''Once Rudd and his hacks sign off on Ford Credit - you and I can change the contract to reflect your preferred fee arrangement and push that through quickly next week. I will not be running it past Henry and co,'' Mr Grech wrote to Mr O'Sullivan at 10.02am on March 19.

At 10.24am, Mr O'Sullivan sent an email to Mr Grech. ''Thanks Godwin. Sounds sensible. I will be here Monday and Tuesday but then away in HK so I will give you a call Monday to see where we got to. many thanks. jos.''

----------------------

I would not be surprised if some smart cookie, loyal to the Labor camp, knew that Godwin Grech was fiddling the loans, leaking information and was madly rightwinging — all illegally of course for a "public servant"... So the smart cookie threw him a furphy, Grech took the bait and flushed himself out... Now all the other participants who benefited from Grech's deceit should be put in the klink, Malcolm included....

From the ABC

The close links between the former Treasury official at the heart of the OzCar affair, Godwin Grech, and members of the Liberal Party have been laid bare in a Senate report.

It is the latest trouble in what has been a very troubled week for Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull.

And a long week is getting longer for the Senate - it will sit for the rest of this week and early next week to debate the emissions trading scheme.

Mr Turnbull has survived a push to spill his leadership but some MPs say it is only the start of a campaign to oust him.

Just to cap off his troubles, the OzCar affair has resurfaced now a Senate privileges committee has found Godwin Grech misled a Senate inquiry into the OzCar financing scheme.

G'day Gus,

It further destroys my faith in the principle of right and wrong to hear that Godwin Grech and Senator Abetz were cleared of acting in contempt of the Senate!

As far as I can remember it happened like this.  For a long time a Labor Government employee (Godwin Grech) was communicating (advising) with the Leader of the Opposition the culmination of which the said Government employee produced an E-mail to the Opposition Leader and his Senate “attack dog” Abetz.

Godwin Grech should have been immediately sacked and his credibility forever blackened as it should be with any other trusted Government official.  Fancy him being in our Treasury!  Perhaps it would be advisable to check his bank balance?  Fair dinkum.

He then turned up at the Abetz organized “Senate Committee Meeting” (where they had the majority) for the Senator to perform like the slimy grub he is and act out the planned disgraceful, un-authenticated and fabricated attack on the integrity of the Australian Prime Minister and the Australian Treasurer.  Am I too emotional Gus?

“Senator” Abetz continued to question Mr. Grech exactly as previously planned and Mr. Grech lied accordingly.

Mr. Grech's LIED to the majority Coalition Party Senate (which if successful could have brought down the elected Federal Government) and if that is not treating it with contempt, what is?

Mr. Turnbull in the background was just as guilty as “Senator” Abetz in the planning of this disgrace and at least deserved a censure motion in the House of Representatives.

It has been acknowledged that “Senator” Abetz and Mr. Grech have both misled the Senate but – they were CLEARED of the more serious crime of treating the rabble Senate with CONTEMPT.

IF Grech is ever allowed to hold any position of trust in any Australian Government, of any persuasion or level, then this fiasco will make us a deserved laughing stock in the western world.  

From now on until we have an opportunity to change that Senate, the entire country should also hold them in contempt. 

The much hated political attitude of “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” is still prevalent even though Howard is gone.

Cheers Gus.

God Bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE.

from Crikey .....

Canberra correspondent Bernard Keane writes:

With the shenanigans of this week, and the demise of Malcolm Turnbull, last week's Senate privileges committee report into the Godwin Grech business has dropped off the radar. It shouldn't be permitted to.

The report is a remarkable document in a number of ways, few of them positive for the committee or for the Senate.

The committee criticised Ken Henry, not for anything to do with the subject at hand (and in fact they gave the tick to the conduct of Treasury's David Martine, criticised for allegedly trying to stop Grech from answering questions), but because he had the flaming hide to send his submission to the committee about Treasury's handling of Grech to the office of his Minister, Wayne Swan, and the Prime Minister.

It is standard procedure for departmental submissions to Senate committees to be cleared by their ministers, or even the Prime Minister's office if the issue is high-profile enough. The Senate's own rules in fact say that submissions "should be cleared" by ministers.

Because the submission related to his department's actions regarding Grech, rather than government policy, Henry didn't clear his submission, he merely provided it to the Treasurer's and Prime Minister's offices for their information. He later noted that the Treasurer, PM and their staff members were all discussed in the Treasury submission. The clear implication is that it would have been inappropriate for Henry NOT to have told the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and their officials what he had said about them.

