Andrew R will no doubt have his opportunity now

No one can replace Peter Costello. No one? OKAY – no one except Michael Kroger who has absolutely no reason for seeking a seat in parliament.

Joe, JA will be a very good replacement for Cossie. Whilst not as good as Cossie, he will be a far better MP than the alternative, J-Rat.

Mr NARDELLA (Melton) — Today I grieve for the Liberal Party. On 11 May this year the Leader of the Opposition identified a cancerous cell within his own party, which has been actively working to undermine the party leader and a handful of Liberal moderates around him. Today I want to detail to the Parliament how that cancerous cell within the party has not been dealt with but has just shifted and continues to actively work to undermine its leader in this place.

On 12 May this year the Herald Sun reported the Leader of the Opposition as having said:
‘Their activities are a disgrace’ …
‘They’re at odds with everything that the Liberal Party stands for, but I don’t believe they acted alone’.
‘(They are) a narrow, but deep-seated cell of people who are destroying this party’ …
‘It is time to clean house. We have some cancerous elements … and they are destroying the Liberal Party’.

Apparently Tony Nutt and Dr Kemp were brought in to excise this cancerous cell from the Liberal Party’s Victorian division. Victorians were told that the problem had been fixed and that the disastrous blog affair that we saw in Julian Sheezel’s period as state director was a one-off incident with no broader cultural problems in the Liberal Party. Sadly, however, it is my duty to report to the house that this is not the case.

Worse still, it is now clear that these problems are spreading from 104 Exhibition Street to the heart of the Victorian division, the federal electoral division of Higgins.

Cultural problems within organisations such as this grow from just a few bad apples but spread aggressively. That is the case here. Ground zero is immediate past state director, Julian Sheezel. Mr Sheezel inherited his propensities from his long-time mentor and ally, disgraced former Queensland senator Santo Santoro. Mr Sheezel’s political mentor is Santo Santoro, and that is how this endemic cultural problem was released into the Victorian division of the Liberal Party. Mr Sheezel and Mr Santoro — the Brian Burke of the Liberal Party — were often sighted having long lunches in a certain club on Collins Street during Mr Sheezel’s tenure as state director.

Mr Santoro had to resign from the Howard federal ministry and the Senate in disgrace after it was discovered that he had made a series of investments in aged-care companies which he was in charge of regulating in the aged-care portfolio. You would think that this sanction would have been enough for Mr Santoro to realise that these links were now toxic and that he had done enough to damage the good reputations of these companies. However, in his bid to take over Higgins, Julian Sheezel invited Santo Santoro to be his special guest at the latest Higgins 200 Club budget breakfast on 16 May 2008, and the disgraced former aged-care minister bullied a series of managers from the aged-care profession into purchasing seats at this breakfast — companies from the very same industry he was caught red-handed improperly investing in. That the once-powerful Higgins 200 Club, chaired by Peter Bartels, should be brought to such lows is very sad.

While it was useful and amusing for those of us on this side of the chamber to be constantly in receipt of leaked documents and other information from Mr Sheezel over the years, his antics reached extraordinary lows. Many Liberal Party members have surely been wondering what Mr Sheezel achieved as state director other than banking a $1 million plus contract package, losing a few elections, wimping out on a few by-elections and racking up lunch bills on the party’s tab, as I said, in a nice club at the end of Collins Street. The one bright spot in the lacklustre Liberal campaign at the last state election was Clem Newton-Brown and his innovative, groundbreaking campaign methods. Why Mr Sheezel pulled resources from that outstanding campaign in Prahran is a mystery to Labor. It was almost as though somebody at 104 Exhibition Street was attempting to ensure that the Leader of the Opposition did not do too well.

Then there was the blogging scandal which occurred under Mr Sheezel’s watch.

During the blogging scandal a shameful, anti-Semitic email from Susan Chandler emerged. Julian Sheezel advised the media that Ms Chandler had resigned and that had she not resigned, she would have been fired. Sadly I am forced to reveal that this was a blatant and cynical lie. A major Liberal Party supplier under Mr Sheezel was DPA Document Printing Australia Pty Ltd. It received the lucrative contract to print how-to-vote cards in the last federal election and the Kororoit by-election of a couple of months ago.

Immediately on leaving the Liberal Party, Ms Chandler was employed by the company. How it happened and on what basis has now become a matter of open gossip within the Liberal Party. It has been alleged by certain Liberals that Ms Chandler was immediately re-employed by Mr Sheezel through an artificial mechanism. It is alleged that Mr Sheezel organised for DPA Document Printing Australia to place

Ms Chandler on its books and to covertly invoice the Liberal Party for the cost of her wages while continuing to work at the day-to-day direction of the Liberal Party, including right through the recently held Gippsland by-election to this very day. Should this allegation be true, it is a gross insult to Liberal Party members, Victorians and, most importantly, members of Australia’s Jewish community, all of whom have been lied to.

