Ministers holding portfolios in the New South Wales parliament must be holding their breath and awaiting the outcome of the latest bombshell to emerge from the mess that is the ICAC anti corruption body. A High Court ruling on the Margaret Cunneen fiasco has ever widening ripples and it seems that Michael Gallagher is about to have charges hanging over his head dissipated.
Gallagher was Police minister when ICAC accused him of of being part of an illegal donations scandal. He denied this accusation, but relinquished his role as Police minister and in 2014 resigned from the Liberal party and has since sat on the cross bench. ICAC has revealed that it will be unable to present any actual evidence of wrongdoing and the charges will not proceed.
Michael Gallaghers's fate is now in the hands of Premier Mike Baird and justice demands that this wrong against him be righted - and that he return to a ministerial position. Of course, for that to happen someone has to move sideways to make a vacancy happen, and in many ways the state cabinet is now playing a game of "Musical chairs "!
What riles many people in New South Wales is the inertia in settling accounts with ICAC. Exactly the same people are in positions of power and this power has been clearly abused and misused to run vendettas and distort the notion of justice. As a concept, ICAC has clearly failed and needs to be legislated out of existence to make way for a new body more carefully constructed with checks and balances to avoid the same mistakes.
Sadly, the sins of ICAC are also reflected in the lack of finality within the police structure where the misuse of power resulted in over a hundred senior police suffering harassment by having their homes and offices bugged and being subjected to false accusations. In the public mind, it seems that retribution is powerless at the highest levels because both a public enquiry and the role of the Ombudsman proceeded for over a decade - and ended in a whimper with no clear result. It seems that this disaster has been filed away somewhere in the depths of the bureaucracy - to never again see the light of day.
The successful sale of components of our electricity industry has released a torrent of money that will see a vast improvement in the road system and new rail and light rail additions to the public transport system. The years ahead will be exciting and we will probably experience a surge in job growth as a result, but lingering in the background will be the ghosts of the justice system, rattling their chains and throwing a shadow that false accusations are still possible to ruin productive lives.
Both the ICAC disaster and that Police imbroglio are deeply mired in the competing depths of politics and taking the necessary action would disturb the status quo and cause ripples in unexpected places. Unfortunately, if left unattended it has the capacity to reappear on a regular basis. If we want this state to progress with investment that brings prosperity we need to make the wheels of justice squeaky clean. That has yet to happen !
It seems that the public are good at reading vibes and there is an expectation that the era of cheap money is about to end. The trickle of home owners locking in their mortgages to a fixed interest rate rose from just 13% in the five months to June and reached 38% in the period to November. If that continues, there is every chance that it will become self fulfilling !
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