Mafia scandal should make O'Farrell and Turnbull very nervous ...

Irfan Yusuf writes:

Well it’s been a bad few weeks for the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party.

Brendan Nelson decided to POQ, his parting message to many of his more senior colleagues to join him. Julie Bishop was effectively demoted. Former leader John Hewson wrote op-eds in Fairfax papers telling Costello to also POQ. Joe Hockey reckons Costello’s refusal to POQ makes him resemble Prince Charles waiting for Queen Lizzy to kick the bucket or abdicate. Both Phillip Ruddock and Bronwyn Bishop are facing pressure from their branches to POQ. And just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse, it now seems the Federal Police have been investigating links between the Liberal Party organisation and a local franchise of the Calabrian mafia.

The Party has seen better days. Who could forget that famous scene when John Howard told a packed hall of Liberal Party faithful on the eve of the 2001 federal election: "We will decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come". If allegations raised in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald today are anything to go by, it seems the Howard government was quite happy to allow persons with links to organised crime to enter and remain in Australia -- at a price.

It shamelessly lied in accusing asylum seekers of throwing their children overboard. John Howard and Phillip Ruddock, in the name of "border protection", happily took a cue from Saddam Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld by locking up in detention centres ordinary Iraqis and Afghans (including children) fleeing persecution, all the while boasting of a "war on terror" designed to liberate Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet the Liberal Party Division in both John Howard’s and Malcolm Turnbull’s home state was happy to accept donations from people allegedly close to the Calabrian mafia. Liberal MP’s happily lobbied to keep a man accused of having mafia links in Australia and happily received donations of up to $150,000 from his buddies.

Vanstone denies donations affected her decision to intervene, which she claimed was made on humanitarian grounds. Vanstone had evidence of the person’s links to organised crime. She overruled her Department’s recommendation and exercised her discretion to allow the individual to remain in Australia, overturning the decision of her predecessor. Fairfax also reports that the man was subsequently arrested in relation to his alleged involvement in the world’s largest importation of the illegal drug ecstasy.

This was supposed to be the government which prided itself on its national security credentials. This is the party which wants to form the next State Government in New South Wales. Both Barry O’Farrell should be more than a little nervous And Malcolm Turnbull must be on the verge of a cardiac arrest.

and elsewhere …..

NSW mafia stains Labor and Liberal alike

Alex Mitchell writes:

The overnight decision by Mick Keelty's Australian Federal Police to re-investigate donations to the Liberal Party by colourful characters with alleged Italian Mafia links is like an unguided Exocet missile -- no-one really knows where it will strike.

NSW Labor Senator Steve Hutchins, a former State Secretary of the Transport Workers Union, has made extravagant statements which will surely come to haunt him.

“If anybody in the Labor Party has been involved in similar activities, they should be thrown out of the party and be hit with the full force of the law," Hutchins stormed.

“If these allegations end up leading to Labor, well, so be it. But at the moment it only seems like it is those morons in the Liberal Party who are dopey enough to take money from people linked to organised crimes figures."

Yesterday’s investigation by Age journalists Nick McKenzie and Richard Baker alleged that thousands of dollars went to Liberal coffers with the aim of helping Francesco Madafferi overcome his visa problems.

The article also noted the names of other prominent Italian businessmen who have made political donations -- Pat Sergi, Nick Scali and Tony Labozzetta -- all prominent in Sydney's Italian-Australian community.

In his inaugural speech to state parliament on April 30, 1996, the newly-elected MP for Fairfield Joe Tripodi, now Finance Minister, said:

During my election campaign I made many new friends in the local Italian community who assisted me, namely, Michael Daniele, Sam Romeo, Roy Spagnolo, Tony Mittiga and Pat Sergi. These people are friends I intend to keep for a long time.

In her inaugural speech on December 1, 1994, the newly-elected MP for Cabramatta Reba Meagher, the ex-Health Minister, also paid tribute to her helpers:

I would also like to thank Pat Sergi, Michael Danieli, Anthony Cavallaro, Sam Romeo and Nick Scali.

Both newcomers thanked Pat Sergi who received a prominent mention in The Age investigation: “Mr Sergi, a Sydney property developer and charity director, was named in the Woodward royal commission in 1979 as a money launderer for the drug boss Robert Trimbole.”

In the late 1990s, Sergi’s charity work brought him into contact with the Fred Hollows Foundation. He approached the Foundation’s then Executive Director Mike Lynskey with an offer to make “millions” for the charity. At the time he was supporting another charity but offered to “switch horses” and throw his energy behind the Hollows Foundation.

It was a seamlessly presented and brilliantly conceived scheme: Sergi would prevail upon his friends to build a house on donated Crown Land at no cost whatsoever. The house would then be raffled through an art union and Sergi guaranteed that all his friends would buy lots of tickets.

The Foundation does not appear to have accepted his generous approach but Sergi did organise a fundraising ball for the Foundation, which was held at the Sydney's Star City Casino on October 24, 1998, with tickets costing $1000 each.

I wonder whether Joe Tripodi or Reba Meagher attended. Just asking.In his recently released book, Smack Express, former NSW assistant police commissioner Clive Small noted that a year after his election to parliament, Tripodi formed a business partnership with Sergi which involved "buying and selling government land and Department of Housing properties in Sydney's western suburbs for significant profit".

In February 2005, then Premier Bob Carr promoted Tripodi to his ministry and made him the NSW Housing Minister.