But ICAC certainly didn’t need a taxpayer-funded public inquiry, estimated to

have cost more than $30m, to test the allegations, relating to the period

leading up to last September’s council elections.

It could have simply visited the NSW Electoral Funding Authority’s website,

which clearly states the accused councillors had nearly three months to declare

any electoral funding or advertising in the lead up to the 2012 elections.

For several months now, the EFA has prominently displayed on its home page,

under the heading “Local Government Elections 2012” a blurb which advises

councillors, mayors and their official agents that “Disclosures must be

completed and lodged by no later than 23 September 2013.”

Not unexpectedly, on the day before ICAC issued its problematic public

statement, The Sydney Morning Herald’s Heath Aston kicked off a three-day

campaign based on selective leaks of confidential, supposedly-secret

information, from the ICAC.

His efforts included a smattering of ICAC’s specialty – rumour, smear, innuendo

and largely-baseless, concocted stories conveniently aligning with ICAC’s

fanciful interpretation - including the factually-incorrect, bungled claims the

Commission had made on the subject of political donations.

SMH, Thursday July 11, 2013

The lead paragraph in Aston’s “exclusive” first instalment speaks volumes

about the substance of the ensuing paragraphs. Cr Salvestro-Martin had been

“ordered to front” an ICAC inquiry “into allegations of bribery and misconduct

at Ryde Council,” it trumpeted.

By that time, it had been known for at least a month that the six ‘good guy’

councillors were being put through the ICAC mixer by virtue of ICAC’s first

public statement.

A good journalist would have also known that separate to its public inquiry,

ICAC conducted private examinations of witnesses it intended to call in the

months prior to announcing its public inquiry.

Eager to please his ICAC deepthroat, Aston delivered three prominently-

positioned stories in the Sydney broadsheet.

By assessing ICAC’s bungled information to be newsworthy and including it in

his third and final effort, Aston failed to carry out some very basic fact-

checking and also failed to get a comment from Cr Salvestro-Martin on the

specific allegations ICAC was making against him.

Instead, Aston ran some comments earlier obtained from Salvestro-Martin to

provide the illusion his story was appropriately balanced.

In a statement issued by Cr Salvestro-Martin prior to the decision by Labor’s

national executive to dump him, he notes that Aston had not disclosed to him

or allowed him to comment on the allegations ultimately published.

Aston’s prominently-placed stories elevated ICAC’s ill-considered dispatch to

national news status.

Within a few days, the ALP’s national secretary George Wright had attributed

the party’s decision to dump Cr Salvestro-Martin on Aston’s erroneous report.

As if ICAC’s foolhardy efforts to influence the national news agenda with an

inexcusable error weren’t hard enough to stomach, a dirt file, featuring ICAC’s

bungled claims, appeared on former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s desk.

Was ICAC colluding in some way with destructive elements within the Labor

Party? There’s strong circumstantial evidence to suggest this.

One of Cr Salvestro-Martin’s political rivals from within the ALP made a point

of attending ICAC’s public hearings on Ryde and was even spotted on several

occasions infiltrating ICAC’s media room to plant her evil spin on deliberations.

Just days before, Rudd announced his party reforms, including zero tolerance

policy to those within the party accused of corruption.

Apparently this stance was in response to damaging revelations involving key

Labor figures in ICAC’s ongoing Mt Penny mining licence inquiry.

It didn’t matter that Cr Salvestro-Martin knew, as

did senior NSW ALP figures, that he and fellow

councillors were to be dragged in front of ICAC

as part of a political witch-hunt.

His political opponents on Ryde council had a

number of reasons for wanting to go down the

ICAC path.

It was an act of retribution targeting the six ‘good guy’ councillors who

sided with the community to oppose a disastrous $1bn civic precinct

development that was to deliver ratepayers a raw deal.

They also ensured ICAC’s Ryde inquiries were timed to provide

maximum disadvantage to any Labor candidate who dared to challenge

Bennelong’s Liberal incumbent, John Alexander.

Last but not least, this was a crucial part of their relentless campaign

with the Ryde civic precinct redevelopment, one which they hoped

would lead to the council being dismissed and the project revived.

ICAC in its opening address of the Ryde inquiry stressed that it was not looking

into the merit or otherwise of the Ryde civic precinct redevelopment and its

inquiries had nothing to do with it.

Those familiar with the Ryde ICAC inquiry, however, would argue it is

COMPLETELY about the Civic precinct plan and payback to those who blocked

it, through abuse of process.

Cr Salvestro-Martin was one of the six councillors who sided with the

community to strongly oppose the proposed civic precinct redevelopment

which cost ratepayers nearly $5m despite never getting off the ground.

He also strongly campaigned for an overhaul of Ryde Council’s procurement

processes after identifying a number of vulnerabilities and his subsequent

focus on the accountability of senior staff.

