KEY POINTS:
Like some kind of political Friday the 13th, the ghost of WA Inc has returned to stalk the halls of the West Australian parliament. Worse, its banshee howl has echoed across the continent, swirling around the head of Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd as he prepares for his run this year against Prime Minister John Howard.
WA Inc was the disastrous and corrupt 1980s partnership between the WA Labor Government and the state's corporate cowboys that ultimately spelled its doom and sent businessmen such as Alan Bond to jail. The scandal also put the Premier of the time, Brian Burke, behind bars.
Now Burke is back with a vengeance, and with a maze of contacts, deals and influence-peddling that once again threatens to sink Labor in the west. So far, three ministers have been sacked, with a bevy of ministerial staffers, senior public servants and local government officials under investigation by the state's Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC). A fourth minister earlier fell separately.
Burke's reach has been extended by his business partner Julian Grill, another former Labor minister from the WA Inc days, and by his association with Liberal party powerbroker, former Senator Noel Crichton-Browne, who helped to ensure the Opposition did Burke's bidding on behalf of his clients.
In Canberra this week, Rudd has defended his contacts with the disgraced former Premier against a wave of attacks from a delighted Government. Treasurer Peter Costello and Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer have led the charge, insinuating that Rudd lunched with Burke to gain his help in winning the votes he needed to oust former party leader Kim Beazley.
At the time Rudd met Burke, the lobbyist was banned by former WA Premier Geoff Gallop from speaking to his ministers, a prohibition the Federal Labor leader says he was unaware of.
Rudd called a press conference to defend himself, rejecting any suggestion of wrongdoing and imposing his own ban on Federal contacts with Burke. "Would it have been better for me not to have met Mr Burke had I known what Mr Burke was up to at the time?" he said. "Of course."
In Perth, Premier Alan Carpenter this week cut short a trade mission to India to fly home amid a mounting crisis that saw him sack two ministers, doubling the toll Burke's manipulations had taken on his Government. On ABC television, Carpenter refused to call an early election, vowing to clean up his extremely soiled back yard.
The historical omens are not good. The CCC's investigations, including recordings from surveillance videos, tapped phones and bugged apartments, have exposed an administration riddled with corruption. Similar problems decimated Labor in the 1980s and kept it out of power for a decade or so. The subsequent Liberal Government left office under the shadow of a sharebroking scandal that was later to become fodder for Burke's misdeeds.
Polls taken last year indicated the new Burke morass has not yet damaged Carpenter too much. WA's population is rising faster than any other state's, property prices have rocketed 80 per cent in the past three years, and its 2 per cent unemployment rate is the second-lowest in the country.
But the revelations have continued to mount, and the Premier is now seen to be floundering in a mire that has oozed throughout his Government. The Greens are threatening to use their balance of power in the state's Legislative Council to block supply and force Carpenter's downfall. The Liberal Opposition is investigating possible constitutional grounds for dismissal.
Federally, it is hard to determine what impact this may have on this year's election, if any. But WA is finely poised. The Coalition won 55.4 per cent of the vote at the last federal election in 2004, 10 points ahead of Labor. The most recent Newspoll on federal voting intentions in WA, made late last year, still has the Coalition ahead by six percentage points.
Now the headlines and TV news in Perth are again dominated by Burke, overweight and in his trademark Panama hat and sunglasses. His reach and influence has been phenomenal, extending into secret Cabinet discussions, parliamentary debates, bureaucratic decision-making, committee recommendations, and local council planning and development approvals.
He has caused the political death of three ministers, all sacked after evidence to the CCC showed how Burke had bent them to his will: Small Business Minister Norman Marlborough, Environment and Climate Change Minister Tony McRae, and Local Government and Gaming Minister John Bowler.
Former Police Minister John D'Orazio was sacked and expelled from the Labor Party last May after another CCC investigation of a scandal over unpaid parking fines.
Former Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlish, already dumped from the portfolio, has been shown to have had contacts with Burke. Labor backbencher Shelley Archer is likely to be investigated by the CCC after evidence indicating she passed secret Cabinet information to Burke and acted as a go-between during Gallop's ban on ministerial contact with the lobbyist.
