longer control Indo-China. And the Chinese now run China for themselves.

We occupy a continent surrounded by ancient societies; nations which have reclaimed their identity and their independence.

The Australian story, for it to be a record of continuing success has to come to terms with our expropriation of the land, our ambivalence about who we are and our place in the new geo-political make-up of the region. That is, being part of it, rather than simply being tolerated in it.

History is always our most useful tool and guide. Knowing our past helps us to divine our future.

To see the long strands which denote our character and which have been common in each epoch of our development. And how they may be adapted in our transformation as an integral part of this region, while re-energising our national life.

How do we pick the good strands and the step changes on the pathway to our security?

Because there are only 20 million of us, the primary matter for national policy is how we maintain possession of the continent.

How do we find the pathway to a genuine security, a naturally reinforced one. Security in Asia and not from Asia. Where we are other than a client state perennially searching for a strategic guarantor.

Once, all our faith was in the British Navy. Now it has swung to the American defence establishment.

Those who militantly defend the conservative orthodoxy in Australia see all change as an affront to the past, especially their view of the past. Whereas, knowing the past and seeing it for what it is with all its blemishes, allows us to divine our destiny for our appointment with reality.

And our appointment with reality has to come around. We are no longer part of some empire. We are no longer some passenger on the British Lion. We are no longer protected by their navy to the extent that we ever were.

While people may say we enjoy some protection from the Americans, we have to be clear what reality, in this respect, means.

I have never understood why the Howards and the Blaineys et al are so defensive. So resistant to novelty and to progress. They are more than conservatives. They’re reactionaries.

Conservatives gradually, if somewhat reluctantly, accept change. Reactionaries not only resist change, they seek to reverse it. Understanding and acknowledging the past and moving on to bigger and better things is anathema to them.

They absolutely insist on their view and the lessons they see in our history. Yet in their insistence, their ‘proprietorialness’ their ‘derivativeness’ and their rancour, they reduce the flame and energy within the nation to a smouldering incandescence. What they effectively do is crimp and cripple our destiny. It’s like suffering from some sort of anaemia; robbing the political blood of its energy.

The problem for the Howards and the Blaineys is that their story is simply not big enough for Australia.

No great transformation can come from their tiny view of us and their limited faith in us.

Their failure is not simply one of crabbiness or rancour; it’s a failure of imagination, a failure to read our historical coordinates correctly but usefully to move to a bigger construct, a bigger picture as to who we are and what we can be. That’s the real job of political leadership.

Their timidity not only diminishes their own horizon, it is a drag on the rest of us. The country always has to make its progress despite them. They never help. They have always to be dragged along and they will only accept a new norm when someone else has struggled to put it into place.

But the fact is, their view will not prevail. They cannot win because they have no policy framework to win with. And deep in their tiny, timorous hearts they know it.

The undertaking is simply too big for them.

This is why you get all this thrashing about in the press and why we are drenched in the babble of the lickspittles and tintookies around them. And it’s just that, babble. It’s babble because at the heart of their wrong-headed campaign is an attempt to contain and censor the human spirit, to muffle, muzzle and vitiate it.

Their exclusiveness, whether we are talking about White Australia in the past or boat people now, relies on constructing arbitrary and parochial distinctions between the civic and the human community. Who is in and who is out. Who is owed possession. Who has rights.

If you ask what is the common policy between the Le Pens, the Terrablanches, Hansons and the Howards of this world, in a word, it is “citizenship”. And it has always been. Who is in and who is out. Who is approved of.

Wolfgang Kaspar, writing in Quadrant, was brazen enough to instruct us in the “frictional costs of Australian settlement of Muslims”. This is an example of the new fascism.

Rather than celebrate the successful multiculturalisation of Australia, they seek to shear people off and play on old prejudices by the use of implicitly negative phrases like “for all of us”, when they really mean “for some of us”. This is a government that talks in code.

