“There’s been a massive fuck up,” NSW Labor’s now suspended general secretary Kaila Murnain allegedly told party lawyer Ian Robertson after she had found out about the party receiving illegal donations from a Chinese billionaire.
According to Murnain’s testimony to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC), Robertson told her to forget all about it.
“Ian said to me ‘there is no need to do anything from here, don’t record this meeting, don’t put it in the diary… and don’t tell anyone about it’.” Robertson is yet to address this claim.
Just a few short months ago Robertson, listed as a leading technology, media and telecommunications lawyer, was being considered for appointment as chair of ABC. Sitting prominently on a number of film and television boards, and national managing partner for a prestigious law firm, he had been appointed as an officer in the General Division of the Order of Australia.
A glance at Robertson’s CV reveals he is one of the most influential people you’ve never heard of. While he’s yet to give evidence in the ICAC investigation, here’s what we do know about him.
Elite education
Robertson attended Camberwell Grammar School, an illustrious private school in Melbourne’s leafy eastern suburbs. The school’s alumni features famous football players, Anglican bishops, governors and judges.
He attended the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1978 with a bachelor’s degree in business communications, law and commerce and was snatched up by law firm Holding Redlich as a lawyer in 1989. Just a year into his employment he was promoted to partner, moving swiftly up the ranks to managing partner in 1994, and national managing partner in 2015.
Friends in high places
Robertson can count among his clients former prime minister Julia Gillard — in 2013 he negotiated the terms of her memoirs and got her a $400,000 advance. In 2008 he was appointed deputy chair for Screen Australia and he was reputedly “a central figure” in the introduction of the producer offset tax rebate scheme.
Donor disclosures published by the Australian Electoral Commission reveal that Holding Redlich donated $92,700 in 2015-16 — the year Robertson became national managing partner. While this was mainly in the direction of state and federal Labor branches, AFR points out that the firm’s “donations go back a number of years, criss-crossing the political divide”.
Proximity to power (and occasionally scandal)
Robertson hasn’t held back in saying he thinks the Australian Broadcasting Authority should have more power. He was on the board from 1997 to 2004.
“I think the ABA should be able to use what are effectively civil penalties. I think the ABA should be able to receive legally binding undertakings,” he said in an interview, pushing for the power to obtain injunctions and suspend announcers from broadcasting.
The comments came after Robertson was on the panel overseeing hearings following the “cash for comment” scandal, where broadcasters including Alan Jones endorsed products without disclosing commercial partnerships. Robertson later called the broadcaster’s conduct “disturbing”.
In 2015, in a personal submission to the Department of Communications’ review of the Australian Communications and Media Authority, he pushed for the broadcasting regulator to have less power, stating it should “adopt a less legalistic and rigid approach to its investigations”.
He was also appointed president of the board for Film Victoria in 2011, which was at the time attempting to move on from embarrassment of spending $45,000 on a farewell party for outgoing CEO Sandra Sdraulig.
No doubt about it – this is a disaster for Labor’s credibility and deserves to be front-page news. My questions are as follows. How come the Timor- Leste bugging scandal, surely the most disgraceful act perpetrated by any Australian government, but by a Coalition government, is also not on the front page? How come the scandalous and vicious pursuit of Witness K and Bernard Collaery by this LNP government and mostly by foul means is not front page news? Why have not Morrison and Porter stepped in and called a halt to an abuse of legal process by the lawyers acting against K and Collaery? How come Mr “Political Dynasty” Downer, who signed off on the bugging and then took a job with the major commercial beneficiary of the bugging and subsequent treaty negotiations – Woodside – is also not on the front page?
Good, pertinent and, of course, entirely rhetorical questions. The figleaf of ‘national security’ is a license to harass and persecute citizens both judicially and extra-judicially.
Now we have to remember, that Alexander Downer, raised in Australia House, school fees paid for our federal government, needs to have an income of much more than that, of a retired ambassador and government minister, or else he will be unable to keep up appearances in London.
Alex’s friend just happens to be Rupert Murdoch, that ever so pleasant media baron, who has lots of media in Australia, they just don’t go for such an OLD story and anyway, Woodside didn’t mind paying for his consultants fee and retainer, so, really, no story to speak of.
As for Christian Porter, our current Attorney General, well he just can’t see why Mike Pezzullo can’t just organize to harass and intimidate journalists and of course the ABC, whenever, he get a bit of “they caught me out again, I’ll teach them”, and so, it seemed to Christian Porter, a good idea to prosecute and teach those bastards, Bernard Collaroy and Witness K, not to expose our dirty linen in public, especially now that the deal has been redone with Timor Leste, bastards!!
The real punchline, was that the whole thing, could be held in secret and so, no one would ever know that a bit of payback, OK a lot of payback was about to be dealt out, using one of the tons of terrorism acts.
No one was supposed to know that the Attorney General and the Head of ASIO and formerly of ASIS were going to get those two and punish them severely for the revelations that we had bugged the Timor Leste’s negotiators rooms.
Anything and everything has been thrown at them, from overt surveillance, unemployment, cancellation of passport, ransacking a legal office, seizing document illegally and now a prosecution that needs to be held in the dark because the charges will not stand up to daylight or public scrutiny.
Basically, we robbed one of the poorest countries on earth, not for our country, but for an oil company and some consultants fees. Reduced to that, it is cringeworthy.
I am sure Christian Porter despairs, every time Andrew Wilke gets to his feet in parliament and puts on record what new abuse of power, that has been perpetrated against Bernard Collaroy and witness K.
If this government wants to come out of this absolute mess, they need to stop rolling in the abuse of power sludge, hose themselves off and drop the charges.
Otherwise, Bernard Collaroy has already said, that this entire affair is like throwing a boomerang, when it returns it is likely to take part of your head off.
I am sure that the newbie, Christian Porter, has no real concept of what exactly he has unleashed and is still under some illusion that it make him look tough on whistleblowers. It doesn’t, it makes him look like some one who can’t tell right from wrong.
I wonder who is pulling Porter’s strings (Brandis wouldn’t dance for them) – or is he just doing it for some sort of brownie points, as he sees it, to impress whom? …. “Pezzullo”?
I think it is the natural reflex of a scion of the Establishment to see lese majeste in any opposing view as an affront to be crushed.
Basically spot on – “… we robbed one of the poorest countries on earth, not for our country, but for an oil company and some consultants fees.”
Cringeworthy is too kind.
Does anyone seriously think he and the Labor Party are the only ones dabbling in this sort of corruption?
….. That “Eight by Five” slush fund they were slopping around in, behind the Liberal Party?
Where’s the federal ICAC – to prove they’re all such clean-skins in Canberra?
If he graduated in 1978 he was hardly “snapped up” by Holding Redlich in 1989 – might one ponder what he was doing in those 11 years which prepared him for the subsequent rapid ascent, commercially and politically?
So in 2004 Robertson thought the ABA should have more power. The ABA and ACA merge a year or so later to form ACMA, which he says should have less power. Wtf?