Brimbank Labor's oldest platform
News that former City of Brimbank mayor Charlie Apap has been convicted for indecent assault puts the spotlight once again on some of the more unsavoury history of the ALP in Melbourne's western suburbs, as a number of press reports show.
Labor Party identity Apap, 70 is known locally as a rent collector. He was found guilty in the Sunshine magistrate's court of putting his hand down the back of a 20 year old mother's jeans and underwear while collecting her rent.
Adding insult to injury, as the Leader reports "The landlord made a subsequent application for lost rent money due to the tenant giving insufficient notice before vacating the premises".
Apap is no stranger to the court, having previously been involved in a dispute over unpaid printing bills for Labor candidates at a Brimbank council election. At the last election five councillors did not declare any contributions to their electoral campaigns.
One of the councillors, Ken Capar, subsequently got into hot water at a New Zealand conference while on a council-funded junket for the Keilor Cemetery Trust. According to reports Capar remained drunk for the full three days of the conference, and was unfortunate enough on his return to wake up and see the headline "I was drunk" plastered on the front pages.
According to the local Star newspaper two women reported alleged sexual advances by Cr Capar. The story continues
"Cr Capar admitted being intoxicated on Thursday 10 October during the last day of the conference but in a letter to the Keilor Cemetery Trust he objected to allegations which included making inappropriate sexual advances to female and male delegates."
To cap it off hotel security staff later found him in possession of certain items that had been reported missing by other delegates.
Sexual harassment and theft by a councillor would not normally be rewarded. Capar resigned from the Cemetery Trust in disgrace but remains a sitting Brimbank councillor, no doubt grateful for the complexities of trans-Tasman litigation.
Chairwoman of the Trust at the time was Brimbank's Deputy Mayor Kathryn Eriksson, forced to endure the full three days of Capar's ratepayer-funded extravagance. With talk of police charges however she defended her colleague and in doing so submitted herself to public humiliation, saying
"It's a disgrace that we (the trust and council) can't communicate between ourselves. To have people turn around and say that we're going on junkets just because of one person behaved inappropriately, I find it really sad."
Indeed it is. Even more sadly Deputy Mayor Eriksson is also known as the wife of former Labor Minister Andrew Theophanous who became the first sitting member of parliament to be gaoled for bribery, conspiracy to defraud the Commonwealth and corruption.
Evidence submitted at his trial alleged that in rorting the immigration system he wasn't just seeking money, but also sexual gratification. An NCA tape recording has him saying "Maybe next week or towards the end of the week we might have a meeting, you know, see if I like her."
Channel 9's Sunday program quotes Theophanous from the secret recordings soliciting sexual favours. "…and she is prepared to have some times with me but keep her mouth shut completely then we will do it for $100 for a year." [A discount from the standard illegal fee he was asking for from clients].
Theophanous is still seen at Brimbank Council meetings, where he occasionally bumps into his close factional ally Hakki Suleyman. Suleyman is father of Brimbank councillor Natalie Suleyman; he runs the local migrant resource centre and in his spare time works as electoral officer for Planning Minister Justin Madden.
Suleyman was the subject of a formal complaint to the council in 2005, describing his behaviour toward a woman at a council meeting as "angry, rude, confrontational and abusive" to the point where she had to ask the CEO for protection and to be escorted to her car.
A number of metropolitan papers report an alleged assault by Suleyman on a woman handing out leaflets in the street. According to the Age
"He was pulling me and I was shaking back and forth at the force. I just saw his face and I thought, 'He's going to hit me'. I then started to panic and I screamed at the top of my voice, 'You leave me alone.' And he backed off."
The Herald Sun report of the incident mentions welts and cuts left by Suleyman on the victim's arm while "A day later, his son Mehmet Suleyman, who worked for former police minister Andre Haermeyer, allegedly attacked a young man with a screwdriver -- an incident police are now investigating." The report also mentions a fist fight between the younger Suleyman and Brimbank councillor Sam Tabban, but that's another story. Stay tuned for that one.
The press reports taken together paint the ALP in the west as a party of misfits and sexual predators using intimidation in the exercise of their power: the power of the rent collector over the young tenant, the power of the drunken councillor, the power to grant or deny a visa, and the power of sheer physical force.
Suleyman daughter Natalie shares with Charlie Apap the dubious distinction of being a former mayor of Brimbank council. Along with her current duties as councillor, she works as electoral officer for the now-discredited former Police Minister and MP Andre Haermeyer. For a time she worked alongside convicted criminal Craig Otte in the same office.
Haermeyer came to prominence again more recently when the Herald Sun reported police sources alleging he tried to influence the outcome of a rape investigation by using his influence over "top cop" Noel Ashby.
Ashby for his part said it was appropriate to keep Mr Haermeyer "informed" because Mr Haermeyer had a professional relationship with the woman. Perhaps you can work that one out.
The story makes allegations about the role of the Victorian ombudsman in the case and concludes by stating the obvious - there is no crime and corruption commission in Victoria capable of investigating the misdeeds of our elected representatives.
And don't they know it.
Justin Madden was elected to the Victorian upper house in 1999, having been adopted as a "celebrity candidate" (a famous AFL footballer) by a Labor Party racked with branch stacking and internal division.