John Howard does not understand that base motivations run through a community and a polity like a virus, that these things are poison to the nation’s soul. They are part of an anti-enlightenment. He has recalibrated Australia’s moral compass, where due north is only for elites, whoever they are.

A national leader, I think, should always be searching for the threads of gold in a community. Nurturing and bringing them out. Focusing on the best instincts – running with the human spirit and not punishing it.

A growing public morality and probity based on notions of charity and human regard should not be traduced by slurs such as “political correctness”, with implicit support for an official “incorrectness”. It takes a long time to build institutions and to build new norms of behaviour, new acceptances of protocols in any country. But to build them and then have them traduced is a terrible thing.

Those who want to celebrate only our European past, rejoicing in its prejudices, and who want us to be exclusive and cocooned and who employ division and ridicule in their quest, must lose.

Many people are dispirited by this period and they think that somehow the Bolts and the McGuinness’s, the Devines and the Albrechtsons somehow have got the upper hand. They will simply be a smudge in history. What have they put into place which is enduring, which makes the heart skip a beat? Nothing. And, in the end, there will be no punctuation mark in our annals from their paltry efforts.

The game is too big for them.

This is why those of progressive mind shouldn’t despair, arid as this period is. Because in the end, the vapid and heartless messages of the militant conservatives will fail to make any real headway.

Always confronting them will be these things. Who are we? Can we borrow the monarch of another country perpetually? Can we go to the region and say we’ve turned a new leaf but, by the way, we never got to a proper basis of reconciliation with our indigenes? How do we find our security in the region rather than from the region? How do we make our multiculturalism work better? How do we make everyone feel as though they belong, that the place, truly is, for all of us?

These questions are still on the agenda, unsatisfied perhaps and unattended. But still sitting there.

I notice people saying this debate hasn’t harmed us in Asia. I don’t know who they are talking to. The publicity people in foreign affairs departments around the region perhaps, certainly not those who actually run these countries.

The fact is, there are a lot of wise heads in this part of the world; those who see Australia in a longer context and who are waiting for us to recover our equilibrium.

The History Wars rolls out the canvass of this debate. It helps us better understand the battlefield. It gives us some of the infrared we need to discern the shapes in the current darkness. We owe Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark for that.

It is with most respect that I launch The History Wars and wish it well in its journey to the library catalogues.

Paul Keating made this speech at the launch of ‘The History Wars’ in Melbourne on Wednesday.

For more information about Paul Keating go to http://www.keating.org.au/

Congratulations to Webdiary readers for helping the Australian Electoral Commission see that its duty is to Australian voters, not to devious politicians trying to avoid their legal obligation to be honest with voters about who’s bankrolling their parties. The AEC Chairman, Trevor Morling QC, has now intervened to clean up the mess and reassure the public that Tony Abbott will not get special treatment. He’s criticised the AEC for aspects of its conduct in the ‘Honest Politics’ Trust matter to date, and urgent new legal advice is being sought (AEC chief intervenes in Abbott slush fund secrets).

Thank you Trevor Morling, an Australian elder – a distinguished retired judge who takes his duties to the people very seriously. Justice Morling is a part time AEC chairman, because it’s a part time job. But he cares, is well aware of his grave responsibilities, and is above politics. I think the Australian people can trust him to do the right thing. I certainly do. (For his background and career, see Taking Abbott’s slush secrets to the top: Will the AEC chairman intervene?)

Bouquets are also due to the AEC itself! After trying to keep its record on Abbott’s slush fund secret for more than a week in accordance with its misconceived “standard practice”, it’s now decided to be open with the Australian people it’s there to serve. AEC media spokesman Brien Hallett now openly admits that mistakes were made. That is courageous, honest, and worthy of hearty applause. How many other public service bodies or companies – let alone politicians – are willing to admit they were wrong and then get on with doing the job better?

