At odds: Former premiers Morris Iemma and Bob Carr. ''Bob seeks to rewrite history; I don't," Iemma says. Photo: Michel O'Sullivan
As the allegations of wide-ranging corruption have emerged at the corruption watchdog, former premier Bob Carr has sought to portray himself as having stood up to Eddie Obeid's influence. It was his successor, Morris Iemma, who had given him ''special status'' within the state government, Carr told ABC1's Four Corners this week - and, by implication, left Obeid unchecked to exploit his position.
Iemma responded with vigour, pointing out that he did not give Obeid a ministry, Carr did.
The picture of how Obeid accrued so much clout in the ALP is much more complex. Iemma might have been a closer friend to Obeid, but Carr turned a blind eye and at one stage even gave character evidence for the powerbroker in a defamation suit against the Herald.
Obeid, a budding Lebanese businessman and owner of ethnic newspaper El Telegraph, joined the Labor Party at 29 and was elected to the Legislative Council in 1991. A good networker with extensive ethnic contacts, he wielded significant clout in the ALP's western Sydney branches even before he entered State Parliament.
But despite his power, there was reluctance to make him a minister. Carr finally appointed Obeid to the ministry in 1999 as the relatively lowly fisheries and minerals minister. At that time the ministerial vacancies were filled by factional caucus votes, leaving the leader's hand tied other than to choose the portfolio.
However, after a thumping win in 2003, Carr asserted his power to demand, with the backing of John Della Bosca, the right to appoint some new blood to the ministry. Obeid, Richard Amery and John Aquilina were casualties.
Obeid returned to the backbench, and Carr chose to turn a blind eye to a string of reports about Obeid's business dealings and political dabbling in the affairs of several inner west councils.
In 2006 Carr gave evidence in support of Obeid's defamation action against the Herald, which sprang from a report alleging that Obeid had offered to smooth the way for the Bulldogs' Rugby League Club's Oasis development at Liverpool in return for a $1 million donation to the ALP. The Herald lost the case.
''His reputation was as a diligent political operative with the advantage that he was a successful migrant and especially well regarded in the Lebanese community. A successful businessman,'' Carr told the court.
He said he did not believe the imputations that were contained in the Herald story, but because he feared ''a campaign'' by the Herald, he asked Obeid to stand down. ''A minister has got to be able to deliver the government more favourable than unfavourable publicity, and if there is a chronic inability to do that because of a media campaign, then I have to to accept that as a reality,'' he told the court.
During the case, extracts of Carr's private diaries were tendered.
They provided a slightly more nuanced picture of Carr's view of his parliamentary colleague.
''Running Obeid out of the ministry means not having controversies about his untidy pecuniary interests. That eliminates one area of vulnerability,'' he wrote.
''I took on the Obeid faction, the Terrigals, and forced their leader out. Squalls and turbulence but I won, breaking Obeid's power. Now he flutters around me desperately reasserting his relevance, managing and massaging backbenchers.''
But Carr was misguided if he thought that he had broken Obeid, says Iemma. ''He was already a factional superpower and his power took years to acquire,'' he said.
Obeid's clout was acquired through his abilities as a ''wart healer and fixer'', as the man who could help a backbencher get access to the premier or the minister, solve a branch dispute, get onto a committee or even secure a grant for a project, Iemma says.
If anything, Obeid had more time to build his networks from a spot on the backbench.
Iemma says it is a matter of public record that he was a close political friend of Obeid and a founding member of the Terrigals.
He says that as premier he met Obeid regularly but misheard at ICAC when he agreed that it could be as often as three times a week.
Carr was also one of the beneficiaries of the rise of the Terrigals, Iemma says.
The Terrigals were formed in part to counter the other right faction, the Trogs, who were behind the destabilisation of Carr in the early years.
The Terrigals became the pro-Carr faction and kept in check the leadership ambitions of former police minister Peter Anderson when Labor was in opposition.
''Bob didn't just tolerate the rise of the Terrigals; he supported it,'' Iemma says. ''Bob seeks to rewrite history; I don't.''
For Iemma, Obeid's power to change a political career was felt with full force in September 2008.
Obeid ''overstepped the boundaries of friendship'' and attempted to dictate how the sale of the state's electricity assets would proceed.
''We fell out spectacularly, and I lost and they [Obeid and Joe Tripodi] won,'' he said.
Iemma resigned as premier and Nathan Rees, from the Left, was installed with Obeid's blessing, only to experience a year later the power of Obeid to pull the strings.
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