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March 26th, 2013 
Peter Nolan Updated: 21:33, Tuesday March 26, 2013
Former NSW mining minister Ian Macdonald was the subject of a ‘chorus of complaints’ from senior government figures and earned some disparaging nicknames, a corruption inquiry has heard.
In testimony before the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) on Tuesday, Labor MP Luke Foley said Mr Macdonald was nominally a member of the Labor Left faction.
But he was nicknamed Eddie Obeid’s ‘left testicle’ by colleagues who believed his loyalty had switched to the party’s right faction, Mr Foley said.
Mr Macdonald was also dubbed ‘Della’s pet crocodile’, a reference to retired MP John Della Bosca.
‘Mr Macdonald was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eddie Obeid,’ Mr Foley said.
The ICAC is probing a coal exploration licence granted by Mr Macdonald in 2008 to a group of entrepreneurs, including ex-CFMEU boss John Maitland, for a tenement in the Hunter Valley known as Doyles Creek.
The commission’s Operation Acacia hearings this week follow months of testimony involving Mr Macdonald and fellow former Labor minister Mr Obeid.
Mr Foley said that by 2006 he had received a ‘chorus of complaints’ about Mr Macdonald from senior figures in the NSW Labor parliament.
‘I had formed that view that Mr Macdonald had abandoned Labor principles, had lost his moral compass and was not deserving of continued Labor preselection for the parliament,’ Mr Foley said.
‘He disagreed with my assessment.’
Mr Foley, then a NSW Labor assistant secretary, arranged a lunch at the Noble House Chinese restaurant in February that year with Mr Macdonald, along with Labor and union heavyweights George Campbell, federal MP Anthony Albanese, Senator Doug Cameron and AMWU official Paul Bastian.
It was at that lunch that Mr Macdonald claimed to have the support of the miners’ union, the CFMEU, in a bid to retain his preselection.
Mr Foley said Mr Maitland and others at the CFMEU ‘made it known’ the union stood firmly behind Mr Macdonald’s preselection.
Mr Maitland’s counsel Jeremy Kirk said on Tuesday: ‘Mr Maitland can recall no such conversation and no such support.’
Mr Foley told reporters outside the commission that he did not regret trying to stop Mr Macdonald from being re-elected, and later, from being kept on as a minister in Nathan Rees’s government.
‘In 2006, I sought to strip Ian Macdonald of his preselection because I felt he had abandoned Labor principles and he’d lost his moral compass,’ he said.
‘In 2009 I urged premier Nathan Rees to sack Ian Macdonald from his cabinet and I’m very glad he did so.’
Mr Rees told the inquiry earlier it was inappropriate for a minister to be ‘wined and dined’ by stakeholders who had interests that fell under his or her portfolio.
The inquiry has heard the Doyles Creek licence was worth as much as $100 million in fees to the state.
But when the licence for the site was granted, Mr Rees was under the impression it was of ‘limited geological significance’.
Speaking outside the commission, Mr Rees said the alleged misdeeds of Mr Macdonald and Mr Obeid were ‘deeply disappointing’ for the party’s politicians and members.
‘These allegations, if proven, are a stain on public administration in NSW,’ he told reporters.
Source Article from http://rss.skynews.com.au/c/34485/f/628636/s/29ffddc0/l/0L0Sskynews0N0Bau0Ctopstories0Carticle0Baspx0Did0F8579880GvId0F/story01.htm
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