I’ve now talked to a lot of people who know how the system works, and I’m getting a good idea of how John Howard has deliberately weakened the AEC through budget cuts and the refusal of all AEC requests to clean up political donation disclosure laws. Mark Riley’s piece in the Herald this morning, Anti-rorting proposals ignored, shows the AEC has pushed for legal reforms to stop the big parties rorting the system and hiding their donors from the Australian people for the last ten years. First Keating then Howard said no.

We can now see that Abbott’s ‘Honest Politics Trust’ was not just a joke on the people of Australia because its donors were secret. Abbott and Howard were also misleading the Australian people in a more fundamental way. By their actions – and lack of action – they allowed the system to break down so that there were plenty of chances to evade the Liberal Party’s legal obligations to disclose its political donors. Howard and Abbott believe in dishonest politics for them and honest politics for their small political competitors.

The AEC has to both administer the system and enforce it – a pretty hard ask when you’re trying to keep politicians honest! There should be a powerful, independent enforcer of rules to keep our democracy clean and transparent, just like the ACCC stops big business abusing market power and misleading consumers. But John Howard doesn’t want it that way.

To try to avoid getting embroiled in big party politics, the AEC adopted a policy of confidentiality on donor secrecy so the two big parties didn’t play politics with each other’s tricky business. But that’s backfired. Tony Abbott demands confidentiality of the AEC, yet releases correspondence with it when it suits his political needs. And the AEC forgot for a while that requests by the public for openness on its 1998 decision to allow Abbott to keep his slush fund donors secret were about the AEC being accountable to its clients, the voters.

Tonight, the text of the letters between Abbott and the AEC in 1998 – thank you to the Australian Financial Review’s Canberra bureau chief Tony Walker for giving me copies. Abbott gave the letters to Tony on Sunday night to justify his continuing refusal to come clean, but as Webdiary reader Sue McDonald found out, chose not to put them on his ministerial website. Sue wrote:

I have been searching for details of correspondence that Tony Abbott had with the AEC. I eventually rang Andrew Simpson who is given as the contact on the press release titled One Nation Litigation on Tony Abbott’s website. I said I was trying to find out who initiated the correspondence between Tony Abbott and the Australian Electoral Commission. Andrew Simpson said it was Tony Abbott who initiated the correspondence. (Margo: This is not correct. The AEC wrote to Abbott first.) I asked if Tony Abbott was going to release copies of this correspondence and the legal advice Tony Abbott had obtained. Andrew Simpson stated that the correspondence had been released to media outlets. I also asked if he could fax me a copy of the correspondence. He said he would organise for a copy to be faxed to me. Has this correspondence been released to media outlets? (Margo: Certainly not to the Herald. Only to Tony, as far as I know.)

The letters reveal that the Honest Politics Trust was formed not only to destroy One Nation through the Courts, but also other political parties which could threaten voter support for the Liberal Party.

Webdiarists have also asked for information on the AEC’s legal powers to investigate the trust and prosecute Abbott for non-disclosure. Our legal experts, Graeme Orr and Joo-Cheong Tham, have kindly obliged.

***

Text of letter from Abbott to the AEC in response to its demand that he disclose the name of the donors to his honest politics trust in accordance with laws requiring transparency of political donations. Comments in bold are mine.

October 20, 1998

Roger Wills

Australian Electoral Commission,

PO Box E201

Kingston, ACT 2604

Dear Mr Wills,

The Australians for Honest Politics Trust was established on August 24 1998, and, therefore, cannot fall within any disclosure requirements for the 1997-98 year. In any event, I very strongly submit that the Trust is not an “associated entity” under the Act.

The object of the Trust is to support legal actions to test the extent to which political entities comply with Australian law. I have two fellow trustees: John Wheeldon, a former Labor Minister (now a neo-liberal right winger associated with John Howard’s favourite magazine, Quadrant) and Peter Coleman, a former NSW Liberal leader. Neither, as far as I know, are currently members of a political party and neither would do the bidding of a political party.

