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August 4, 2009
Turnbull and the Liberals are going to have some trouble putting the OzCar affair behind them and moving on to greener fields of economics and deteriorating budget fundamentals. Hope springs eternal I guess, even though the storm clouds are massing.
Ozgate is still now, and it is lead in the saddle. A very sick Godwin Grech, the Treasury official who testified before a Senate committee that he recalled an email from the PM’s office about John Grant, has admitted writing the fake email. Australian Story, which was filming in Turnbull’s office when the story broke that the fake email had been found at Grech’s house, showed the shock and bewilderment within the office. They had thought the email was real.
Unfortunately for Turnbull Grech said he handed a printout of the email's contents to Mr Turnbull and Senate deputy leader Eric Abetz -- which he later took back -- at a meeting at his wife Lucy Turnbull's office in Sydney's Potts Point on June 12, one week before Grech's evidence before a Senate inquiry. Turnbull must have thought that he'd struck gold-- the means to land a killer blow on Rudd.
Even worse for Turnbull, Grech wrote down a series of questions for the Opposition Leader to ask in parliament concerning Rudd's statements that he had not sought special favours for John Grant, the Ipswich car dealer.
Grech also says he never authorised anyone to publish, report, comment or discuss the contents of the email, which he showed Turnbull and which he discussed in a telephone conversation with a journalist that Turnbull arranged. The Liberals sacrificed him.
Turnbull has been damaged by Ozgate and more fallout can be expected in the future from the up-close-and-personal nature of his involvement with Grech. The favourable presentation of Malcolm in the soft sell of Australian Story has already been swept away by Grech saying that Turnbull was deeply and personally involved in the release of what he believed to be an email that could bring down the Prime Minister.
A betrayed Grech is going to be sacrificed by the Liberals in full damage control mode. Turnbull's defence had been built around Grech's public testimony at the Senate hearing, not previewing the email. They will throw as much doubt as they can on Grech's central defence that he gave them information in the hope that it would assist the passage of the emergency car financing bill.
Update
The Auditor General's Ozgate report clears Rudd and Swan, and points the finger at Godwin Grech. However, it is also heavily critical of Treasury for allowing Grech to be under huge pressure to deliver the dealer finance program by himself. The delays in establishing the program because of a lack of resources helped to create the situation in which Grech was asked to find private finance for dealers and this opened the situation to political referrals from MPs.
Grech writes in his response that Treasury did not reduce his workload adequately - despite the fact that he was hospitalised repeatedly to deal with a small bowel obstruction, kidney disease, osteoporosis and a metabolic bone disease. Other parts of his response indicates that he judges Turnbull used him to attack Labor's crony capitalism until he became toxic, and has now discarded him like a used rag. Betrayal.
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The judgment of the ABC’s Chris Uhlmann on Australian Story on the treatment of Godwin Grech, the Treasury official who testified before a Senate committee that he recalled an email from the PM’s office about John Grant.
And Grech was a Liberal friend, giving them good information over the years.