Despite the Death Threats, We Kept on Telling You How It Was August 1, 2013 Anne Davies COMMENT
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Despite the death threats, we kept on telling you how it was August 1, 2013 Anne Davies COMMENT Eddie Obeid: Facing multiple corrupt findings in three reports tabled in the NSW Parliament on Wednesday by the ICAC. Photo: Edwina Pickles It's tempting to say, we told you so, especially to the former leaders of the NSW Labor Party. After a decade of the Herald and the Australian Financial Review reporting of the dealings of former NSW minister Edward Obeid and his successor in the minerals department Ian Macdonald, the Independent Commission Against Corruption has found what we always knew: the two are corrupt. In 2009, the Obeids bought for $3.65 million Cherrydale Park in the picturesque Bylong Valley and arranged for associates to buy adjoining plots. Suspicious locals tipped us off. The Herald published my report in May 2010, pointing out the sudden interest by Obeid friends in the valley. The Financial Review wrote about a secret shareholding in Cascade Coal, the winning tenderer. ICAC contacted journalists and began asking questions. It took ICAC's powers, of course, to reveal that the Obeids were secret shareholders in Cascade Coal and stood to make $60 million out of the deal. But this was not the first time the activities of Obeid and Macdonald have been held up to the light, thanks to the efforts of our journalists. Since 1999, with an article headlined ''Fast Eddie'', Kate McClymont has documented the Obeids' dealings with councils, their involvement in contentious property deals in Port Macquarie, at Blackwattle Bay, at the Elizabeth Bay Marina and at Rozelle. Linton Besser forced the resignation of Macdonald from cabinet, exposing a $30,000 benefit he received from a vested interest that he had tried to keep secret. The Herald has detailed Macdonald's appointments of mates to government sinecures and his advocacy of the V8 supercar races that benefited his mates. Late last year, the Herald wrote about the Obeids' secret involvement in Australian Water Services, a company with huge state contracts and on whose behalf Mr Obeid has lobbied extensively. These investigations have come at a cost for Herald journalists. They have received writs, death threats and endless attempts at intimidation. As far back of 2006, Mr Obeid used parliamentary privilege to attack: ''[Kate] McClymont obviously gets her thrills by being constantly in the company of the bad guys, the heavies and the sleazy insiders who claim to know things. McClymont has been mixing with scum for so long that she no longer knows who is good and who is bad, what is real and what is made up. She has become the journalistic equivalent of a gun moll with glittering associations with the not so well to do.'' To its credit, the management of the Herald continued to grant her prime space for the forensic scrutiny of Obeid and his associates. The Obeids didn't give up. Midway through last year, Eddie Obeid's son Moses tried to hire a private investigator to put McClymont under surveillance. The family was trying desperately to stop the negative publicity. ''The whole thrust of his conversation was: 'Everyone has skeletons in their closet and I want to know what skeletons she's got','' the investigator revealed to the veteran reporter. ''You might have been having an affair, anything like that. Anything they can use to get leverage on you they would use.'' Last year, when McClymont and Besser attempted to interview Obeid snr at his office at Birkenhead Point, they were rebuffed, and received a legal letter shortly afterwards. ''We have been instructed to take appropriate steps to bring those matters to a head and to prevent future harassment of Mr Obeid and the Obeid family by the Herald and its reporters,'' it said. Sadly, successive Labor leaders - with the notable exception of Nathan Rees - chose to side with Obeid. Former premier Bob Carr may have dropped Obeid from the ministry, but ignored the mounting evidence that Obeid Inc was running out of room 1122 of Parliament House. Morris Iemma and Kristina Keneally chose to defer to Obeid's political clout and promoted Macdonald. The consequences of that are now on the record. .