So far, the Trust has raised nearly $100,000 – almost all of which is committed to supporting the action brought by Mrs Barbara Hazelton (at the urging of the Trust and after it promised to pay her legal bills) in the Queensland Supreme Court to test the validity of the Queensland registration of One Nation. Given the unusual structure of the One Nation entity (as unusual as the structure of the Honest Politics Trust?)there is an important public interest in this action – which may not have been brought but for the Trust. I very much doubt whether the framers of the Electoral Act would have wished to discourage those seeking to test and strengthen the electoral law. (People like you and Howard, Tony, who’ve blocked electoral law reform so your party can keep avoiding disclosure laws?)

The Trust is not controlled by and does not operate for the benefit of any registered political party. The Trust does not raise money for a political party nor hold assets for the benefit of a political party nor take any part in election campaigns. If the Trust – which is not linked with a political party and is not involved in election campaigns – is required to file an “associated entity” return, other organisations such as trade union and party-allied think tanks would also need to file returns. (Indeed, and so they should.) In my judgement, this would amount to a change of policy in the guise of administration.

Before seeking donations to the trust I spoke with one of Australia’s leading electoral lawyers who assured me that the Trust would not be covered by disclosure provisions. (Tony, why did you want to keep them secret in the first place?) If despite this letter and the attached Trust document you still believe otherwise, I would appreciate your urgent advice.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Abbott.

***

June 10, 1999

The Hon. Tony Abbott, MP.

Suite 11

Pacific Point

4-10 Sydney Road

Manly NSW 2095

Dear Mr Abbott,

Thank you for your letter of 20 October 1998 responding to our inquiry as to whether the trust Australians for honest politics may fall within the ambit of an associated entity. I apologise if you have not received a response earlier.

On the basis of the information provided, I am of the opinion that the trust does not constitute an associated entity at this time and accordingly is not required to lodge a disclosure return.

I take this opportunity to note that if the activities of the Trust alter, then it may constitute an associated entity. This is a term interpreted by the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 and used by the Australian Electoral Commission for an organisation that is controlled by, or operates wholly or mainly for the benefit of, one or more political parties.

If I can be of any further assistance, please telephone me on 02 6271 4413.

Yours sincerely,

Brad Edgman

Director

Funding and disclosure.

***

I asked Webdiary’s electoral law experts Joo-Cheong Tham and Graeme Orr to tell us what the AEC can do to enforce the disclosure laws against reluctant politicians who want to avoid complying with the laws they passed. I also asked if voters could take the matter to Court and ask it to decide whether Abbott should reveal his donors. I’ve published Joo-Cheong’s piece at Enforcing disclosure: AEC can make Abbott give sworn evidence on slush fund. Joo-Cheong added:

I haven’t included stuff on individuals enforcing the Electoral Act as it is really a theoretical option. Like the overwhelming majority of statutes, the Electoral Act can only be enforced by citizens in very limited circumstances. Generally, the requirement is that a person have a special interest in the subject matter. The courts have insisted that a ‘mere emotional or intellectual concern’ won’t do! In the case of AHP Trust, the only people who can make out this requirement are probably Pauline Hanson and David Ettridge.

Australia’s foremost electoral law expert Graeme Orr, senior law lecturer at Brisbane’s Griffith University, debuted on Webdiary in AEC claims secret political donations no business of voters. He was rushed for time today, partly due to media interviews on this hot topic, but emailed these notes:

1. An ‘associated entity’ must file an annual return within 16 weeks of the end of each financial year, to include the names/addresses of donors over $1500.

2. This obligation falls on the trustees. NB – Unless Abbott was a trustee that technically means the rap falls on Wheeldon/Coleman rather than Abbott or Lib Party. (Margo: Abbott is a trustee.)

3. It’s an offence not to furnish a return – with a piddling maximum fine pf $1,000.

4. Under the Electoral Act, only the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is empowered to seek an injunction. If the AEC changed its mind and determined that Australians for Honest Politics (AHP) was an associated entity of the Liberal Party, it would advise trustees to disclose. If the trustees didn’t, the AEC could compel them to via the Federal Court. I note Abbott has committed to disclose if the AEC requires him to. As for the offence/fine, that would only come into play if the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) chose to pursue it after a referral from the AEC. Clearly, the AEC, having first held AHP wasn’t associated, would only pursue conviction for an offence if the trustees refused to disclose the donors.