Gary Stokes, the Deputy Director-General of the state's key Department of Industry and Resources, overseeing the mining boom that has sent WA's economy soaring, is also facing tough questions relating to Cabinet submissions involving one of Burke's and Grill's clients. A former WA Agent-General to London and an adviser to Grill during the WA Inc days, Stokes was videotaped lunching with the pair at a meeting he insisted to the CCC he could not recall.
In the Shire of Wanneroo, to the north of Perth, CCC phone taps recorded deputy mayor Sam Salpietro divulging sensitive and confidential information to Burke, whose clients enjoyed special access to council staff and saw council agendas manipulated to their advantage. Burke used a political mate to gain Salpietro the votes he needed to head a committee overseeing a big new land development.
To the south of Perth, Burke client and development giant Australand helped to fund the re-election campaign of pro-development Cockburn mayor Stephen Lee, channelled through a local lobby group to disguise its origins. Burke was also one of the key players in Lee's campaign. Lee was a strong supporter of a A$700 million ($792 million) development planned by Australand.
It was a sensational recovery for Burke, who served seven months of a two-year term for rorting travel expenses in 1994, and six months of a second three-year sentence for stealing campaign donations, later quashed on appeal. He teamed with Grill and quietly tapped old contacts, developed new ones, and established a network of astonishing breadth and influence.
His old mates included political luminaries such as former federal Labor Leader Kim Beazley and many other state and federal politicians. His clients included some of WA's biggest miners, energy companies and developers. He short-circuited Gallop's ban on ministerial contacts, and thrived on clandestine meetings and back-room deals.
In return, clients paid Burke and Grill up to A$10,000 a month in retainers, plus large success fees that included prime property. In one case they received at least A$1 million from a satisfied client.
Burke's latest fall is just as sensational, with the prospect of new criminal charges. He has been spurned by friends and contacts and expelled from the Labor Party. He can no longer speak or have dealings with Labor parliamentarians, state or federal. And the inquiries continue.
He is taking his contacts with him, tied together by the video, phone-tap and bugging tapes that have stunned the inquiry. About 80 politicians, public servants and others were subject to covert surveillance and bugging.
The first to fall in this round of CCC investigations was Marlborough, sacked from his Small Business portfolio last November. Evidence to the CCC showed Marlborough and Burke had spoken on a secret phone line up to 10 times a day, much of it to discuss secret Cabinet discussions on compensation for the mainly elderly victims of a sharebroking scandal, whose life savings had evaporated.
Burke's client was IMF, which represented many of the victims. Burke used friendly MPs to lobby on IMF's behalf. The Government eventually paid A$26.6 million directly to the victims and A$3.4 million to IMF. CCC tapes recorded Burke boasting he could secure the votes of at least six Cabinet ministers.
Next to go was McRae, accused of manipulating the announcement of an environment planning decision to gain a financial benefit from Grill. In earlier CCC tapes McRae is recorded accepting an offer from Grill to help to bankroll his re-election campaign. McRae denies wrongdoing, claiming to be the victim of a circus of supposition and innuendo.
Bowler, first demoted from the resources portfolio to local government, racing and gaming and finally sacked this week, is the latest head to roll. Bugs in his Perth apartment caught Bowler briefing Grill on Cabinet discussions affecting one of his clients. He also made more than 100 phone calls to Burke and Grill.
Bowler also agreed to delay a decision on a uranium prospecting application, handing a Burke-Grill client leverage to extract millions of dollars in negotiations with mining giant BHP Billiton.
The CCC was also told that Burke had used Bowler and McRae to set up an inquiry into the mining industry, and had Bowler insert recommendations prepared by one of his clients after the inquiry report reached unfavourable conclusions. The amended report helped the client to win a A$20 million payout in a dispute over a vanadium mine.
Burke's influence didn't stop at Labor. He paid former Senator Crichton-Browne A$2000 a month to lobby fellow Liberal MPs to support motions favouring his clients, enabling the lobbyist to work both sides of parliament. Evidence to the CCC alleged that Crichton-Browne at one stage wrote the terms of reference for a parliamentary inquiry. The CCC hearings wound up this week - but the investigation continues.
