Ian Macdonald, the former NSW Labor minister whose name became synonymous with the corruption and rot at the heart of the party, walked out of Silverwater jail yesterday, after the New South Wales Court of Criminal Appeal overturned his conviction for misconduct in public office.
After less than two years in prison, Macdonald, along with union boss John Maitland, will face a retrial over his granting of lucrative mining exploration licenses at Doyles Creek. But while Macdonald might be, at least for now, a free man, his story is still an endless carousel of grubbiness.
The rise and fall of ‘Sir Lunchalot’
Long before the ICAC investigations and criminal trials, Macdonald was a Labor minister not afraid of having other people (often the taxpayer) foot the bill for his expensive and flamboyant tastes. Macdonald had to overcome real hardship to make it in politics. He grew up poor with a single mother, and this memory of childhood deprivation soon turned into a burning desire to “get everything” he could.
As early as the 1980s, Macdonald had earned the moniker “Sir Lunchalot” because of his habit of putting long, boozy Friday lunches on the Department of Housing credit card.
Fast forward 20-odd years, and Macdonald was an embattled minister, lurching from one expenses scandal to the next. He spent thousands on furniture and a television. He charged taxpayers $150,000 for a wine advisory council stacked with his mates. He regularly went behind cabinet’s back and made multibillion dollar offers to sporting bodies to hold events in Sydney. In 2010, Macdonald was finally sacked after he was caught rorting travel expenses on a trip to Rome.
Then the ICAC came calling and things got worse. In 2011, the commission heard Macdonald accepted sexual favours from a sex worker in return for brokering high level meetings between property developer Ron Medich and government agencies. Medich is currently serving a 39 year sentence for the murder of an old business associate. Macdonald claimed he was too drunk to think straight, but was later found to have engaged in corrupt conduct.
Also under the microscope were several decisions Macdonald made while holding the mining portfolio. More corrupt conduct was found after the commission heard Macdonald opened a mine for his mate and fellow NSW Labor power broker Eddie Obeid. One Labor insider told the ICAC that Macdonald was known as Obeid’s “left testicle”. Obeid is now in prison over separate corruption incidents.
How the case fell apart
It was a later ICAC finding — that Macdonald had helped grant a coal mining licence to Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union boss John Maitland — that has been overturned. True to form, the deal was sealed over a now infamous $300 bottle of pinot noir. In 2017, after ICAC recommended Macdonald to the Director of Public Prosecutions, the former minister was convicted of two counts of misconduct and sentenced to 10 years in prison with a seven year non-parole period. During sentencing, Judge Christine Adamson said Macdonald had betrayed the people of NSW.
That all came crashing down yesterday, when five judges on the NSW Criminal Court of Appeal overturned Macdonald’s conviction. The court found that Adamson had misdirected the jury in relation to the state of mind required to be found guilty of the offence. Macdonald also appealed for a second reason, that the jury’s verdicts were unreasonable and could not be supported by the evidence, but the court suppressed its conclusion on that question.
What it means for Labor
With a NSW state election just weeks away, the court’s decision could not have come at a more inconvenient time for Labor, who are desperate to banish the memory of Macdonald and Obeid to the past. The pair were banished from the party following ICAC’s findings in 2013, and at the time it was believed that spectre of corruption cost the party in that year’s election.
When Michael Daley took over as Labor leader late last year, the Liberal Party were quick to gleefully point out his connections with Macdonald and Obeid. However tenuous that connection may be, Daley has no desire to revisit the numerous incidents that tainted the last Labor government to run NSW.
But Macdonald’s quashed conviction, and the prospect of another, high profile trial makes that era harder to forget.
With this ticking time bomb freakshow out on the loose, now’s the time for Daley to grow a pair and advocate real reform for NSW, eg the lazy lockout laws, extremist policing practices, life jobs for ex pollies and mates, cap the number of ex pollies on early retirement, restore ICAC to its original setup, true reform of drug laws, threaten Lend lease about it’s slimy contract to knock down the stadiums next week. Plenty of other issues as well. Take the inevitable noise away this nutter.
I doubt anything will happen though. 21st century lounge Club ALP is as boring as Bambi. They’ll just wade into the Liberals gunsights.
Too right!
Agree, alas.
Let me preface my comments by saying I don’t live in NSW, and have no connection with ANY politician.
However, I am more concerned that Crikey is leaving itself open to contempt of court charges. You have detailed what these men have been accused of…or at least two of the ‘crimes’…where the court has just said there is some doubt about their convictions and they should face another trial. That being the case, whatever you and everyone else THINKS they may have been guilty of, it has NOT been proven in a court of law…at least not yet. What happened to the concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty’? Trial by media is suddenly okay, is it????
Not to mention that there are a host of LNP members of parliament running around the place, both federal and state, who have had very serious accusations made against them, but I don’t hear anyone in the media saying they are guilty, should be in prison or are a ‘disgrace’ to their respective parties. The usual comment is that their behavior is ‘within the rules’…perhaps that is the case with these two men who have been released. Do you have proof to the contrary?
I would just remind you that there are ‘bad apples’ in ALL political parties and organisations, but ultimately the law decides who, and who is not, guilty. NOT the media!!
Like Pell, he comes from a broad church.
Regardless of whether he is ultimately found guilty of having transgressed the law, there isn’t going to be much sympathy out there for him
I also don’t buy that this is a big problem for Labor now. Everyone sees the LNP selling off state assets and rezoning land, all legally, but very few of us are concerned about courtroom distinctions. It all looks grubby to us poor punters and the LNP have as much form as Labor, and more recent.
Don’t forget his role in turning Sydney Olympic Park into a motor racing circuit for Supercars and providing them with $40 million to run their show for private profit. Here in Newcastle his legacy continues – with a multimillion dollar circuit cut through our heritage conservation precinct and prize winning foreshore Park – enclosing 3000 residents and small businesses – it took an amendment to his bill – the Homebush Act – to enable this to happen – and all the pollies have learnt is how better to hide the costs.