A New South Wales Labor frontbencher has used parliamentary privilege to launch a scathing attack on her own party, linking one of its candidates for the next election with corrupt former minister Eddie Obeid and accusing party leaders of ignoring the “horrific influence” of property developers.
Shadow minister Tania Mihailuk used a late night speech in parliament on Tuesday to launch the extraordinary attack on Canterbury-Bankstown mayor Khal Asfour, who is nominated to run on the party’s upper house ticket ahead of its state conference next month.
Mihailuk, the MP for Bankstown, launched a series of accusations against Asfour about the redevelopment of land in the area, including alleged links to Obeid.
“Candidacy for such a privileged position, you would expect, warrants comprehensive scrutiny, particularly given Labor’s recent Icac woes and the well-documented Icac findings against former ministers, which marred the last New South Wales Labor government,” she said.
“I raise my legitimate and longstanding concerns regarding Asfour’s character and his unprincipled actions in furthering the interests of developers and identities, in particular Eddie Obeid, who went to his wedding, adorning him with a generous gift, as Asfour boasted at the time, and remained steadfastly committed to ensuring Asfour would be mayor throughout the period of redeveloping the landholdings in Bankstown.”
Asfour has been nominated by Labor’s right faction for an eight-year term in the state’s upper house at the March state election.
On Wednesday he accused Mihailuk of being “gutless” and “cowardly”, and challenged her to “repeat those outrageous and unsubstantiated claims outside the parliament”.
“She has used parliamentary privilege to launch a cowardly attack on me and my family and I call on her to produce evidence of any wrongdoing to the relevant bodies,” he said.
“She is citing matters from 2012. This reeks of sour grapes at being overlooked on Labor’s upper house ticket.”
There has been significant upheaval in Labor’s upper house preselection, with a slate of new faces including Cessnock nurse Emily Suvaal and Dubbo barrister Stephen Lawrence endorsed by the right faction in place of sitting MPs including Adam Searle.
A boundary redistribution that abolished the seat of Lakemba in Sydney’s south-west sparked a bitter preselection stoush. It has led to some MPs, including Mihailuk, being forced to switch seats.
The Bankstown MP was also recently the subject of reports about alleged bullying inside her electoral office, a claim she has denied. Asfour accused her of “deflecting from her own issues and the front-page headlines she attracted recently” with her attack.
As well as Asfour, Mihailuk also took aim at the party’s leadership in her speech, including general secretary Bob Nanva, claiming she had raised concerns about Asfour previously.
“No one can claim they did not know about my concerns and misgivings about this man,” she said.
“I have either written or raised matters in meetings. I remember raising my concerns early on with [former Labor general secretary] Jamie Clements, who was, unsurprisingly, uninterested.
“But I thought Bob Nanva, tasked with the challenge of cleaning up Labor post-Icac, would be different.
“I met with him on 7 February 2020 at 2.30pm. I relayed my concerns about the horrific influence with respect to developers, the pressure on councillors, the unusual party members joining up and the myriad of documents that have been presented to party office and respective authorities over the years.”
She claimed preselecting Asfour would put the saga over John Barilaro’s selection for a plum New York trade job “into the shade”.
“And indeed the wider public would have to question what the Labor party’s operation mantra is going to be under a potential Minns Labor government if we can’t deliver new blood that is not tainted,” she said.
The timing of the public stoush came as the NSW Labor leader, Chris Minns, prepared to launch the party’s most significant pre-election policy announcement on Wednesday, with a commitment to employ an extra 1,200 nurses and midwives across the state if it is elected next year.