NB: All this is only relevant assuming AHP is an ‘associated entity’ – as I’ve said this is arguable but less likely than not, unless a court read ‘benefit’ very widely and purposively. I’d be happy to see the AEC and their brief take this line, though it may have difficult consequences for other political activities.

5. Donors are only required to disclose personally if they donated ‘with the intention of benefiting’ a particular party or candidate. That clearly doesn’t apply here.

6. As to whether an ordinary elector could sue directly, there may be two options:

(a) claiming standing to sue as an elector and seeking a declaration – the elector would face the argument that the AEC is the only proper party to sue by implication (see note 4.)

(b) suing the AEC under a writ of ‘mandamus’ to compel it to take action. Andrew Boe, a high profile lawyer, did something like that against the Criminal Justice Commission in Queensland to compel it to use its powers to hold an investigation, and won. The problem here is that the AEC is now taking action – ie getting new legal advice.

Joo-Cheong Tham is associate law lecturer at La Trobe University. He wrote a chapter on campaign finance reform in Graeme Orr, Bryan Mercurio and George Williams (eds), Realising Democracy: Electoral Law in Australia (2003), Federation Press, forthcoming.

The continuing controversy surrounding the Abbott-controlled Australian for Honest Politics Trust (AHP Trust) has thrown into sharp relief the role of the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) in enforcing the disclosure obligations under the Commonwealth Electoral Act (AEC chief intervenes in Abbott slush fund secrets).

This issue of enforcement, firstly, raises the question of the AEC’s handling of AHP Trust. It appears from newspaper accounts that the AEC in assessing whether AHP Trust was an ‘associated entity’ and, therefore, subject to disclosure obligations, relied heavily on evidence volunteered by Abbott. Brad Edgman, the AEC official responsible for enforcing the disclosure obligations in 1998, has said that he based his decision that AHP Trust was not an ‘associated entity’ mainly on the trust deed and letters from Abbott (AEC took Abbott’s word for it to keep ‘honest politics’ donors secret).

It is important to stress that the evidence that can be used by the AEC in assessing whether such a trust fund is an ‘associated entity’ is clearly not confined to the evidence volunteered by the trustees. In particular, it is not confined to the trust deed or letters written by the trustees.

The AEC can obviously request the trustees to provide further evidence. More significantly, the Act arms the AEC with significant investigative powers in determining whether an entity is an ‘associated entity’. These powers, conferred by section 316(3A) of the Act, include the power to require officers of entities reasonably suspected to be ‘associated entities’ to produce documents and to give sworn evidence. In the case of the AHP Trust, for instance, the AEC could require Tony Abbott, as an officer of the trust, to give sworn evidence concerning the purposes and activities of the trust. If Abbott unreasonably refused to comply with such a requirement or knowingly provided false or misleading evidence, he would then be committing an offence under the Act.

Indeed, given the public disquiet surrounding the AEC’s decision in 1998 determining the AHP Trust not to be an ‘associated entity’, the AEC should, when considering its present position, require the trustees of AHP Trust to provide further documents and sworn evidence. In this instance, effective enforcement and public confidence in the AEC can be met by a judicious use of its investigative powers.

It would, however, be a mistake to consider the AHP Trust episode without regard to the wider considerations constraining the AEC’s effectiveness.

Foremost is the question of adequate resources. Policing the disclosure obligations is resource-intensive – not least due to what the AEC has characterised as ‘an unwillingness by some to comply with disclosure’. It is, however, unclear whether the AEC has sufficient resources to devote to this area. In a parliamentary submission last year, the AEC drew attention to its ‘very tight budget situation’. As far as this situation continues, it must necessarily impair the effectiveness of the AEC in policing disclosure obligations.

