“Did you know at the Liberal Party end in your capacity as Treasurer that Australian Water Holdings was making donations to the Liberal Party?”
“Not that I can recollect at the time.”
“Does that mean you may have been told that you’ve since forgotten it?”
“I cannot recollect one way or the other.”
“Does that suggest to you that you did not know that the company of which you were Deputy Chairman was making donations to the political party of which you were Treasurer?”
“It was not a process I involved myself in.”
When asked at the ICAC inquiry what responsibility he accepted for the fact that funds from illicit donors came to the Liberal party, Arthur Sinodinos at first equivocated and tried to suggest that the question was too general before eventually telling it:
“I don’t accept responsibility because I made my best endeavours for that not to happen.”
When it was suggested that funnelling donations to the federal party through the FEF at meetings when Sinodinos was present.
“If there was a suggestion, it went over my head,” Sinodinos told the corruption watchdog in 2014.
Of course, in the interests of being seen to do the right thing, Sinodinos stood down from his position as Assistant Treasurer of Australia, eventually being restored to Cabinet when Malcolm Turnbull took over.
So the recent report from the NSW Electoral Commission which mentions his name is a little unfair, because as Arthur has consistently maintained at no stage did he know anything because if he’d known something he would have done something, so the fact that he did nothing is clear evidence that he knew nothing.
His lawyers are now threatening the NSW Electoral Commission with legal action unless they remove Arthur Sinodinos’ name from all documents, so before they demand that I remove his name, I shall not be referring to him by name from this point on. However, if I say that Liberal guy who knows nothing, I don’t think you should presume that I’m referring to the aforementioned person, as the phrase, “Liberal guy who knows nothing” is far too broad to make any assumptions, just as if I said that “Liberal PM who had no idea about what was happening”, I could be referring to John Howard whose staff insisted that he wasn’t told, or to Tony Abbott.
Anyway, we shouldn’t be concerned with the petty dealings of a few funds from developers finding their way into Liberal Party coffers. I mean, just because it breaches electoral law doesn’t mean it’s corrupt or anything. The fact that a few developers chose to donate to the Free Enterprise Foundation who then allegedly pass the money on to the NSW Liberal Party doesn’t need any further investigation and the fact that the electoral commission is refusing to hand over a few million until the Liberals spill the beans is just one more example of red tape gone mad. Labor, on the other hand, need to immediately cease taking money from the CFMEU because some of their members have recently been charged with criminal offences, and, even if a number of these charges have been quietly dropped for lack of evidence, in the case of unions there’s no smoke without fire and that’s why we need extra bodies to investigate them because, well, courts demand such red tape as “evidence” and aren’t satisfied to simply take the word of someone with a vendetta as proof of wrongdoing.
As one of those Liberal guys who knows nothing about anything – and if he was told about something, he doesn’t recall if he was present when told – suggested it’d be wrong of anyone to suggest that he should know because when working for John Howard, it was his job not to know about anything damaging, because if he’d known it would have been his job to tell the PM and as the PM didn’t know, then clearly neither did anyone in the PM’s office, so Labor could just stop trying to link anything to John Howard. Clearly, when working for some company that made a large donation to the party of which he was treasurer, the company would have just presumed that he knew because he was treasurer of the party and the party would have presumed that someone at the company may have mentioned it to him in passing at the water cooler.
But let’s get down to what’s really important the Senate obstructing the ABCC bill, because we need to have a watchdog with coercive powers to stop lawlessness in the construction industry where sometimes union officials do such outrageous things as visit sites without giving enough notice for people to cover up the safety breaches. Of course, this will only be a civil body, so how it will stop lawlessness in the building industry, I don’t know, but I’m sure Mr T. will explain that in the coming weeks. (Mr T… Now there’s a good nickname for our PM. Or perhaps we should just use his initials and call him: “M.T.” Yep, the more I say it the more it suits him).
Mm, developers? Are they part of the construction industry? Will this new body be able to investigate them and any dodgy donations?
Oh, sorry, I missed the meeting where we learned that only unions break the law. Or maybe I was there and I just don’t recall…
I once knew something but I said nothing. Then when I was asked if I knew, I asked what it was that I was supposed to know and when I was told, I said I knew something but I don’t think it was that something, but if it was then I knew it but didn’t know if I knew that it was that which they were asking me about. So, we all agreed that I didn’t know that what I knew was what they were asking me if I knew.
