Daily Archives: March 24, 2016

Under pressure cabinet secretary Arthur Sinodinos has publicly lashed out at the NSW Electoral Commission over a political donations scandal, branding as “flawed” its report into the illegal funnelling of donations to the state Liberal Party.

As Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull came under pressure to stand down his cabinet secretary, Senator Sinodinos said his lawyers had demanded it “immediately retract all references to me in the publication”.

It was an escalation of the dispute, following the damning finding by the NSW Electoral Commission against the NSW party at a time when Senator Sinodinos was its finance director.

The scandal pitted Premier Mike Baird against his own party office on Thursday, after he called on it to “cop it on the chin” and accede to the commission’s demand for it to disclose who donated $693,000 via the controversial Free Enterprise Foundation before the 2011 state election.

Mr Baird said he had spoken to NSW Liberal state director Chris Stone and told him the Liberal Party “should comply”.

“It’s very clear that it looks like we have done the wrong thing, so we have to cop it on the chin, and we need to get on with it,” he said.

Later, Mr Stone said he had written to the electoral commission “seeking their assistance in resolving any areas of uncertainty about the legal status of donors in the 2010/2011 period so as to comply with our obligations.”

However, it remains unclear if the party will agree to disclose the names of the donors as the commission has demanded.

Mr Stone said the NSW party had been waiting for the Independent Commission Against Corruption to deliver its findings in Operation Spicer during which the donations issue came to light.

The call for Senator Sinodinos to stand aside came after the NSW Liberal party was slammed by the state Electoral Commission for “concealing” the identities of major donors before the 2011 state poll, including via the secretive Free Enterprise Foundation.

The commission said that, based on evidence given to ICAC during Operation Spicer in 2014, the federally registered foundation was used by senior NSW Liberal party officials to “channel and disguise donations by major political donors some of whom were prohibited donors”.

The commission said it had relied on evidence given to ICAC by senior party officials including about the “involvement” of members of the then NSW Liberal finance committee, which included Senator Sinodinos.

Senator Sinodinos was finance director and treasurer of the NSW Liberals at the time but has previously denied any knowledge of the use of the Free Enterprise Foundation to circumvent state donations laws to funnel property developer and other illegal donations into the campaign.

The NSW Liberals refusal to formally disclose the names of the donors led the commission to withhold $4.4 million in campaign and administrative funding claimed by the NSW Liberals from the 2015 state election. It has also frozen future public funding to the division until it complies.

The commission is unable to prosecute the party for not filing a “requisite declaration” containing the donor details due to a three-year statute of limitations on the offence, which occurred in 2011.

Acting shadow attorney-general Brendan O’Connor called on Senator Sinodinos to stand aside following the commission’s “extraordinary finding”.

Mr O’Connor said “it beggars belief that he has no role in this at all. It doesn’t pass the pub test that somehow all of this happened and he’s oblivious to all of it”.

But a spokesman for Mr Turnbull – who recently promoted Senator Sinodinos to cabinet secretary after former prime minister Tony Abbott stood him aside amid a separate ICAC investigation in 2014 – declined to comment.

Mr Sinodinos said he had “no role in the NSW Division’s decision to decline to update information disclosed in [its donations declaration], as was requested by the Commission”.
source:smh.com.au

Two pieces of debris found in Mozambique are ‘almost certainly’ from missing flight MH370, the federal government has confirmed.

One of the pieces, stamped with ‘676EB’, was found in December but initially dismissed as rubbish and only reported to authorities earlier this month, prompted by media reports of the other piece, which has the words ‘NO STEP’ on it.

The pieces arrived in Canberra for testing four days ago and on Thursday, Transport Minister Darren Chester said investigators had concluded they were consistent with panels from a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft.

Mr Chester said investigators remained hopeful the aircraft would be found.’The analysis has concluded the debris is almost certainly from MH370,’ Mr Chester said.

He said finding the objects on the east coast of Africa was consistent with modelling of debris drifting from the search area in the southern Indian Ocean.

Authorities remain certain they area searching in the right area for the plane which disappeared on March 8, 2014 with 239 people on board, including six Australians.

So far only a piece of wing, known as a flaperon, discovered in July on the island of Reunion, has been confirmed as being from the missing jetliner.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau commissioner Martin Dolan told AAP earlier this month pieces could take that long to make it across the sea because the rate of drift and, to some extent, the direction depended on how much of the object was sticking up above the waves.

An ATSB spokesman confirmed the governments of Malaysia, Australia and China remain of the view the search area will not be expanded beyond the current 120,000sq km zone in the absence of credible new information.

Just over 20 per cent or 25,000sq km of the underwater search area is yet to be combed, with completion estimated as mid-year.Mr Dolan also recently told AAP the area would not be re-scoured as he had confidence in the quality of the work, which was being done by the world’s best sonar experts.

Another object found on the shores of Reunion earlier this month by the same member of a beach clean-up crew who found the flaperon was last week deemed unlikely as being from MH370.

Mr Dolan also flagged on March 10 the possibility of debris being found in South Africa, 12 days before the Malaysian transport minister announced an object had been discovered near the town of Mossell Bay.

The minister said it could be from an inlet cowling of an aircraft engine.A spokeswoman for the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre, which is organising the search off the West Australian coast, said the authenticity of photos in media about the South African find, showing an object with part of a Rolls Royce logo, could not be confirmed.

source:skynews.com.au