It’s understood, Cr Salvestro-Martin also identified several matters of serious,

indictable and documented corruption all of which were referred to ICAC –

but ICAC CHOSE NOT TO INVESTIGATE THEM.

Those matters involve the group of people to which ICAC has chosen to extend

‘whistleblower’ protections.

Cr Salvestro-Martin was afforded the same whistleblower protections as

former Ryde GM John Neish, but curiously had those protections stripped

away, just days before the start of the public inquiry based on a bungled

allegation.

ICAC chose to strike just before Cr Salvestro-Martin left for some rare time

with his family on holiday somewhere outside mobile phone range.

ICAC wanted him to attend its offices later that week to answer questions

about “fresh matters” which it turned out were substantially without

foundation and included the bungled claims by ICAC.

For the most part, Cr Salvestro-Martin was out of contact and oblivious to the

first two SMH stories that went to print and the Machiavellian backstory being

played out in relation to his candidacy.

In fact, as expected, given the clear premeditated nature of political attacks on

Cr Salvestro-Martin at the time, most of the ICAC information provided to

Aston in advance for his articles seemed bespoke creations to underpin their

goal – to take him out.

The allegations gained little traction or interest during the public hearing and

in a court of law with proper rules of evidence and the kind of due process and

rigour expected of the legal system, these kinds of claims would stand

absolutely no chance.

And in a properly resourced media organisation, which the SMH once was, the

idea of a journalist getting a guernsey with three stories of the type served up

by Aston, would also have stood no chance.

Unsurprisingly, ICAC’s latest statement, midway through the public inquiry,

included none of the allegations used against Salvestro-Martin before hearings

kicked-off.

In stark contrast to Cr Salvestro-Martin’s disgraceful treatment by political

opponents as well as “the enemy within”, former Ryde GM Neish has had a

smooth run with the help of close Liberal right wing allies.

Neish, who was on a $360k pa salary at Ryde, used a council laptop to access

porn and it was apparently the malware that came with the downloading of

that porn that brought him undone.

ICAC has repeatedly taken a dim view of public servants accessing porn with

the slogan “No excuse for misuse”.

But in the Ryde inquiry, ICAC wheeled Neish in to give evidence on day one of

the inquiry and resisted efforts to cross examine him.

Remarkably, ICAC has portrayed Neish as the victim of a campaign to discredit

him through the porn discovery and force his departure.

The reality is that there has been no suggestion by Neish that he had been set

up and he had taken steps months earlier when he could see his appeal with

councillors was dangerously waning, to protect himself as a “whistleblower”.

He did this by referring to ICAC an email of hearsay allegations contained in an

email sent by a political ally with a vested interest in the civic precinct

redevelopment.

That email was sent just two days after he was notified of an extraordinary

meeting to terminate him on July 23, 2012.

And that’s what happened, but the decision by council was subject to a

rescission motion which was never dealt with in the chaotic lead-up to the

September 8 council elections.

The decision by ICAC to investigate Neish’s referral and to protect is the

genesis of the ICAC Ryde inquiry and requires urgent scrutiny by an

independent body, outside the reach of the NSW Liberal Governments senior

leaders.

Ryde Council’s in-house counsel found the legal mechanism to allow his

referral to ICAC, which singled out Neish’s fiercest political opponents on

council, be publicised before the elections.

It was no surprise that a news report emerged midway through the council

election campaign, that unauthorised election pamphlets had been distributed

in the dead of the night featuring ICAC smears on two candidates.

Considerable sums of ratepayer money (est >$300k) were spent on NSW

Supreme Court injunctive relief to enforce Neish’s protected whistleblower

status –the first time this has ever happened.

In short, he didn’t have to go anywhere until ICAC said so.

But with his ICAC protections representing a considerable bargaining

advantage, he walked away with 38 weeks of his salary (approx $285k).

Neish also negotiated deed of release – the legal name for an agreement by

two parties to lie about preceding events.

In total, Neish received nearly $500,000 of ratepayer funds in the seven

months he remained in his role as a protected whistleblower and then his

massive payout, after being caught downloading porn.

You would have to wonder how many other employees could enjoy that sort

of windfall in similar circumstances.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that while Aston was way off the mark with his

reporting on the ICAC Ryde inquiry, he should have known all along who was

pulling the strings in this ICAC inquiry and the events surrounding it.

Ryde councillor, Bill Pickering, who serves in the dual role of paid, right wing

Liberal-aligned political lobbyist as founder of Hugo Halliday Marketing and

Public Relations Pty Ltd is – along with Neish - among a handful of officials that

had aggressively pushed for Ryde’s civic precinct redevelopment. He employs

NSW Attorney General Greg Smith’s son Nathaniel, also a lobbyist holding a

dual role of councillor, at Kogarah.