As I understand there’s a further breaking scandal re Arthur. Something to do with the gift of a ‘house’.
But I supposed he won’t remember that as well.
It sounds a bit like a ‘beat up’.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/liberal-party-backers-were-approached-to-buy-senator-arthur-sinodinos-a-home-20160325-gnraih.html
Arfur Seenodonors , Arfur Speaknodonors, Arfur Hearnodonors , corruption has escalated in politics since the Looters Narks Pillaging Party lied their way into Government .
Hey great post we must be ready for the Turnbull lies….. Household debt as a percentage of gross domestic product has risen to around 140 percent compared to a global average of nearly 80 percent. Last month, an investigation by UK-based economist Johnathan Tepper concluded that Australia was in “one of the biggest housing bubbles in history.”
Over the past four years, he noted, more than 40 percent of all new mortgages had been interest-only; in other words, the house was purchased solely as an investment, to be resold when the price rose. This system of “Ponzi financing” was, Tepper said, a “disaster waiting to happen.”
In the lead up to the election, which could come as early as July 2 if a double dissolution takes place, the government is seeking to keep its real agenda hidden,(wage cuts, cuts more cuts and more cuts) instead creating a set of economic fictions about a new boost to prosperity.
And…While the ABCC is being revived under the banner of stamping out corruption in the trade unions, its real purpose is to establish mechanisms for forcibly suppressing the opposition that will develop throughout the working class to the impact of the “internal devaluation” of the economy—i.e., to the imposition of austerity.
It should be of great concern to the electorate that Lib politicians either can’t remember anything, or are not responsible for anything that occurs during their tenure, or make grandstanding statements and knee jerk reactions to reports they haven’t read.
How can they continue to pull an incredibly generous salary +entitlements when they are obviously in the throes of dementia or just can’t be bothered to do their jobs properly?
Although Arthur can be forgiven because he probably forgot which “hat” he was wearing, dodgy lobbyist hat or dodgy politician hat.
A bit like Hulk Hogan and his alter ego Terry, and those sex tapes Hulk wasn’t involved in but Terry was.
spot on jim
Wether Senator Sinodinos has memory problems or not is only part of the issue, surely!
All we can do is accept the Senator at his word, and just maybe I am prepared to do that. However, if the good Senator was at a meeting discussing matters that directly impacted his duties and responsibilities, but indicates that if indeed the matter was actually discussed, then it went over his head.
This is not the skill set required of the Cabinet Secretary of the Federal Governmet, therefore he should vacate the position due not having the skill set required for the position.
The country simply cannot have a person taking minutes of meetings omit possible adverse input from being recorded in the minutes, because they were not paying attention!
More I read about this rorting liar Sinodinos, more I am taken back to the scandalous behavior of 2 habitual liars in Howard and Downer with their double amnesia act during the AWB food for oil enquiry. Torys, lies and rorting bedmates supreme.
Poor, poor Arfur “Da Spiv” Sinodinas…. such a deplorable memory …early onset dementia or just a limited capacity for storage?
Such a rich tapestry you weave, Mr Brisbane.
“He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” was a fictional character in the ‘Harry Potter’ series, wasn’t he?
You can’t sue a fiction, which was the premise of the story about the man who sued god.
Then you have Rumsfeld’s great oration;
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.”
Mr Kelly’s comment reminded me of another thread in the tapestry, Catch 22.
“a dilemma or difficult circumstance from which there is no escape because of mutually conflicting or dependent conditions.”
The last three years have demonstrated a government that is bereft of any standard. And yet we continuously attempt to compare them to a standard, any standard. When the bar has been set so low, that people actually think this place is good?
It seems ironic to me that this is the centenary of the “Easter uprising” in Ireland. We seem destined to repeat history, in our glorious attempt to ignore it.
Thank you, take care
If it forgets like Corruption its Corruption.
If it lies like Corruption its Corruption.
If it smells like Corruption its Corruption.
Something about how hard it is to make a profit in the construction industry… Must be the unions!
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/business/manuka-oval-developer-grocon-paid-no-tax-on-441-million-income-20160324-gnqf7u