The history of ALP celebrity candidates is not a pretty one. There is deep suspicion and resentment within the party that such Johnny-come-latelies are ushered into influential positions ahead of the long serving hacks who for years before them have dutifully stood in line.
The sad fact is that like Peter Garrett, these candidates are either quick to sell out their celebrity and trash whatever reputations they may once have had, or like Mary Delahuntly face constant white anting and be seen as hopeless no-hopers.
On election The Honorable Justin M. Madden was immediately made Minister for Sport and Recreation - naturally - and is now the Minister for Planning. It is in this second capacity that he has gained most notoriety, having notched up some remarkable achievements in a relatively short space of time:
- he presided over the failure of Melbourne 2030, a long term planning policy designed to stop the spread of the city's boundaries.
- he approved the destruction of Melbourne's "green wedges" (also known as Melbourne's lungs) by opening up large tracts of land to those described as Labor's "developer mates".
- he condoned significant corruption in his own electoral office that effectively ran the Brimbank Council first into disrepute, and then to failure.
- he introduced new laws stripping local councils of their planning powers and making himself the supreme arbiter of local planning decisions.
Planning and corruption is a potent and perennial mix, and it is instructive to view a 21st Century incarnation of this age-old problem at work with Justin Madden.
The Melbourne 2030 policy was, on the face of it, a very good idea. Common sense tells us a city's boundaries can't keep expanding indefinitely, bearing in mind the attendant costs of infrastructure and inevitable destruction of the environment this entails.
But under Labor the policy became a means of diverting funds from it's notorious "developer mates" into the Party's re-election coffers. It manifested in a host of shoddy and apparently corrupt planning outcomes, universally condemned by local government and the public alike. In the face of formidable public opposition, just one day after the local government elections in Novembner 2008, the policy was finally scrapped as unworkable.
The attendant cost was a significant destruction of Melbourne's green wedges - for the third time in this government's term - strategic land tracts set aside in a long-term planning policy from 1971 designed to keep the city "livable". Madden will commandeer 51,000 hectares of open space for low density housing, in what Federal MP Kelvin Thomson has likened to "a fat man loosening his belt rather than dieting." It is widely accepted this will irreversibly lower the city's standard of living and create outlying areas without public transport, infrastructure or essential services: in other words, modern day ghettos.
Naturally those speculators "in the know" have had a field day. Property developers even successfully lobbied Madden to alter the route of a planned 8-lane ring road. This would avoid a route through the speculators' own holdings, but at the cost of destroying significant native grasslands further west. Maddens public reasoning for the change was "we now know the grasslands are not as prolific in this area as originally thought".
In the face of public disbelief, Madden resorted to the tried and true - hubris. "I don't believe we will need to make an adjustment in the urban-growth boundary, beyond this one, in my lifetime" he said, and you could hear howls of laughter all the way from Melton down to Hastings.
It was over his central role in the Brimbank Council corruption scandal that Madden was condemned by a vote of no confidence in parliament, the first passed in Victoria for 20 years. A scathing Ombudsman's report had found widespread political corruption entrenched within the rogue council, corruption linking state politicians and unelected party officials to an orgy of ratepayer-funded rorts and party self interest. This was found to be substantially organised and engineered from within Madden's own electoral office.
The Minister's response to accusations was to once again resort to hubris. "I want to state from the very outset that I am absolutely appalled by the findings of the ombudsman's report," he told an incredulous parliament, finishing with "I will continue to concentrate on the important job that I have as the planning minister, and that is to ensure that Melbourne can remain one of the world's most liveable cities. Nothing will deter me from the vital task that I have."
At this same time he ventured a desire to one day become leader of the state, leaving Premier Brumby uncharacteristically speechless.
Faced with failure upon corruptly-engineered failure, there was nothing for it but for Madden to get his hands even dirtier. New laws governing public housing have now made him the final arbiter of local planning outcomes. This has opened the door to a new form of corruption that would not only put Federal Stimulus money "no questions asked" into developers' hands (and hence into Victorian Labor coffers) but in doing so would prey upon the disadvantaged and provide intolerable circumstances for those who are least able to withstand it.
Resulting from the laws, Victoria is now primed to receive a spate of substandard public housing designed to entrench disadvantage in those communities already under resourced. On the agenda, for example, is a gated public housing development in Sunshine that is attached to licensed gambling premises. Designed to cater for victims of domestic violence and ex-prisoners (i.e. those most at risk of alcohol and gambling related problems), it is situated where there are no corresponding support services. More than 30 units are plied into the space of 6 suburban housing blocks, and this is just the tip of the public housing iceberg Victoria is headed for.
The list of Madden's planning failures goes on. His decisions established a glut of so-called "booze barns" in the city - drinking venues that can seat literally thousands of people at a time. These are widely considered responsible for the huge surge in bloody alcohol-fuelled violence that has afflicted the city streets in recent years, demanding a highly increased police presence and other interventions. Now amid the growing controversy it turns out that the last booze barn to be approved was done so by his department - according to Madden - without his knowledge!
Taking all of this into account, it is hard not to draw a picture of the man as an incompetent and brazenly corrupt politician with a penchant for hubris when all else fails.
Fortunately, we can be glad that every grey cloud has a silver lining. When all is said and done, Justin Madden will rest in the knowledge that he has done more than most to bring about the early demise of the Brumby State Labor government. Bring it on Minister, bring it on.