Today it is also my sad duty to inform the chamber of a new anonymous blogging scandal apparently linked to Mr Sheezel. I raise the anonymous blog http://www.fightfirewithfire.blogspot.com. This blog contains a number of fresh attacks on the Leader of the Opposition. An entry on 4 February says it is ‘Time for Ted to show some real leadership’ and goes on to accuse the opposition leader of not supporting Andrea Coote as Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council.

On 15 November 2006, in the middle of the last election campaign, a blog entry accuses the Leader of the Opposition of not having a clear message, while on 3 November, during the campaign, the blog made it clear that it was thought that the government’s advertisements regarding the Leader of the Opposition’s financial dealings with the Kennett government were accurate.

Honourable members would know that I do not purport to be Sherlock Holmes, but there are key facts pointing to the identity behind this blog. Let me dive into the murky world of the Collingwood Football Club. Fans of the ‘pies who regularly attend games often go by nicknames. There is one particularly mad keen fan who goes under the name ‘Driver’. Driver is responsible for a set of Blogger.com blogs on Collingwood, including ‘Magpies arise — 2005′ and ‘Pleasure and Pain 2006′. A key Sheezel factional ally is a former member for Monash Province, Peter Katsambanis.

Indeed Mr Katsambanis’ inaugural speech on 14 May 1996, which I had the pleasure of sitting through in the Council, gave special mention to his friend Mr Sheezel, while Mr Sheezel was campaign manager and strategist for Mr Katsambanis’s losing campaign in 2002. Mr Katsambanis is also a Collingwood tragic. The fact that he spent most of his tenure as a member of the Legislative Council expressing his love for Nathan Buckley on the Buckley Surfers website is no secret. I can now reveal that Driver is also revealed by Blogger.com as the author of ‘Bracks Watch’ and ‘Fight Fire with Fire’. In an amazing turn of events, it seems that certain Collingwood fan club members know Mr Katsambanis only by the nickname ‘Driver’. Who really is the driver behind ‘Fight Fire with Fire’? Like Fox news, all I can present is the facts: you decide.

Further, it has become apparent that the young Turks, the group that nearly unseated the shadow Treasurer, the honourable member for Scoresby, from his Liberal party seat in the lead-up to the last election, have now moved to Higgins. The leader of the young Turks, Dan Feldman, is intimately involved with Mr Sheezel at many levels. Immediately upon Mr Sheezel becoming state director, Dan Feldman was appointed on a commercial basis to replace the previous party solicitor who donated his time. Simultaneously Visits Pty Ltd, of which Mr Dan Feldman has been a company director since 6 September 2001 and which is headed by Mr Feldman’s brother, was appointed without tender to run the Liberal headquarters’ information technology systems. Mr Feldman and his branch stacks have returned the favour by moving their memberships to Higgins, in an obvious payback for favours granted. They are there as stacked branches in favour of Mr Sheezel’s candidacy for Higgins. Has the new state director, Tony Nutt, investigated these contracts? Have they been renewed? If not, is this an admission that they were uncommercial in nature?

Has the party held an investigation into the enrolment of the young Turk branch stacks into Higgins?

It is a truism of democracy that strong governments require strong oppositions. It is clear that the cancerous cells that the Leader of the Opposition spoke of have not been removed.They are growing faster than ever. It is time that the opposition got its house in order. The so-called investigation into the cancerous cells attacking the Leader of the Opposition was clearly a whitewash. The Victorian division of the Liberal Party has its own Santo Santoro. His name is Julian Sheezel. The Liberal Party must acknowledge the cancerous elements led by Mr Sheezel and deal with them or forever remain unelectable.

I now turn to the preselection deal to be confirmed at the special Liberal Party conference that will be held on Sunday. The deal is about saving the neck of one person and one person only — that is, the Leader of the Opposition.

It is about protecting his support base in Parliament. It is about protecting his sitting members of Parliament. The 64-page Liberal renewal document confirms that factionalism is rife within the Liberal Party, which has had its membership reduce from a high of 45 000 under Menzies — the glory days — to 14 000 as at the end of last year. To fix this factionalism the report recommends plebiscites for all preselections in the future.

But this sleazy deal, which has just been agreed to and which was reported today, is to protect the Leader of the Opposition and will aid present members of Parliament in their efforts to retain preselection — and those problems have been detailed in this 64-page report. It is okay for those stacking and underhand factionalism methods to remain, because doing so supports the Leader of the Opposition, but all the new candidates will need to undertake this new process.

The Leader of the Opposition has form on this. We just have to look at the coalition deal with The Nationals — and haven’t they been in trouble with that? One moment The Nationals are on Stateline saying one thing and then it is retracted by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. It shows he is prepared to do anything. How can you trust a party when it is — –

The DEPUTY SPEAKER — Order! The member’s time has expired