Morris Iemma was battling an escalating corruption scandal last night that threatened to draw in two of his most senior ministers and to bring down one of the state's biggest Labor-controlled councils.
Joe Scimone - a close ally of the Minister for Ports and Waterways, Joe Tripodi, and a friend for 30 years of the former Wollongong lord mayor and current Police Minister, David Campbell - stood down from his job managing property within NSW Maritime yesterday pending the outcome of an Independent Commission Against Corruption inquiry.
There are allegations before the commission that Mr Scimone, a former Wollongong Council officer, paid $30,000 last year to conmen posing as commission officers who were offering to destroy evidence against him.
Mr Tripodi's office confirmed last night that Mr Scimone, a former federal Labor preselection candidate and Labor branch president, had been stood down on full pay.
The future of Wollongong City Council was in doubt last night as some of its ALP councillors were further implicated in the growing sexual and corruption scandal inside the council.
And that's why I don't vote for the ALP. I am sick of how easy it is for corruption to infiltrate politics. I may be down on John Howard and his government, but at least there was little evidence of this sort of corruption. If the Rudd government gets drawn into a corruption scandal in the next few years, I wouldn't be surprised.
1 comment:
Don't be so Pollyannaish. The Independants on Wollongong Council are just as bad. They leak confidential information allegedly for ideological purposes [see the Wollongong Council Conduct Committees findings against Councillor Anne Wood]. Independant Wollongong Councillors Anne Woods and Mayor Darling meanwhile receive campaign donations [money] from Malcolm Heard a local solicitor representing one of the named persons before ICAC and in Darling's case from every single developer who ahs appeared before ICAC. Oh - and when Woods is caught out releasing confidential Council information to third parties, Woods and Darling think its fine to appoint one of their financia backers - Heard - to sit on the Conduct Investigation Committee without declaring their existing relationship. They are all rotten!
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