A cashed-up property developer who famously told the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) he felt like a “walking ATM” for politicians stands to win from the government’s much-lauded gas plan.
Jeff McCloy, the controversial former mayor of Newcastle who popped up last week as being the only stakeholder pushing NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro to blow up his own government over koala protections, is the joint owner of land flagged by Scott Morrison and Energy Minister Angus Taylor as the potential site of a new gas plant.
Taylor and Morrison announced plans last week to build a gas generator in Kurri Kurri in the Hunter Valley “should the market not deliver what consumers need” when AGL’s Liddell plant closes in 2023. The government is reportedly scoping out the site of the old Kurri Kurri aluminium smelter, which was purchased by McCloy and fellow developer John Stevens in January.
The developers said at the time that the purchase was the biggest of their careers and that the industrial part of the land would be ideal for either a solar farm or a gas peaking plant.
Another prominent Hunter Valley developer Hilton Grugeon (who was also found by ICAC to have made undisclosed political donations to the NSW Liberal party), and his business partner Garbis Simonian, told the Newcastle Herald last week they were “delighted” with the PM’s support for a gas plant in Kurri Kurri as it would be a ready customer for their proposed $1.2 billion underground gas pipeline from Queensland to Newcastle.
McCloy and Grugeon were found by ICAC’s Operation Spicer in 2016 to have acted with the intention of evading the statewide ban on political donations from property developers. It followed evidence that McCloy gave admitting he handed thousands of dollars in envelopes to Liberal Party candidates ahead of the 2011 state election.
Labor MP Pat Conroy said the new gas projects raised more conflict of interest questions over the government’s highly criticised “gas-led recovery” plan.
“It’s a curious coincidence that two of the projects that would directly benefit from the government’s gas announcement are owned by people who have made very large donations to the Liberal party,” he told Crikey.
“The government should be very clear why they selected that site, and whether anyone who advised them on the gas plan has a direct commercial interest. It’s incumbent upon the government to assure the Australian people that no one advising them will directly benefit from their plans.”
Taylor was pushed yesterday after his speech to the National Press Club on whether any of the high-powered business leaders advising the government on its gas-led recovery, including former Fortescue boss Nev Power and Saudi Aramco board member Andrew Liveris, would personally benefit from the gas-led recovery plan.
Taylor refused to say. “Yes we get advice from the [National COVID-19 Coordination Commission] … we’ve had hundreds of people engaged every step of the way, but ultimately the decisions that we’ve announced last week and this week are our decisions,” he said.
Power has been criticised for being unable to say at a Senate inquiry hearing in May whether anyone on his commission would personally gain from the government’s gas plan.
Crikey tried to ask McCloy whether he had been in discussions with the government about turning the former smelter site into a gas plant. He did not return calls.
Taylor did not respond to questions about the site, and whether any Coalition donors would commercially benefit from the proposed plant.
This whole convoluted new energy sources/so called low emissions technology is deliberately wound in confusion and slick terms parsed by corporate spin merchants to deliberately confuse voters unfamiliar with the energy sector. We know it’s a rort, dressed up as a transition to something or other, with govt mates getting a better go at making even more money from taxpayer funded gas exploration and production. But they won’t admit it.. Morrison always said he would look after his mates, and here he is, looking after them big time.
The ones who are familiar with the energy sector, or just freakin’ maths, know the whole thing’s a fraud.
It starts with electrolysis – to liberate the H from the H20 – you have to put in more energy, than you yield.
But, when you burn gas or coal to provide that input energy, you lose around 50% of that energy to waste heat.
The ‘numbers just do not work’.
Which is why the private snouts line up at the public trough.
Maybe our enterprising Angus can pay ten times what the Kurri Kurri site is worth, and get all of it back in donations to repeat the cycle. And they said a perpetual motion machine was a myth…
What a “propitious coincidence”? One could say ‘taylor made’?
…. Ever get the feeling you’re being played for a bunch of mugs by a bunch of turgid dicks?
All too frequently!!
Plenty of brown paper bags full of cash from this one.
I reckon Taylor and Scomo are quietly confident that the NSW LNP have successfully nobbled ICAC.
We are of like (fair) mind.
Mike Baird did that I think.
I reckon that oxford university should reassess who they give Rhodes Scholarships to, Taylor and Abbott are surely too stupid.
I suppose what makes my blood boil is how quickly these examples of corruption/fraud/rorting the system disappear. It seems they hardly ever touch the inside pages of our MSM. That’s the real corruption – evildoing by the LNP Government is invisible to the Murdoch and rightwing papers.