Being sensitive to the Senate's prickliness about such matters, however, Swan's and Rudd's offices sent the submission back and told the committee.

The committee jacked up and criticised Henry, saying the only way he hadn't avoided contempt of the Senate was because Swan and Rudd's offices had returned the submission. In its report, the committee piously declared that for "this kind of inquiry", public servants "should not regard themselves merely as an extension of the relevant minister's office (let alone the Prime Minister's office), and therefore free to share all relevant information about the inquiry, including submissions, with that entity".

It may seem trivial, but it shows the Senate at its pompous best. At the core of the complaint is the idea that a public servant might have a separate relationship with Parliament than via the Executive.

Governments are elected. Public servants work for them. The Senate, which is not even elected on a one-vote, one-value democratic basis, has no business trying to have a separate relationship with public servants. In fact the Senate's own guidelines for witnesses take that approach. Indeed, heads of agencies and other very senior offices need to consider carefully whether, in particular cases, it is possible for them to claim to appear in a "personal" rather than an "official" capacity, particularly if they are likely to be asked to comment on matters which fall within or impinge on their area of responsibility.

Anyway, such issues are likely to only be of interest to Canberra obsessives.

But the committee wasn't finished. It proceeded to attack the Australian Federal Police.

Their sin? They had provided the committee with a submission and attachments, and then spoken to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, the Minister for Home Affairs and the Treasury about whether the material should be kept confidential, out of concern that its publication by the committee might jeopardise future prosecutions.

The committee disliked that, too, and criticised the AFP, and also criticised Ken Henry again because Treasury, when consulted by the AFP, had shown the AFP advice it obtained from the Australian Government Solicitor saying Henry had not been in contempt in the first place.

One, perhaps unfair, interpretation of all that is that, as far as the Senate is concerned, its dignity is more important than even the risk of jeopardising criminal prosecutions.

Now, all that is a kind of context to something else the committee did, or rather didn't do.

Part of what Ken Henry gave the committee was a huge pile of emails from Godwin Grech's Treasury email account. We ran selected highlights last week.

The emails are highly unflattering to Grech, the coalition, and a number of Liberal-linked luminaries such as Credit Suisse's John O'Sullivan.

Under normal circumstances, that material would have been published online, like all submissions to Senate inquiries are unless they are determined to be confidential. But when the committee published its report last week, the Treasury material wasn't available online. You had to get a hard copy from Parliament House to see what Godwin had been saying about Malcolm and Eric.

The committee had agreed that many of the emails needed to censored to protect privacy. That was done. But a clue as to why the Committee didn't make the material available online can be found right at the end of the body of the report.

The committee was unable to agree on the publication of the documents submitted by the Treasury Department on 18 August 2009. Government members of the committee who comprise the majority of the committee agreed to the publication of most of those documents in whole or in part, while opposition members of the committee disagreed with the publication of a significant number of those documents on the basis that their provision was gratuitous and unnecessary to the findings of the committee. As those documents were not created for the purpose of submission to the committee, its majority decision does not affect any other use or publication of the documents by their owners.

The committee chair, and report author, is Liberal Senator George Brandis. Plainly, Opposition senators didn't like anyone seeing what really happened behind the scenes with Grech, and the extent to which the man was clearly acting utterly inappropriately in full view of senior Liberals.

And in its conclusions, the committee couldn't see its way clear to actually finding Grech had been in contempt of the Senate.

Although evidence was given to the Economics Legislation Committee by Mr Grech that was objectively false and misleading, and although the committee was also misled by references to an email later revealed to have been fabricated by Mr Grech, this committee has not been able to make findings about Mr Grech's state of mind at the time he took those actions. A finding of contempt by misleading a Senate committee depends upon the existence of a subjective intention to do so.

Grech declined to appear before the committee on health grounds -- his mental and physical health problems are well-known -- and accordingly the committee felt it couldn't determine his state of mind, despite clear evidence that he had misled the Senate.

Bear that in mind if you ever find yourself in the position of having misled the Senate.

And it found no cause to question the conduct of Eric Abetz, who was gulled into orchestrating this entire affair using the resources of the Senate.

A strange position from which to criticise the behaviour of public servants just trying to do their jobs.