The question of resources, importantly, reveals the institutional bind that the AEC finds itself. It is reliant on the goodwill of politicians – especially those from the major parties – for any increase in its budget. These are the very same people it regulates under the Commonwealth Electoral Act. The AEC’s position is akin to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission being dependent on the grace of big business for budget increases. This institutional bind must be addressed for there to be effective enforcement by the AEC.

 

AEC chairman Trevor Morling

Related:  Anti-rorting proposals ignored  AEC took Abbott’s word for it to keep donors secret   Hanson still a redhead and coping well behind bars: lawyer Joo-Cheong Tham: AEC can make Abbott give sworn evidence on slush fund

The Australian Electoral Commission chairman, retired judge Trevor Morling QC, has intervened in the “honest politics” slush fund controversy, calling for the files and all legal advice to date on whether Workplace Relations minister Tony Abbott must unmask his secret donors.

Mr Abbott today maintained his refusal to take the pressure off the AEC and restore public confidence in the electoral system by revealing his donors voluntarily.

AEC officials today urgently briefed the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) to advise whether the structure of Abbott’s honest politics trust avoided any legal duty to disclose the donors to the Australian people under existing law.

Mr Morling confirmed that in 1998 the AEC had trusted Mr Abbott’s word that he could legally claim secrecy for his donors in 1998 without seeing his legal advice or taking its own.

Mr Morling revealed that in June 2002, after questions by the Senate, the AEC took general legal advice from the AGS and the Director of Public Prosecutions on whether legal slush funds designed to destroy political opponents could now be used as a way to avoid disclosing donations to political parties.

Mr Morling said he had not yet read the DPP’s advice, but that the AGS advice was “inconclusive”.

The AEC took that advice after Labor Senator John Faulkner warned that if Abbott’s slush fund was legal, then political parties could exploit his disclosure avoidance mechanism to hide more political donations from the people of Australia.

Mr Morling said he did not know why the AEC had not investigated the trust after receiving advice that it might or might not legally avoid disclosure.

The commission not only failed to launch an investigation into the trust, but also failed to advise Senator Faulkner and the Senate of the findings of its legal advice as promised in June last year.

The AEC’s spokesman, Brien Hallett, conceded to the Herald yesterday that this was wrong.

“It was an oversight. It’s regrettable. I’ll take that one on the chin,” he said. “We should have got back to him (Senator Faulkner).”

Mr Morling also criticised the AEC for not advising him of the AGS and DPP legal advice at the time.

“I wish it had been referred to me then,” he said, adding that the AGS advice, which left the question of whether Abbott should disclose his donors open, would not have justified an immediate prosecution.

The question whether it warranted an investigation of the trust “is another matter”, he said.

He said it was an open question whether admissions since Pauline Hanson’s jailing by Abbott and fellow trustee Peter Coleman, who is a Liberal Party elder and Peter Costello’s father-in-law, that the honest politics trust’s purpose was to destroy One Nation to avoid electoral damage to the Liberal Party strengthened the case for disclosure of donors.

“It may be. I’m not in possession of all the facts yet. Steps are being taken and I believe a discussion is being held today with the AGS,” he said.

Mr Morling said the AEC “must stay outside politics – you’d be surprised at the ways we have to fend off politicians and political parties trying to get what they want implemented”.

“That applies whatever government is in power – I’ve been in the job for fourteen years.”

Mr Abbott today maintained his refusal to reveal his donors voluntarily. His spokesman, Mr Andrew Simpson, said “he’s been pretty consistent on that right through.”

Asked why Mr Abbott did not want the Australian people to know who donated to the honest politics trust, he said he would ask Mr Abbott.

The Herald asked Mr Simspon if Mr Abbott had received written legal advice that the trust structure successfully avoided laws requiring transparency of political donations. Mr Simpson said he did not know.

The Herald also asked why Mr Abbott would not name the lawyer who verbally advised him that he was in the clear. Mr Simpson said he would refer this question to Mr Abbott.