ActivePaper Archive Corruption reports will shape MPs’ future lives - The West Australian , 6/7/2007

Being cleared in a CCC report tomorrow would boost John D’Orazio’s chances of four more years in Parliament

Corruption reports will shape MPs’ future lives

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Careers in the balance: John D’Orazio, left, and Troy Buswell are sweating on the outcome of separate CCC reports.

Two Corruption and Crime Commission reports due this month will go a long way towards shaping the political futures of dumped former Labor rising star John D’Orazio and tainted Liberal shooting star Troy Buswell.

Mr D’Orazio — whose fall from grace following the Godfather affair almost immediately after he was sworn in as police minister in Alan Carpenter’s first Cabinet early last year was as spectacular as it was swift — will learn his fate tomorrow when the CCC is expected to table its report into the activities of panelbeater and police fantasist, Pasquale Minniti.

Mr Minniti and police officer Arduino Silvestri already face corruption charges stemming from the CCC’s investigations, but Mr D’Orazio is hoping that a clean bill of health from the watchdog on his contact with Mr Minniti will help resurrect both his reputation and political career.

Mr D’Orazio has yet to decide whether he will contest the 2009 State election as an Independent and will wait for tomorrow’s report and then the new boundaries being drawn by the Electoral Commission in response to one vote, one value laws before making a final decision.

But he maintains that his contact with Mr Minniti, who offered to help with his fight against driving without a licence charges, was innocent and is confident his discussions with Mr Minniti at his panelbeating shop will be regarded as neither improper nor unethical.

He has already won an admission from the State Solicitor’s office that his licence suspension orders were never made validly. Mr D’Orazio managed to keep his job as police minister when it was revealed that he failed to pay staff at his pharmacy their proper superannuation and the CCC found no evidence of impropriety in the events surrounding the Godfather affair.

That leaves tomorrow’s report and there’s no doubt he believes a clean sheet from the CCC and favourable numbers from the redistribution will give him a good chance of another four years in Parliament, possibly even as a Labor Party member.

“For me personally it’s important that I’m cleared because I know in my own mind that what happened was totally innocent,” Mr D’Orazio said yesterday. “I’d have to convince my family that it’s worth doing (running again).

“It’s awful when the pressure’s on, the effect on your family, so I’d have to convince them that it’s a good idea to run again . . . (but) I’ve still got unfinished business.”

Despite being turfed out of the ALP last year, Mr D’Orazio maintains strong links to at least three branches in his Ballajura electorate (some say he still controls them) and says he can count on Labor members supporting him if he did decide to run again. “Have I got people who are members of the Labor Party who are close friends of mine? Absolutely,” he said. “And will they help me in elections? Absolutely. “I expect the people who have

been loyal to me for a long time would continue to be loyal to me.”

Asked whether he can see a time when he can rejoin the Labor Party, Mr D’Orazio is circumspect but doesn’t rule it out.

“At this stage I just want to get Friday out of the way and then we’ll worry about what happens thereafter,” he said. “I would have to discuss it with the people in the branches at the grassroots level as to what they want me to do.”

Some of the unfinished business includes the promotion of a west-east railway line along the Tonkin and Reid Highways — a project he says former premier Geoff Gallop refused to let him air publicly — and the abolition of the Legislative Council, which he says is an idea supported by most Lower House MPs.

While Mr D’Orazio has only a day before he learns his fate, Mr Buswell has been on tenterhooks for months as the CCC’s report into the Smiths Beach inquiry refuses to surface.

In Parliament, Mr Carpenter and Treasurer Eric Ripper in particular have not let Mr Buswell forget his ill-judged meeting in the parliamentary carpark with lobbyist and Liberal powerbroker Noel Crichton-Browne on the eve of last year’s leadership contest between eventual winner Paul Omodei and Matt Birney.

While the focus of the conversation was no doubt the leadership challenge and Mr Buswell’s wavering support for Mr Birney, the two strayed into the matter of their respective interviews with CCC officers, a conversation which could yet draw comment in the Smiths Beach report.

The nature of that comment could have far-reaching consequences, not only for Mr Buswell, but for the Liberal Party and Mr Omodei, who although popular with party colleagues is no match for Mr Carpenter in Parliament or on the hustings and continues to return woeful ratings in the polls.

Mr Buswell on the other hand is a sharp performer with a good grasp of policy and economics. The fact that the Government aims most of its fire on the member for Vasse and not his leader is a fair indication that it sees him as a far more dangerous adversary than Mr Omodei.

If Mr Buswell does receive a clean bill of health from the CCC, there are those in Liberal ranks who will begin pushing immediately for his elevation to the top job.

For me personally it’s important that I’m cleared because I know in my own mind that what happened was totally innocent.