By Mark Davis
‘‘UTEGATE’’ is a complete inversion of Watergate, the Auditor-General has revealed.
In the classic Watergate model of the political scandal there is substantive wrong-doing, a ‘‘deep throat’’ helps uncover the truth and the bigger story often turns out to be the cover-up.
But, in his report on the OzCar affair yesterday, the Auditor-General, Ian McPhee, concludes there is no substantive wrongdoing – and the bigger story turns out to be the concoction of the allegations by the deep throat himself.
Previously, we had only tantalising glimpses of how Treasury official Godwin Grech ensnared Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull with his idee fixe that the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had done favours for the Brisbane car dealer John Grant.
Now much more of the story has been laid out.
By June this year Godwin Grech was a man under pressure.
Since October, he had been working on devising and implementing OzCar, the Government’s plan to help car dealers hit by the financial crisis.
He had been in hospital twice, in February and March, after suffering a small bowel obstruction. He was working up to 85 hours a week, including dealing with politicians’ representations on behalf of car dealers.
In early June he contacted the office of the Opposition industry spokesman Eric Abetz with an apparently explosive tip-off.
A few days later when Treasury officials appeared before estimates on June 4, Senator Abetz asked Mr Grech questions which elicited the information that John Grant Motors had sought assistance from OzCar.
Later that day Mr Grech met the Treasurer’s chief of staff, Chris Barrett, and two other officials from Mr Swan’s office. He says he told Mr Barrett that he had received an email raising the case of John Grant Motors from one of the Prime Minister’s advisers, Andrew Charlton, back in February.
It was the day after this meeting that Mr Grech concocted this email.
Then, at 10.41pm that night, Mr Grech emailed Mr Turnbull from his home email account suggesting the Coalition send the OzCar legislation to a Senate committee so he could give further evidence.
A week later, on Friday June 12, Mr Grech travelled to Sydney to meet Mr Turnbull, Senator Abetz and the senator’s chief of staff Brad Stansfield. To avoid prying eyes they gathered in the office of Mr Turnbull’s wife Lucy at Potts Point. The public servant showed the Liberal politicians the email, but did not allow them to keep copies.
Believing the email was a smoking gun proving that Mr Rudd and Mr Swan had misled Parliament, the Opposition went into overdrive.
At the next week of Parliamentary sittings, they asked Mr Rudd and Mr Swan several questions and voted in the Senate to refer the legislation to a committee.
Mr Turnbull was so confident of his ground that he fronted Dr Charlton at a charity function in Parliament, warning the adviser not to lie for his boss.
Then, on Friday, June 19, came Mr Grech’s sensational testimony to the Senate committee.
He said the case of John Grant Motors had been raised by the Prime Minister’s office, contradicting what Mr Rudd had told Parliament.
By late that evening, the Government was convinced the email was a forgery. The federal police were called in and on Monday, June 22, raided Mr Grech’s house and issued a statement confirming the email was false.
All the pressures on Mr Grech had finally imploded.
The public servant checked himself into hospital for psychiatric assessment and was later diagnosed as suffering chronic clinical depression.
Yet later that evening he was still insisting, in a telephone conversation with Treasury secretary Ken Henry, that the Prime Minister had misled Parliament about Treasury’s efforts to assist another car dealer, Hunter Holden.
Apparently, Mr Grech had deceived even himself.