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Initially I dismissed this story as a storm in a teacup.  It just seemed so ridiculous.

If PM Kevin Rudd actually did ask someone in his office to check that his mate John Grant was getting fair treatment from the OzCar scheme, I thought, well so what?

Any taxpayer surely has the right to ask their MP to follow up on something governmenty, don’t they?  Isn’t that why we have MPs?  John Grant lives in Kevin Rudd’s electorate and, friend or not, he has the same rights as the rest of us to ask for representation.

As I said, a storm in a teacup. 

But now I see a much bigger picture emerging, and it is quite disturbing.

The whole fiasco has blown up in Malcolm Turnbull’s face now that he cannot produce the email he claims was at the centre of this controversy.

So it begs the question, how did this all begin and why?

It is interesting to read John Grant’s (he is the car dealer friend of the PM) statement in The Australian where he was quoted as saying he had made some initial enquiries about the OzCar scheme :

“like most dealers did” …”When GMAC (Financial Services) and GE decided to pull out of the country, dealers didn’t know what was going on” … “The government came up with a package, and vehicle dealers wanted to know what was happening with it. I did ring to find out what the program was about and I found out that it couldn’t be drawn down by the dealers; it could only be drawn down by the finance companies and banks.  They were the only people who could access the fund, so me as a dealer could get no favours at all. I didn’t ask for any favours, and quite frankly I’m still with the financier I started with so nothing’s changed for me in my life.” source : http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25662824-5013871,00.html

So, assuming John Grant is telling the truth, there was really nothing for him to ask Kevin Rudd to look into anyway.

Therefore, whatever evidence or innuendo is produced as a result of this ongoing saga, it’ based on an entirely false premise to begin with - individual dealers don’t apply for OzCar assistance to the government, they apply through Credit Suisse.

Normally I would classify my interest in current affairs as a ”half-attentive while eating dinner news watcher”, and I reckon most Australians would probably say the same.  The trouble is, from this limited perspective, the message we get is that there is some new government handout and Kevin Rudd is accused of helping a mate get his fingers into the pie.

That’s the message that Malcolm Turnbull and the Opposition hope most people will half hear, and our 30 TV news second stories won’t explain much more than that.  But this scandal goes so much deeper and it is a symptom or the nasty disease that infects Australian politics today.

How many people will spend time researching the details of this story? How many will simply hear the basics as Malcolm Turnbull might hope?

Well, to begin at the beginning, I looked into OzCar and discovered this:
Car Dealer Financing Support: OzCar Enquiries
Any enquiries relating to the operation of the OzCar Special Purpose Vehicle should in the first instance be directed to Credit Suisse in Sydney who are the Australian Government’s appointed managers of the OzCar facility.Enquiries should be directed to Mr Patrick Eng, Director of the Asset Backed Capital Markets Group, Credit Suisse, 02 8205 4536 or Mr Will Farrant on 02 8205 4891.
source: http://www.treasury.gov.au/contentitem.asp?NavId=&ContentID=1536.

So,  if a car dealer called the PM’s office or the Treasury, they would be directed to Credit Suisse which seems to be widely known on the various motor trade websites I have looked at.

Another thought that occurs to me is this: love him or hate him, you have to admit Kevin Rudd is intelligent and knows about politics.  He cannot have risen to the post of PM without being aware of the nasty tricks and traps that are always lurking in the wings.

Is it even conceivable that such an experienced politician would be caught up in something as fundamentally dumb as trying to get unfair preferential treatment for a mate?  Are we to assume he was home sick on the first day of Politics 101?

In my opinion, there is very little likelihood that Rudd and Grant ever discussed OzCar, and even less that Rudd tried to somehow manipulate things for his friend.

So what about this missing email?

According to The Age, the email was from  a Rudd economic adviser Dr  Andrew Charlton to Gowin Grech in Treasury  and said:

“Hi Godwin, the PM has asked if the car dealer financing vehicle is available to assist a Queensland dealership, John Grant Motors, who seems to be having trouble getting finance. If you can follow up on this one asap that would be very useful. Happy to discuss. A.” source: http://www.theage.com.au/national/rudd-in-car-dealer-crisis-20090619-cr9e.html?page=1

In the Senate inquiry Grech said: “My recollection may well be totally faulty, but my recollection is that there was a short email from the PMO (prime minister’s office) to me, which very simply alerted me to the case of John Grant. I don’t have the email.” (ibid)

Anyone who has ever worked for a company that relies on email communications will tell you that emails don’t just go missing.  Any well run company will ensure that back-up copies of all emails are kept on the email server for a period of time so that they can be referred to if required in the future.  Surely we can expect that our own government follows this most basic code of practice, can’t we?

So, if the email existed, why hasn’t it been produced, along with the email headers to show what machine it was sent from and when?

I was shcoked when I heard Opposition’s Tony Abbott on ABC1’s Lateline say “I hate to sound cynical, but there are such things as searches designed to lose the evidence.”
source http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/

This is surely dirty politics at its dirtiest.

WHAT??? The evidence cannot be found, therefore the accused must have destroyed the evidence.  What an appalling assertion to make.  What happened to the innocent until proved guilty concept?

Next, I think we need to go back to last Wednesday (17/6/09) when:
Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull was accused of bullying … economic adviser Andrew Charlton.
The opposition believes Mr Charlton wrote the document to Mr Grech.
“This whole OzCar issue will be very damaging for you,” Mr Turnbull reportedly told Mr Charlton.
“Let me give you some friendly advice. You should not lie to protect your boss. You know and I know there is documentary evidence that you have lied.” source: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/national/national/general/turnbull-denies-pm-staffer-threat/1545570.aspx

Here we have an incident that appears to have occurred before the Grant/OzCar questioning ever even began in parliament.  If true, it looks suspiciously like Malcolm Turnbull was trying to intimidate Charlton and make him fearful of backing Rudd when the story broke.

So a storm in a teacup turns into a poison chalice - for someone.

If the email turns up, it will be claimed that Rudd, Swan or both, mislead Parliament.
If the email is a fake Malcolm Turnbull’s integrity is shot to hell.

So far it is looking to me as if this email will not be produced.  I feel sure it would have been by now, if it really existed, and various independent experts would have been asked to look at it to determine what the headers revealed about source and date.

Without the email  Turnbull is going to be looking a right wally.

Sooooooooooooooooo….

Why did Malcolm Turnbull start  all this?  He has admitted that he has not personally seen the email. source: http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,27574,25665217-5006009,00.html

Surely now the onus is on  Turnbull to provide full detail of who told him about this email.

Is it possible that this whole fiasco is actually internal Liberal Party politics?

Is it just possible that Turnbull has been set up by someone within his own party?

Is it a coincidence that this story broke the same week Peter Costello announced he was leaving politics?

Is there perhaps a faction within Turnbull’s own party who have “leaked”  false information to him to make him look a fool?

If he was willing to put his credibility on the line based on an email he never ever asked to see a copy of, then whoever was behind this Machiavellian plot to destroy his credibility, was probably quite right to expose him for the fool he must be.